Experimental Porter

Morning all,

Looking at branching out on this one for something a little distant from my norm, it is essentially my basic house recipe with some minor changes to bump up the gravity and give it a fuller mouthfeel that the last few and to use up a malt I've had kicking around for a little while. I have made a chocolate and vanilla porter before (which I ruined) and I have made a smoked porter before (which I didn't leave alone long enough) and I have wood aged a porter before for a couple of months.

I was contemplating fermenting in my wooden barrel but think this will entail a lot of work extracting the beer, holding it, washing and resterilising the cask and chucking the beer back in to condition, plus it will leave me short on volume as it will only hold 20L, some of which will be lost to trub and some will be absorbed into the wood, if I had a 30L oak barrel I'd certainly give it a try...but I don't.

The cocoa nibs will go into the cask for secondary as will the vanilla...or the vanilla will go into the keg with the finings added at the end prior to running some bottles off, unless I decide to bottle direct from the cask via the tap and a counter pressure filler. I am going with 6.25g/l for the cocoa nibs and somewhere between 1 and 1.5ml/l for the vanilla extract, I do have pods but I am not sure whether they are still sealed properly.

The base recipe is:

48% Maris Otter
20% Rauchmalt
12% Brown Malt
8% Ragus No. 3
7% Dark Crystal
5% Carafa I

Hops will be Challenger and Styrian Goldings to 30 IBU, colour should be somewhere around 60+ EBC.

Has anyone done anything similar or think it won't work, this is by far my most experimental beer so any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Cheers.

That looks interesting although can't comment on rauchmalt as never used that. Hop combination should be nice though.

I'd use the vanilla pods as I don't find vanilla extract gives as deep or lasting flavour. Soak the pods overnight in bourbon or vodka and chuck the lot into the FV when conditioning.

What is Ragus no.3 ?

As far as the recipe goes, that looks very interesting. Will be keen to see how it turns out.

Regarding the rauch malt - I've read that you lose the smokiness as the beer ages. Mind, with the amount you're using, it may not need as much aging.

Big thumbs up on the brown malt - I've got 3kg of that stuff for my next stout (likely the 1850 Whitbread one, or certainly based on that).

I have used pods since and found that just putting the pods in isn't as effective.

If you chop up the pods into smallish pieces and then soak in a spirit overnight it works a lot better. I read an article in brew your own magazine that vanilla flavour dissolves in alcohol really easily.

Using this method seems to work well, I'm bringing a vanilla stout to the festival so you can give it a try

Ah right, I'll give that a go then if they are any good. It should be somewhere between 8 and 10 weeks if I'm lucky, just debating whether to keep it for myself or bottle from the cask and put it in the national home brew competition & Briarbank competition in August.

Any update on how this went?

I'm trying to formulate a Smoked Porter recipe and I'm not sure how much Smoked Malt to use. I don't want it to taste overwhelmingly of bacon, more of a nice subtle yet noticeable smoke flavour. I've seen recipes using as little as 2% and as much as 30%. Was 20% about right?

He's a mad man...a mad man! P.s. is this a "craft beer". ??

The initial beer was good, if I'm honest, the smoke was quite subtle compared to the other flavours and I am going to experiment again when I find a smoked malt with a bit more oomph behind it, something that can compete with the brown and the chocolate.

For the purposes of research I've been trying a few smoked beers. First up was a smoked porter by 8 Wired Brewery. It was pretty good and the level of smoke from the rauchmalt was close to what I'm after.

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Second was this beer, a peated Imperial Stout. And I really like this! I've listened to the Brewing Network show on smoked porter where JZ says to stay away from peated malt, and after this beer I can't see why. It's quite similar in many ways to a whisky barrel aged stout.

So perhaps a little peated malt is what you need.

Funnily enough I was looking at peat smoked malt for my next order.

I've been experimenting with my standard porter recipe using a variety of different malt and hops and the results have been interesting, my favourite has been the wood aged version but I need to buy some cocoa nibs and turn it into my Christmas Chocolate and Vanilla Wood Aged Porter.

[Dennis King]