Any of these are candidates to be used in a porter. Give the grains a whiff the next time you are at your local homebrew shop and you should be able to tell if you want to experiment with them. Porters are darker than brown ales or dark milds and have enough dark grains in the grist to give a roast character beyond that found in either of these two beers.
On the top end of the scale, porters can be darker and more roasty than a stout, although the character of the roast is usually different — i. As a rough guideline, brown ales usually contain up to 0. Brown porters usually contain between 0. Robust porters most often contain from 0. As we will see, many factors will influence how the dark grain portion of the grist is perceived.
What tastes great with chocolate? How about caramel? Crystal, or caramel, malts show up in the vast majority of porter recipes. Crystal malts also add sweetness and body to a porter. You can use one or more crystal malts in your grain bill and also pair them with specialty malts. The amount of crystal malt in porter recipes varies, but from 0.
In lower amounts, the dark grains are at the forefront of the beer, with the crystal malt only playing a supporting role. Other malts — including biscuit, Victory, aromatic, melanoidin, honey, rye, etc. I generally prefer simpler recipes that stress the main aspects of a beer, believing that good brewing technique does far more to make a beer stand out than a hint of this or a smidgen or that.
Porter is often brewed as an English-style ale. As such, a good English pale ale malt is a great base. The maltiness of porter can be accentuated by adding some Vienna or Munich malt to the grist. Extract brewers should choose a light malt extract for most of their fermentables, and steep or partial mash the roasted grains and specialty malts for color and flavors. Dark malt extracts are available; however, if you want to be able to tweak the roast character in your porter, using light malt extract supplemented by a steep or partial mash is the way to go.
Beers containing more dark grains are more likely to have some astringency in them. This is because darkly-roasted malts give up their tannins a bit easier in the mash. So, it pays to keep two things in mind. Also, you can cool down and taste little samples of your runnings as you direct them to your kettle. Once the runnings start to have a puckering, drying sensation to them, stop collecting wort.
Finally, keep in mind that a hint of astringency in a porter, especially an aggressive robust porter, is not a bad thing. In most beers — especially lightly colored and flavored beers — brewers strive to minimize astringency. However, a small amount in a dark beer can actually be a good thing — a pleasant, drying sensation in the aftertaste. For all-grain brewers, a single infusion mash is all that is required for a porter.
In a drier beer, the roast character will be accentuated and your porter will have a dry-stout-like element to it. A mash thickness of 1. Quit collecting wort at the appropriate time and — if needed, in a lower-gravity beer — add enough water to reach your full, pre-boil volume.
Extract brewers can either steep their grains or do a partial mash that includes some base malt. Cocoa and coffee are both bitter. Hops are bitter. Can these elements exist side-by-side in a porter — they sure can! Since porter originally comes from England, many homebrewers choose English hops for their brews. And, all the classic English hops will work well in a porter.
One of my favorite hops for a porter is Northern Brewer. Northern Brewer is often described as a minty and, gee, do chocolate and mint taste good together? Hint: yes. The amount of hops you add is dependent on your own tastes. In porters with a sharper roast character, more hops provide a nice balance. In a robust porter, the hops should also have enough character to compete with the other bitter flavors.
This, in my opinion, is a place for high-cohumulone hops to shine. You can, for example, accentuate the chocolate-like and coffee-like flavors and aromas with actual chocolate or actual coffee. You can pair the chocolatey notes in a porter with other flavors frequently found paired with chocolate in cooking; these include raspberry, vanilla, almost anything sweet — and even a little heat from mild chili peppers. Smoked porters can also be excellent. Porter is a style of beer in which it pays to think like a cook when you formulate the recipe.
Good brewing water is nearly flavorless; however, you need to pay attention to your water when brewing a porter to get the best character from the dark grains. In any mash, calcium ions in your brewing liquor react with phosphates from the malt to produce acid.
When brewing a dark beer, the dark grains add additional acidity. When brewing a dark beer using water containing a low level of carbonates, the pH of the wort and beer can drop fairly low and the resulting beer can taste thin and acidic. To counteract the acids in a mash, you can add either calcium carbonate chalk or sodium bicarbonate baking soda. Adding chalk adds calcium along with the carbonate, and these two partially offset each other in terms of their effect on pH.
If your brewing water is deficient in calcium or you only need to make a small adjustment in mash pH, chalk is a good choice. If you already have enough calcium in your water, or you need to make a relatively large change in pH, baking soda may be a better choice. Note: do not use baking soda that has been used previously to absorb odors from your refrigerator.
If you have a copy of your water report and brewing software, you can calculate a water profile that will work well for your porter. Water with higher residual alkalinity levels, anywhere in the 3.
Your water chemistry does not need to be extremely fine-tuned to brew a great porter. All changes to the procedure or ingredients are mentioned below. Substitute 5. All other ingredients will remain the same.
Now that winter is rolling in, start brewing this vanilla porter recipe, let it ferment and enjoy! Benjamin Stange is a freelance writer specializing in craft beer and home brewing.
He lives in Springfield, Missouri with his family, who graciously tolerates his obsession with all things beer. Thanks for the info on vanilla porter extract. I am pleased with the batch that I am now drinking but have a question. It seems like the porter has gotten better the longer that I leave it in the bottle for storage.
I tried it after two weeks and then again after four. The flavors seem to be more noticeable. Is that something that you have experienced? Many beers will become more balanced after time, but will eventually start to turn.
I brewing one batch and drinking it all within a month and the last beer was always the best. Hops, certain spices, and fruit flavors are going to be some of the first flavors to fade over time. Muito obrigado amigo, vou fazer minha primeira porter, thanks my friend, I want to do a first porter beer, I made beer since , but never did some porter, a big embrace.
First one I have seen that is not complicated. In the bottle I could condition this for probably 6 months and see things mellow. Anyway i will give yours a go. Did u sanitize your vanilla pods? If so how? And if not I was under the impression that that would be risky, is that not the case? When I sanitize vanilla pods I put them in an oz or two of bourbon. Then I pour the bourbon and vanilla beans into a secondary fermenter before bottling it kegging. The last time I did this it turned out great.
I want to try this vanille porter. But is the boiling time totally 90 minutes? Life begins at Thanks for the replies that's what I've been reading.
I'll move to bottling once fermentation is complete! GS Assistant Brewer Posts: What they said. Frankenbrew Brewmaster Posts: Quote from: denny on November 07, , pm. Frank C. And thereof comes the proverb: 'Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.
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