First time porter

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pluckthechicken

Spring chicken
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
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Location
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So I recently plucked up (heh) the courage to brew something dark, and a chocolate porter had been on the cards for a while since it's one that I'm fond of that can be pretty hard to come by in the shops. However, I'm a little picky about porters and stouts off the shelf... It seems that a lot of commercial brews end up with some unpleasant burnt/harsh flavours so I assumed that there may be a bit more skill in the successful brewing of darker styles (or is it just me?)
Anyway I browsed some recipes and discussions on here and came up with this. Thoughts, opinions and advice would be valued :D

5.8 litre (weird, I know)

OG 1.062
SRM 37.2
IBU 29.4
ABV 6.4%

British ale yeast wlp005

1kg MO
150g pale chocolate
150g Munich
100g crystal 50L
60g DRC (double roast crystal)
50g roast barley
50g carapils

Mash at 68C for 60 mins

EKG 10g 60min
First gold 5g 10min

40g cocoa powder and 2tbsp sweetener at flameout.

NB. I didn't have much in the way of hop aroma as I thought it might interfere with the chocolate flavours... Was this overcautious?
 
It looks fine to me, without knowing the exact percentages. Most British porters don't use aroma hops. But what's the sweetener idea? New to me.
 
I'd be careful adding sweetener I believe that certain types will inhibit fermentation/carbonation (seen this on a few wine making threads)
 
I wouldn't use sweetener myself. You can get sweetness from grain choice.
 
Most of the Porters i have brewed have been really simple in comparison, using only pale, brown, crystal and chocolate malts and a single hop and were really tasty. From what I understand one has more leeway with a dark beer probably than any other, they seem to be more forgiving. I wonder though if in using smaller grain bill the margin for error is proportionately smaller. Interesting recipe though.
 
I think there's an argument that the more different grain types you use in a brew, the greater chance of getting a muddled mess. The greater danger, perhaps, is that you use too much of a particular grain. I find a large amount of Crystal, or chocolate, makes a beer too heavy, for my tastes.
 
As the others have said, not sure about the sweetner - tbh it's going to fairly sweet anyway unless you use a yeast with a massive attenuation as the balance between the OG and IBU is very heavily skewed to OG. The balance value is only 0.4. My stout and porter book says you need to be looking for about 0.7/0.8 for a robust porter
 
Ahh ****, the sweetener was kind of a last minute thing... I just wanted a little residual sweetness to try and bring out the chocolate flavour in the absence of lactose. It was maltodextrin and sucralose. Fermentation began quickly but has slowed a lot, leaving it at 1.030 (eek). Anyway, I think you might be right about the grain giving sufficient sweetness, I'll probably take an FG reading for future reference and let my tastebuds fill in the rest.

As for the grain bill, I was desperately trying not to get too carried away but still ended up with a shopping list! Still, I sort of felt that everything there had some sort of purpose. I don't know if carapils is a silly thing to add to something that will probably have a high FG anyway?

Thanks for the advice :)
 
The grain bill is fine, and the beer may well end up fine too, keep us posted. :thumb:
 
Thanks Clibit, I'll let you know how it turns out and revise things accordingly when I get around to doing round two... I'll see if I can catch you guys before I brew next time though! If you think a beer has come out a bit heavy, would you cut down on some crystal and use more roast/black malt to make up the difference in colour?

MyQul- that's an interesting idea, I've never seen an OG:IBU ratio being used as a reference but I'll make use of this for next time, it seems sensible. I did wonder as I was making the recipe; does a chocolate porter typically fall into the robust porter category? I wasn't exactly sure what to base it on.

Thanks fellas :)
 
Normally the robust porter uses black malt but I 'categorized' it as a robust porter because you used roasted barley and the roastyness from the higher kilned grains needs a bit more IBU's to balance things out. Otherwise, without any black/RB it's a 'brown porter' - if were talking categories
 
pluckthechicken said:
Thanks Clibit, I'll let you know how it turns out and revise things accordingly when I get around to doing round two... I'll see if I can catch you guys before I brew next time though! If you think a beer has come out a bit heavy, would you cut down on some crystal and use more roast/black malt to make up the difference in colour?

MyQul- that's an interesting idea, I've never seen an OG:IBU ratio being used as a reference but I'll make use of this for next time, it seems sensible. I did wonder as I was making the recipe; does a chocolate porter typically fall into the robust porter category? I wasn't exactly sure what to base it on.

Thanks fellas :)
Click to expand...

I'd never heard of the OG:IBU ratio before either till I read about it in a Stout & Porter book I have. Receipe software sometimes has it - I use brewmate, that does. The ratio can be helpful if your following style guidelines and/or, like me, your not that good at recipe creation
 
So it seems to have fermented out at 1.027, so 55% attenuation.
I want it to be sweet but not downright sickly, hopefully the sweetener hasn't buggered the yeast!
Either way, I was thinking of pitching some active wlp001 with the hope that it would bump up the attenuation a bit.
Samples are tasting delicious if only it would dry out just a little.
Any thoughts?
 
You could try adding WLP001, or US05, Nottingham, S04, but there's no guarantee it would work. It might.
 
As clibit says 'it might work'. The problem is it's already partially fermented. The first thing the first lot of yeast does is use up all the available oxygen and most if not all of th available nutrients in the wort, leaving little or non for the second lot of yeast

Have a look here for some ideas for what to do

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=54457
 
Random idea, maybe add some dried yeast and yeast nutrient to a jar of 30C water and shake it to aerate it? Might kick start things...?
 
You could just try rousing the yeast, I had to rouse my Wlp005 several times to get the attenuation down to the predicted figure. How long has it been fermenting for?
 
clibit said:
Random idea, maybe add some dried yeast and yeast nutrient to a jar of 30C water and shake it to aerate it? Might kick start things...?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines! I guess I won't lose anything but I'm prepared that it may not work.

RedDarren- I've heard of rousing yeasts and assumed that it is just stirring them up, is that right?
 
Okay, so I just activated some wlp001 in 30ml sugar solution at 1.027, aerated by shaking in sanitized jar and then pitched it with some yeast nutrients and gave it a good stir. I might have been able to rouse the yeast like RedDarren was saying but when it comes to saving a batch of beer, I'm an "all guns blazing" kind of guy!
 
Artificial sweeteners used to be fairly common (I never did). Dave Line, one of the giants on whose shoulders we stand, used them in a few of his recipes. You can add them at any time so you could have used them to adjust sweetness at the end of fermentation, had you wished.
 

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