I recently brewed up a few batches of Porter/Stout using two ingredients new to me. They both got the Perla Negra and the Porter additionally got the Brown Malt. This was by no means meant for a side by side but I did notice upon tasting both yesterday that the Porter had a distinct coffee like flavor and the stout had a distinct chocolate flavor. The grain bills were as follows: Porter – 74% Maris, 13% Brown, 9% Perla Negra & 4% Simpson's C-90 (6.5 % abv) Stout – 80% Maris, 10% Perla Negra, 5% Breiss C-120 & 5% Simpson's C-30 (10.5% abv) Please, I know that the stout does not have roasted barley, no need to point that out, but I did pattern the recipe off the NHC award winning Split Open and Melt stout by Pat Craddock. I am not a big coffee fan so my preference is for the stout (by a huge margin) and it is the first chocolate malt I have used that genuinely gives me a chocolate flavor. The porter is really rather good and I would like to use the brown again, maybe at a lower percentage. Anyone else have experience with these two malts and if so, at what levels and what sort of flavors did you get from them? Cheers!
No experience on the Perla Negra, but I love brown malt. I have only used the Thomas Fawcett, though. To my palette, it has an earthy, cocoa powder sorta flavor. Not really chocolate, but in the ballpark. I like it at 10-15%, and then 5-10% black patent or chocolate malt.
No experience with Perla Negra. I concur with your brown malt observations. When people are asking for advice on how to get chololate into a beer I always recommend it. I used Thomas Fawcett as well. My dialed in porter recipe is a US pale ale malt (kilned to 3-4L) and 7% each of brown malt and black patten with a malty water profile fermented with 1968.
