im thinking about making a wheat based porter somthing that would be summery but enjoyable around a bon fire, cause i know during summer i dont want to be drinking the same summer wheat beer i drank all day , at night i want something heavyier and filling that i can chill to. any ideas comments ? cant really decided what yeast to use, kinda wanted to do wheat with a heffewiezen yeast but have porter specialty malts and hops… i want honest opinons people! THANKS!
do it. dunkelweizen is fantastic so why wouldn’t a wheat porter be good. you might have a hard time pairing hops with the wheat yeast, but the roast should work. cheers, j
I’ve always wondered why wheat-based dark ales have never caught on as a style. They sound tasty.
Take your porter recipe if you have one or any standard porter recipe and subsitute half the base malt with wheat… and go from there…I wouldn’t however, recommend a hefe yeast… just stick with the ‘english’ yeasts or american yeasts… WLP004, WLP001 etc…
i dont have a specific recipe yet was kinda just gonna plug in some things to my brew calculator and get the specs right to be considered a porter, any suggestions on fermentation time ??
till it’s done!
Couple of ideas, just sub out half the pale malt with wheat.
Porter1
12-B Porter, Robust Porter
Recipe Specifics
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Wort Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 9.75
Anticipated OG: 1.053 Plato: 13.19
Anticipated SRM: 30.6
Anticipated IBU: 46.4
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
76.9 7.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) Great Britain 1.038 3
10.3 1.00 lbs. Crystal 80L 1.033 80
5.1 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350
5.1 0.50 lbs. Flaked Oats America 1.033 2
2.6 0.25 lbs. Black Patent Malt America 1.028 525
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
0.50 oz. Chinook Pellet 13.00 31.5 60 min.
0.50 oz. Willamette Pellet 5.00 10.9 45 min.
1.00 oz. Willamette Pellet 5.00 4.0 5 min.
Yeast
White Labs WLP002 English Ale
Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Single Step
Grain Lbs: 9.75
Water Qts: 11.70 - Before Additional Infusions
Water Gal: 2.92 - Before Additional Infusions
Qts Water Per Lbs Grain: 1.20 - Before Additional Infusions
Saccharification Rest Temp : 154 Time: 60
Mash-out Rest Temp : 0 Time: 0
Sparge Temp : 175 Time: 10
Total Mash Volume Gal: 3.70 - Dough-In Infusion Only
Porter2
12-B Porter, Robust Porter
Recipe Specifics
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Wort Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.88
Anticipated OG: 1.059 Plato: 14.55
Anticipated SRM: 39.2
Anticipated IBU: 47.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
69.0 7.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) Great Britain 1.038 3
9.2 1.00 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350
9.2 1.00 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.037 8
4.6 0.50 lbs. Crystal 80L 1.033 80
4.6 0.50 lbs. Flaked Barley America 1.032 2
2.3 0.25 lbs. Carafa Germany 1.030 400
1.1 0.13 lbs. Black Patent Malt America 1.028 525
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
0.50 oz. Nugget Whole 13.00 27.8 60 min.
1.00 oz. Fuggle Whole 5.00 16.3 40 min.
1.00 oz. Fuggle Whole 5.00 3.6 5 min.
Yeast
White Labs WLP002 English Ale
Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Single Step
Grain Lbs: 10.88
Water Qts: 14.68 - Before Additional Infusions
Water Gal: 3.67 - Before Additional Infusions
Qts Water Per Lbs Grain: 1.35 - Before Additional Infusions
Saccharification Rest Temp : 152 Time: 60
Mash-out Rest Temp : 0 Time: 0
Sparge Temp : 170 Time: 10
Total Mash Volume Gal: 4.54 - Dough-In Infusion Only
Since BJCP specifies that a porter can contain a moderate amount of adjuncts, I don’t know that wheat would constitute a break from style. That said, I don’t know that subbing wheat for barley base malt is going to automatically make a summery beer. The flavors are still coming from specialty grains. I’d suggest that a simple porter done on the low end of OG and that finishes moderately dry, might be about as summery as the style is going to get. I’d maybe make it just a tad darker than a brown ale, and formulate it to be slightly sweet and mild in terms of the dark malts. Maybe a toffee to coffee range of flavor profile. With minimal hopping of 15IBU.
+1 on tomsawyer’s reply and Ehall’s regarding the yeast, unless that has the flavor you want. i also would worry about nailing a certain style.
Here’s one I did for my step-son’s “wedding”. It was the crowd favorite.
Uncle Dweizen’s Wheat Porter
A ProMash Brewing Session - Recipe Details Report
BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
12-B Porter, Robust Porter
Min OG: 1.048 Max OG: 1.065
Min IBU: 25 Max IBU: 60
Min Clr: 22 Max Clr: 42 Color in SRM, Lovibond
Recipe Specifics
Batch Size (Gal): 10.50 Wort Size (Gal): 10.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 27.99
Anticipated OG: 1.068 Plato: 16.63
Anticipated SRM: 24.6
Anticipated IBU: 27.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Pre-Boil Amounts
Evaporation Rate: 1.00 Gallons Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size: 11.50 Gal
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.062 SG 15.26 Plato
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
32.2 9.00 lbs. Wheat Malt America 38.00 2
53.6 15.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 36.00 2
4.8 1.33 lbs. Crystal 60L America 34.00 60
2.4 0.66 lbs. Crystal 40L America 34.00 40
7.1 2.00 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 29.00 350
Potential represented as Points per pound per gallon.
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
1.00 oz. Centennial low-alpha Pellet 6.00 8.2 30 min.
1.00 oz. Nerwport Pellet 11.10 19.7 60 min.
Yeast
Danstar Munich
Mash Schedule
Mash Name: single infusion
Total Grain Lbs: 27.99
Total Water Qts: 36.00 - Before Additional Infusions
Total Water Gal: 9.00 - Before Additional Infusions
Tun Thermal Mass: 0.00
Grain Temp: 55.00 F
Step Rest Start Stop Heat Infuse Infuse Infuse
Step Name Time Time Temp Temp Type Temp Amount Ratio
sacch rest 2 60 150 150 Infuse 164 36.00 1.29
bump 5 30 157 157 Infuse 193 8.09 1.57
Total Water Qts: 44.09 - After Additional Infusions
Total Water Gal: 11.02 - After Additional Infusions
Total Mash Volume Gal: 13.26 - After Additional Infusions
All temperature measurements are degrees Fahrenheit.
All infusion amounts are in Quarts.
All infusion ratios are Quarts/Lbs.
not really worried about fitting into a certain style or breaking style i just want a nice dark beer i can drink on a 70 degree night with out feeling like it should be snowing out. thank you guys the ideas are great im gonna order suppplies soon
Thank you. I thought I was the only one.
I think that the idea with specifying that adjuncts are acceptable in porter is to allow typical British brewing adjuncts, like brewing sugars/syrups, small amounts of torrefied/flaked adjunct grains, and whatnot. At the extreme end, it might allow for modern interpretations of Pre-Prohibition U.S. porters (e.g., Yeungling Porter), colonial porters (e.g., things like Poor Richard’s Ale clones) and historical 18th and 19th century “mild porters” to be squeezed into the brown porter and robust porter categories.
But, using large percentages of wheat malt for your grist is going to alter the porter profile in a way which many judges will struggle to understand. If you were to enter a wheat-based dark ale into competition, I think you’d have better luck entering in the Specialty category (23A) and possibly defining the base style as brown porter (12A) or robust porter (12B).
it’s an ever growing faction!
I agree.
Seperately - I wanted to throw out the idea of tweaking your wheat recipe (no matter which yeast you decide upon) rather than tweaking your porter recipe; mostly to say that there are mulitiple ways to approach the hybrid beer idea. cheers, j
i dont really plan on entering it in to any compititions unless i get crazy awsome reviews from friends. soo far i just threw some ideas in to my brew calculator and this is what i came up with, didnt really follow a recipe this is just some whacked out recipe i made
3lbs wheat dme
3lbs golden dme
3lbs smoked malt (briess)
.5 lb black malt
.5 lb chocolate malt
.5 lb special roast
35 degree L
1.064 OG - 1.018 FG - 6.0% ABV
1oz Challenger hops 60 min 8% AA
1oz tettnanger 20min 4% AA
.5oz hallertauer 5 min 5% AA
.5foz fuggles 5 min5% AA
35 IBU
american hefeweizen white labs yeast
what do you think? PATENT PENDING 
as long as that is the cherry smoked malt, I’d say go for it.
Actually I was going to say the opposite. I’ve found for my palette that beers made with the cherry smoked malt are overly phenolic when you get above 20-25% of the grist. I think I would cut it back to 2 lbs or less.
I probably wouldn’t go with that yeast either, I would go for a yeast I would actually use in a porter like WY1056 or one of the English strains like WY1098.
But that’s me.
Its all relative to your personal taste… I made a smoked amber with that cherry smoked malt, 33% of the grain bill. It was nice an smokey, not overwhelming at all… again it all goes back to your personal tastes… if you’re not a huge smoked beer fan, I’d say go with 10-20% of your grain bill the first time so you get a feel for it. I used the remainder of the malt in a porter, something around 7% and it was slightly noticable so its not strong stuff at all.
Peat-smoked, baby! ;D
I love smoked beers and make 100% weyermann rauchmalt beers regularly. The Briess just isn’t as smooth to me. Yes, personal taste, but it’s not that I don’t like smoke. Maybe I am just phenol sensitive, which would also explain my rabid hatred of peated malt in beers ;).
I use peat smoked malt in every one of my beers, 0% of the grist. ;D