Plum Pilsner Experiment

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

Bored at work I've been looking at some recipes. I saw one for a plum porter and thought it may be interesting. I'm not a huge fan of porter so wondered how it may work in a pale ale. As it's an experiment I'm only going to do a small batch and will use dme to keep things simple. I think I have enough pilsner dme in the house to cover it so plum pilsner it is. I actually intend to use prunes.

So here is the rough plan.

5l batch
100g prunes stewed 60 mins
Magnum 60 mins 30 IBUs

Might add a small amount of late hops in. I'll see what I have. I'll just use the san diego yeast I have in the fridge although I think something like a saison could add some interesting flavour. All going well I could have a few bottles for Christmas.

Leon103 · Nov 30, 2015

Where did you see the plum porter recipe

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

Can't post links from my phone for some reason. However if you search Google there are a fair few references. Also there appears to be at least one commercially available, Titanic Plum Porter.

geetee · Nov 30, 2015

Look at the Titanic website for Plum porter and you will see that they add Goldings hops and PLUM FLAVOURING to achieve the plum aroma and flavour.

I have a Plum porter in FV at the moment and decided to make it without plums using Special B malt, Bramling cross and endeavour hops to get a dark fruit flavour, a dash of flaked oats for smoothness and some brown and Chocolate wheat Malt for slight roasted feel. it is a nice deep ruby rather than deep brown porter colour but that's what I wanted

It has a deep rich fruity flavour not quite Plum but getting there so when I bottle this week I will split half as is and half with a plum essence flavouring mainly for the aroma. I think it's good enough to drink as is but can hardly call it a Plum porter without ANY plums at all in it!

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

Stopped at the shop on the way home to pick up some prunes. Unfortunately dried prunes contain potassium sulphate which may kill the yeast. I'll go too a bigger shop tomorrow and either get tinned prunes or fresh plumbs. I almost decided to use dates as they don't have any potassium sulphate. Dates are Christmas. I may still try it.

MyQul · Nov 30, 2015

geetee said:
Look at the Titanic website for Plum porter and you will see that they add Goldings hops and PLUM FLAVOURING to achieve the plum aroma and flavour.

I have a Plum porter in FV at the moment and decided to make it without plums using Special B malt, Bramling cross and endeavour hops to get a dark fruit flavour, a dash of flaked oats for smoothness and some brown and Chocolate wheat Malt for slight roasted feel. it is a nice deep ruby rather than deep brown porter colour but that's what I wanted

It has a deep rich fruity flavour not quite Plum but getting there so when I bottle this week I will split half as is and half with a plum essence flavouring mainly for the aroma. I think it's good enough to drink as is but can hardly call it a Plum porter without ANY plums at all in it!

You could have possible used a yeast with a stone fruit/plum flavour to further enhance the non-plum-plum-flavours?

Halfacrem · Nov 30, 2015

Plum sounds much more appetising than Prunes!

Prunes have quite a distinct bitter taste (awful IMHO :sick:). Certainly a lot different to fresh Plums. What about baking some fresh plums, perhaps adding some subtle spices, before adding to your beer? (I have no idea how or when you would add fruit, but baked vanilla or cinnamon or honey plums sounds much nicer than adding tinned prunes).

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

Complete change of plan. I ended up using Dates. 300g dates and 400g pilsner extract in 6l water. I put the dates through the nutribullet to try and extract as much sugar and flavour as possible. Once it was boiling I decided to change the hops. I did a 20 minute boil adding 5g mosaic every at 20, 15, 19 & 5 then 20g more as it was cooling.

Wasn't sure what OG to expect so got a reading at the end at about 1.044. I decided I had over hopped it and cooked up another 150g of extract and topped it back up to about 6l. Very roughly I think it may be 45 IBU's. So it is now a Date IPA rather than the planned Plum Pilsner.

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

MyQul said:
You could have possible used a yeast with a stone fruit/plum flavour to further enhance the non-plum-plum-flavours?

Yeah I may still make this so I might use a different yeast. Did you have a yeast in mind?

H0PM0NSTER · Nov 30, 2015

I tried a bottle of Titanic Plum Porter yesterday and it was very good. ÃÂ£1.49 in Lidl at the moment in their special offer isle rather than the normal beer section.

I would love to make something similar but achieving a good plum taste is very difficult: I've tried artificial plum flavouring but the taste was more like bubblegum. I've also tried adding fresh plums after the initial fermentation but despite very careful washing of the fruit this resulted in a terrible brew infection - the only brew I've tipped down the sink.

Stewing plums might be the answer. I've recently stewed prunes in winter spiced ale but didn't get much fruit flavours - I think the spices may have drowned them out. Still, I think stewing fresh fruit would be more effective. Good luck!

MyQul · Nov 30, 2015

Not really, although I think WLP 007 will give you those flavours if fermented at the top end of it's fermentation range

mike77 · Nov 30, 2015

Ok all done. You can see the dates made it go quite dark. Hopefully I'll get some flavour through.

Leon103 · Nov 30, 2015

mike77 said:
Can't post links from my phone for some reason. However if you search Google there are a fair few references. Also there appears to be at least one commercially available, Titanic Plum Porter.

Yes I have picked up a few of them from Lidl

H0PM0NSTER · Nov 30, 2015

Good luck mike!
I like the fact that this started with plum porter and ended up as date pilsner! That's just how my brew plans evolve - with crossings out throughout my brew log as I change my mind midway through fermentation!

geetee · Dec 4, 2015

I know you went for dates in the end but I have just bottled my 40 litre Plum porter as described above in this thread.
I primed it with dark muscovado sugar to help the colour a bit and then filled 20 bottles as is so I know what the plain porter tastes like.
I then added Plum essence to taste. I ended up adding about 15ml of into the remaining 30 litres bit by bit until I got the level right. not sure if this will come through after carbonation but at the moment tastes and smells just like the Titanic

mike77 · Dec 4, 2015

I should really buy a bottle of this titanic to see what it tastes like.

Date ipa appears to have fermented out so I'll probably bottle up on Sunday when I have time

Simonh82 · Jan 27, 2016

I wanted to ask how both the date IPA and plum porter turned out?

I've had a couple of bottles of the plumb porter and it is lovely stuff. I'm not normally a huge fan of dark malty beers but this was so smooth and fruity I was an immediate fan.

Geetee, what plum essence did you use and where did you get it from? Also would you mind sharing your recipe? This is definitely one I'd like to brew in the future.

ManseMasher · Jan 27, 2016

Not quite plums or dates, and obviously the menu is for a 79l brew. I did a scaled down version (a quarter of about everything). Tasted very very nice.

Simonh82 · Jan 28, 2016

ManseMasher said:
Not quite plums or dates, and obviously the menu is for a 79l brew. I did a scaled down version (a quarter of about everything). Tasted very very nice.

How did you add the damson? I'm really keen to try something like this but there seem to be quite a few options for how and when to do this.

Plum Pilsner Experiment

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