Hoppy Porter Recipe Critique

Don't know about oranges but i just had a Founders Porter from a keg that had a nice chocolate flavor. It will be my next brew and might go with this. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=357248
It might be hard to have chocolate without a roasty taste.

 

Without putting your recipe into a calculator, your diastatic power looks like it could be a little low, causing conversion problems. I'd drop the brown malt, pale chocolate & rolled oats to 10% of the recipe and give everything back to your base malt. I would also drop the mash temp to 152 and increase the length of the mash to 90 minutes.

Now, that is just advice without plugging this into a calculator, which I would definitely do before brewing this up. You could also switch out some of your two row with six row, red or white wheat, but you might be fine without doing that.

For the hops, consider using centennial or nugget instead of azacca and save that for an IPA. I get lots of orange flavor from them + they are cheaper and more available. I'd also drop your IBUs down to 50. 77 is way too high for a porter and is really roasty IPA territory. The idea of a hoppy porter sounds great to me, but I would definitely favor aromatic hoppy instead of overly bitter hoppy here.

I wouldn't mess with your water without inputting your recipe into a calculator. You have a bit of dark malt in your recipe, sure, but it's honestly not that much and you might not need to increase your pH too much anyway. Plus, I always get nervous when advice uses teaspoons for units instead of grams.

 

I love Robust Porters! I recently brewed one and I ‘round tested’ the first bottle of that batch last evening. Still young at this point but yet tasty.

A few discussion points:

Chocolate flavor

If you want “more chocolately flavors” I would suggest that you use ‘regular’ Chocolate Malt vs. Pale Chocolate Malt. I strongly recommend that you use a British malting company brand (e.g., Crisp, Baird, etc.).

Orange-like flavor

I have brewed several times with Amarillo and I agree that this hop provides orange-like flavors. I recently brewed with Azacca but in combination with Mosaic so I can’t comment as to its specific flavor contribution. I would suggest that you use both as you detailed. For me Centennial provides more of a Grapefruit flavor vs. orange.

Finishing Gravity

My personal preference in Robust Porters is that they be ‘chewy’ so I would suggest that you not use US-05. I use Danstar Windsor to brew my Robust Porters. My grain bill is different than yours but my stats were OG = 1.073 and FG = 1.027. Now you might be thinking 1.027 is too high but for a Robust Porter it really isn’t. In fact I was thinking as I drank my first bottle of this recent batch that I wished it had a tad more body. Just something for you to consider here.

Bitterness

I agree with @FeDUBBELFIST that 77 IBUs is too high. Tweak it down a bit.



Best of luck with your hoppy Robust Porter!!

Cheers!

 

Azacca has an orange like flavor when I brewed a single hop IPA with it. May want to check that hop out if you can.

For chocolate flavor, try chocolate rye malt in the grist as well. I used it in my RIS and it's like decedent chocolate fudge!

 

I just plugged the recipe in and you are plenty good on diastatic power. My bad. I would still do the brown malt to 10% though from a flavor perspective. I believe Crisp themselves recommend 10% max.

 

From your Brewers Friend recipe page you can click on "Mash Chemistry and Brewing Water Calculator" and it will import your grain bill to the advanced water chemistry calculator*. From here select "London Porter" and it has a suggested water profile. You can see the forecast ph and with trail and error you can figure out the salt additions. The Big Three salts are gypsum, epsom salt, and calcium chloride (baking soda is a bit player). Fairly certain you'll need all of the Big Three, you can buy epsom salt at the grocery for 'bout two bucks a pound.

Agree with previous comments, Amarillo and Centennial are killers. Do you have a name for the beer yet?

*I found this confusing for the first couple of hours I played with it, but ultimately figured out all the tabs/updates . . . it seems to work.

 

The best I can report is that when I use 'regular' Chocolate Malt (e.g., Oatmeal Stout, Robust Porter) all that I perceive is chocolate notes (nothing that I would report as "roasty").

I am pretty sure that the chocolate flavor contributions from Pale Chocolate Malt will be subdued in comparison.

This is your beer and you get to choose.

A split batch using US-05 in one and Windsor in the other sounds like an excellent idea. If you go this route please report back.

Cheers!

 

Jack,
I've brewed a lot of porters over the years, and one of my favorite things to do was to play with the dark malt bill to see the differences. To me, British chocolate malt tastes like dark chocolate and pale chocolate malt tastes like milk chocolate. But as always, your mileage may vary!

 

I have purposefully never brewed with Briess Chocolate malt since I have heard that it is less potent wrt providing a chocolate flavor.

So far I have brewed with Simpsons and Bairds Chocolate Malt with positive results. I have yet to brew with Crisp or Thomas Fawcett Chocolate Malt but others have provided me with good recommendations for this malts.

As I mentioned before you get to choose which malt(s) to use in your beer.

Cheers!

 

As my friend Lou (who is a HUGE chocoholic) would say: Dark Chocolate tastes like chocolate while Milk Chocolate tastes like nothing.

That's a fact, Jack!!

Hopefully @Ten_SeventySix_Brewhouse is getting the sense that there are no absolute right & wrong choices here. It comes down to what exactly you are looking to achieve along with the fact that we all have our own unique palates and will perceive things differently (personal preferences).

Cheers!

 

I love chocolatey porters! I brew a mole imperial porter every year. I would probably cut down on oats, and toast them as well. I'd drop the crystal down as well. I like a blend of crystal malts (something along the lines of .5# 40L, .25# 80L, .25# 150L). Doing a blend of of pale chocolate (1#) and chocolate malt (.5#) with that amount of brown malt has given me great flavor.
So far as hops with an orange flavor, don't discount Pacific Jade. It has a great orange flavor, as well as a peppery flavor that works well with the earthiness you want in a porter.
I've yet to find a dry yeast that I really love for dark beers. The Mangrove Jack's Newcastle Dark gave off esters that complimented roast, but was a low attenuator.

 

I got a blend of that and some c-120 for my Porter. Chewed on some and agree it has a great cocoa flavor. Also throwing in 1 oz of cocoa power in to the mash to see if it does anything.

 

I just brewed an Imperial Stout with 1.5# Pale Chocolate malt. IIRC all the pale chocolate malts are going to be British. It was quite tasty when I sampled it. I used 1.75# of rolled oats. Next time I make this recipe I am cutting back on rolled oats, I also used some flaked barley.
I've seen some people say that 8% is the most chocolate malt you should use, but you might be able to get away with 10%.

As previous posters have mentioned, it looks like only 50% of your grain bill is enzymatic. I think you'll want it to be more like 70% or so.