Brewing my First Porter - Need Help!

1. Boil the malt extract. Boiling promotes hot break and, upon cooling, cold break, i.e., protein precipitation. Most homebrewers try to avoid transferring this material to the fermenter.

2. This is not a lot of hops for the strength of the beer. The beer will come out to about 1.075 og by my estimate. I would add all of these hops as a bittering addition to get you to about 30 ibus to help balance the sweetness of all the malt. They typically have the same bittering potential. IMO, fuggles is more earthy, goldings is more citrus and floral, but both are pretty mild compared to many modern hop varieties that are in vogue.

3. This is acceptable, although some feel that it makes an inferior beer than boiling the whole thing. I'm not sure exactly why or whether it is universally true, but it was my experience back when I had a smaller kettle. Of course, I was a newbie then, and probably made half a dozen other big mistakes that impacted my beer, so my experience may not be the best to judge the technique.

4. Unsolicited comment on the recipe. I do not know the extracts that you are using but I see one of them is a dark extract. One potential problem with using dark extract is you may not know the combination of roasted malt, crystal malt, and low-roast color malt (e.g., dehusked malt) used to develop color in the extract. This uncertain may be problematic when you add your chocolate and crystal malts. Your beer could end up too roasty, too sweet, or perhaps just a jumble of muddled flavor. I'm not suggesting you do not brew this recipe, but just be aware that you may want to tweak some of these elements should you decide to brew something like this again. Extract brewers who make their own recipes tend to avoid the dark extracts so that they can better control the flavor of the beer via specialty grains.

 

I'll add a further comment for question #3. From the questions that you ask, it sounds like you are a newcomer to this hobby, so an important word of warning. When boiling with a relatively small pot, don't fill it too full. Boil-overs are easy to experience once you get a rolling boil going and add hops. Leave some room in the pot to catch the boil-over and stand by with your spoon to try to stop it by stirring. Shut off the fuel too if the stirring is not going to control the boil-over.

If you are a noobie to this hobby, take time to read howtobrew.com online, or purchase the newer edition so you can take notes, mark it up, etc. That book is excellent to learn just about all that you need to know about homebrewing.

 

Do everything pweis909 says. His #4 is very good advice. I'm not sure where you are but if you can get some brown malt I'd add 200g or less of that too. And make sure your carbon filter your top off water to remove any chlorine. KMeta would be a good addition as well if there are chloramines in your water.

 

there are a thousand things to think about and it can get overwhelming if you aren't careful. so for now it looks good.

except for the combination of dark extract with your grains, as mentioned by others.
roasted malt can become a big problem quickly. it only takes a little to make a pronounced flavor. I might consider eliminating the dark extract and doubling the light extract. i will admit to be 100% American and therefore have little to zero ability to conceptualize in metrics.

your beer will improve dramatically if you move to "full wort" boils. that is to say, all things being equal, boiling the full volume is the single easiest way to improve your beer with virtually no changes to your technique. better hop utilization, better break, less color change, less homebrew twang (look it up). honest. if you can get a big pot and a big burner go with that. otherwise it isn't a sin.

Cheers.

 

You'll make beer. It could be great. I made my first recipe with a dark extract, one lb of crystal 60, and one lb of chocolate malt. I found it to be sweeter than I wanted and roaster than I wanted,but drinkable enough. Dark extracts aren't inherently bad, but easily misunderstood. And no one really bothers to learn them through trial and error because it is easier to use pale extracts plus specialty grains.