Some help with roast flavors

[Nil]

Hello All,
I have been trying with no success to make a robust porter with nice roasty notes. I tried adding NaCl to the water, yet I had a limitation in the chloride level. Then, I choose to reduce the pH of the final wort before pitching, and then neutralize it with Na Bicarbonate to give extra sodium. No success.

Grains used were Briess Extra Special, Briess Special Roast and Crystal 120. The levels were between 10-15%, with a Briess Pale Ale malt.

I also over-boiled for 120 min: 60 min boiling to caramelize the sugars and then start hop additions.

Any comments or recommendations will be appreciated.

Thanks, Nil

 

[chickypad]

You don't have any dark roasted malts there. The extra special at 130L as I understand is more like biscuit on steroids. For a robust porter I would include some combo of black and chocolate malt.

 

[jdauria]

Adding NaCl will help enhance a malty profile in the finished product, but without any roast malts, as chickypad mentioned, you will not get any roasty notes. Black patent, chocolate malt are two common ingredients in a robust porter. For a 5 gallon batch, I would say something like 11 oz of Chocolate malt and 7 oz of black patent will give you what you are looking for.

 

[Nil]

I used Briess Blackprintz for more color. I used Black patent in the past, the beer showed an have acidic aftertaste.

 

[chickypad]

Blackprintz isn't going to give you much in the way of roast. Too much black malt, roasted barley, chocolate, etc. can have an acrid aftertaste but I think you've gone too far the other way without using any of those and trying to make a robust porter. You can balance it in different ways, like using crystal, not overdoing the bittering, using a mix of malts - say 5-6% chocolate and 3% black malt. Personally I'd swap out the C-120 for something lighter, I find it to taste a bit burnt in large quantities and might contribute to your problem. I'd also make sure you're not overdoing it with the two special roasted malts. What is the full recipe with percentages?

 

[Nil]

Briess Pale Ale: 71%
Briess Special Roast: 8%
Briess Extra Special: 8%
Crystal 120: 8%
Briess Blackprinz: 5%
OG: 1.045
FG: 1.01
ABV: 6.1
SRM: 34.9