Porter

Beer Recipes
1

I’ve used jamils BCS hazelnut Porter recipe as my base recipe with a few adj. my question lies with briess special roast and crystal malts. Should I adjust the crystal malts to make up for the addition of the sp. roast?

65% MO
8.2% C80 1#
8.2% C40 1#
8.2% SP. Roast 1#
6.1% pale choc.
4.1% black malt

I will be roasting hazelnuts for the mash, vanilla beans after primary and lastly cold brewed coffee at kegging.

My first thought was to drop the C80? Any other thoughts and/or recommendations would be appreciated.

PS. Sorry for some of the short hand, the AHA forum site won’t let me login so I’m typing this on my phone.

2

No, I wouldn’t adjust the crystal specifically because of the presence of special roast. A couple lbs of crystal in a porter seems like a lot but if that’s how the recipe is written, go for it. Personally, if I were to drop one of the crystals, I’d be more inclined to drop the C40 and keep the C80 in a porter.

3

I agree with Jon, and I also think that 1# of special roast is quite a bit to use. That is a fairly assertive grain IMO. For example, I use 1# of special roast in my big 1.090+ Old Ale, but that is a much bigger beer with a huge malt character. Maybe consider backing it off to 8-12 oz instead on your first go round. Just my 2 cents…

4

Yeah, and Maris Otter has a toasty/biscuity character of its own. Could be overload on that.

5

The reason I’m using special roast is because it was the free 1# of grain for re upping my membership last year.  It came already crushed in a sealed bag so I would need to use it up. Although it was free so…

6

Maybe I could drop the roast to .5# then maybe try to save the other half some how

7

Yeah, personally I think you’d like your beer better at .5 lb of Special Roast since it’s being used with MO. Not sure how well you’ll be able to save the other half pound but I’d rather have 5 gallons of beer I really like than use all the malt here to keep from wasting it. My $0.02  .

8

Cool I’ll do that, thanks for your input.

9

I would match the chocolate to your special roast.  with a 1:1 oz:gal of black malt.  I also think a pound/5gal of brown malt for any porter of any variety.

10

Brunwater is estimating my PH to be 5.1 with no additions and I will have to add back some bicarbonate.  I will be adding 2 grams baking soda to mash, will I need to add more to the boil since it’s not recommended to add to sparge? With this addition the Mash PH should be up to 5.3, I’d prefer to be 5.4-5.5

If I add anymore bicarb to mash, would the sodium be an issue?

Finished profile
CA 43
MG 5
Na 54
So4 47
Cl 70
Bicarb 145

11

Are you using RO water or your tap water? You’ll make a much better porter mashing at 5.5-5.6 pH - the roast is softer and less acrid at that pH.  No you don’t need to add more in the boil. Just add enough in the mash to raise pH to the referenced levels. I use RO and in a big roasty stout I stay just under 50ppm Na and that’s mashing @ 5.6 .

12

I use my tap, which is part of denver water system and I use campden tabs.  I could try diluting it with distilled and go from there but today is brew day so I’m crunched for time at this point.

13

I would say up the baking soda and get to the minimum 5.5 mash, I would get the Calcium to the 50-55ppm, but that is how I prefer my porters.

14

I did, but I can’t add anymore ca because it’s lowering the ph per the spreadsheet.  I have to quit at some point or I’m just going around in circles trying to balance this out. I settled at 43 ca

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15

Best of luck man!