Brewing a plum porter, advice on recipe and process

[Simonh82]

I'm planning on brewing a plum porter for Christmas and wanted to know if anyone had any tips on brewing with fruit.

It's meant to be based loosely on the Titanic plum porter that I've tried a few times and loved. Their website says "This beer is dark strong and well rounded; the richness of such a rotund beer is brought to an even keel by the late addition of Goldings hops and natural plum flavouring"

The recipe I've come up with is below. I've never brewed with fruit before and I thought I would add the fruit late in the boil, then if it was lacking in fruit flavour at the end of fermentation I would use some natural plum essence to boost the flavour at bottling time.

I went for Bramling cross rather than Golding as its meant to have more of a dark fruit flavour. Not sure if I should up the IBUs slightly as it looks like it will finish quite sweet.

Thoughts on the recipe or process are very welcome.

Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: English Porter
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 23 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 33 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.044
Efficiency: 80% (brew house)


STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.018
ABV : 5.72%
IBU (tinseth): 30.51

FERMENTABLES:
3.6 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (44.7%)
0.5 kg - German - Munich Light (6.2%)
0.3 kg - United Kingdom - Amber (3.7%)
200 g - Belgian - Special B (2.5%)
250 g - German - De-Husked Caraf II (3.1%)
0.2 kg - United Kingdom - Crystal 45L (2.5%)
3 kg - Plum - (late addition) (37.3%)

HOPS:
15 g - Admiral, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 14, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 22.14
30 g - Bramling Cross, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 7.3, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 8.37
70 g - Bramling Cross, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 7.3, Use: Whirlpool for 0 min at 75 °C

Mash temp: 68 C, Time: 60 min

YEAST: Wyeast - English Special Bitter 1768
Fermentation Temp: 19 C

 

[JFB]

Love the sound of this.
Ive only done one brew with fruit in a raspberry wheat beer and the fruit went in the FV on day four.
I would be tempted to add 500g of rauchmalt to that recipe, give it a slightly smokey fruity flavour.

 

[Leon103]

Personally I would look at the grain choices against other porters and ditch the fruit and just use the flavourings. I don't think you will get much plum flavour from the fruit.

 

[Simonh82]

Personally I would look at the grain choices against other porters and ditch the fruit and just use the flavourings. I don't think you will get much plum flavour from the fruit.

I know the grain bill isn't that traditional for a porter. I don't drink a lot of dark beer and I remember the Titanic beer being very smooth with none of the burned roasted flavours you can get with some dark beers. I've therefore gone for Caraffa Special for colour and Special B for the dark fruit toffee flavour. The Amber malt should provide a good malty backbone.

Thanks for the suggestions of ditching the actual fruit. I get the impression that Titanic don't use fresh fruit. I think if I can find some decent plums I'll put them in but I won't panic if not.

 

[Leon103]

I think plums can contain a lot of wild yeast.

 

[MyQul]

Here's a thread over on jims about titanic plum porter you might find helpful

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=74527&hilit=plum+porter

 

[Simonh82]

I think plums can contain a lot of wild yeast.

That's why i want to add them to the boil. I definitely don't want an infection in this one.

 

[Simonh82]

Here's a thread over on jims about titanic plum porter you might find helpful

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=74527&hilit=plum+porter

Thanks. I think I have seen that before but no one ends up actually brewing a plum version.

I've tweaked the recipe a bit, adding some oats, upping the Carafa Special and cutting back on the Amber malt slightly. I'm just fannying around really. I'm just going to have to get on a brew it and see what it turns out like.

 

[machin05]

Titanic definitely use actual plums as I've seen them Tweet pics from the brewday.

Maybe get in touch and ask them how and when they add them, and in what quantities. Breweries are usually pretty open with stuff like that (good ones anyway).

 

[Simonh82]

Titanic definitely use actual plums as I've seen them Tweet pics from the brewday.

Maybe get in touch and ask them how and when they add them, and in what quantities. Breweries are usually pretty open with stuff like that (good ones anyway).

I've procured 2KG of plums and I think I'm ready to brew tomorrow. I almost ditched the plums and just went with plum essence until I saw this last post.

I think I'm going to roast the plums first to bring out the flavour of what are pretty under ripe plums. I've also got the plum essence as a back up. Then I will add them to the boil in the last 10 minutes.

I'm quite excited by this one as it's my first go at a proper dark beer.

 

[Toffee]

Just because they use some plums, doesn't mean they don't use essence as well. I'd be shocked if the majority of the taste was not from using some essence, extract or similar.

 

[Simonh82]

I brewed this last night. It all went pretty smoothly apart from over shooting my mash pH and ending up at 4.9. I thought it was odd that I was being asked to add a lot of acid to London water when porters are a style that was traditionally brewed here. I still got good mash efficiency so I don't think it affected anything adversely.

I've never mashed at 68°C before, I generally aim for 65°C for most of my beers. I ended up with an OG of 1.061 so it should be a fairly hefty pint.

I started off roasting the plums but realised it would take too long so transfered them to a pot and stewed them.

The sample from the trial jar tasted amazing. The plum flavour was quite subtle though so I think I will need to add some plum essence after it has fermented out.

 

[Leon103]

Wow that's close to the top.

 

[Simonh82]

That's the joy of Brupaks Antifoam. You can boil 1cm from the rim without a boil over. You might lose a little bit to splashes but I can get 4-5L extra into the fermentation vessel as I can fill the kettle to the top.

 

[BeerCat]

So far I have made 3 beers with fruit all added in secondary. Each one fermented again and ended up quite dry but they were wheat beers without any crystal.

 

[Simonh82]

There's about 500g of crystal in this one including plenty of Special B. I. Hoping that that plus the high mash temperature will mean it doesn't finish too dry.

 

[MartinF]

I have 4Kg of plums in the freezer, given to me by a friend so I was thinking of doing a plum porter. Was just wondering how yours turned out?

 

[Simonh82]

I have 4Kg of plums in the freezer, given to me by a friend so I was thinking of doing a plum porter. Was just wondering how yours turned out?

It turned out really well although I didn't get much flavour from the plums. I think I used 2 or 3 KG of plums but they were under ripe and out of season so you may have more luck with yours.

To get the plum flavour I used this natural plum essence. 100 drops at bottling time gave it a really strong plum flavour.

If I were to do it again I would tweak the recipe a bit. I would use aromatic malt instead of the amber to boost the mid range toasty malty flavour and I would sub half of the carafa special for chocolate malt to get a darker roast flavour that would work well with the plum. If you like dark roasty beers then you could swap all of the carafa for chocolate as the plum essence really balances the roast flavour. 100 drops of plum essence gave a very strong flavour, I might cut this back to 75-85 although I'd leave it at 100 if I went all chocolate malt.

If I were trying to get more flavour from the proper plums I would lightly stew them and then add them to secondary, rather than add them to the boil.

I used Brew Lab Essex Ale strain for my first beer. It was quite a nice yeast but gave a very high final gravity of something like 1.022. I didn't want a dry beer but I didn't expect it to finish this high either. I think any fruity English ale strain would work.

It's definitely a beer I'm going to be brewing again and I really recommend the natural essences as a good way to add fruit flavour to beer.

 

[foxy]

I had a Plum Porter when I was in the UK really enjoyed it, but to me the taste was more of a prune juice rather than plum, and a commercial brewery I would imagine would be going down that avenue of prune juice.
I attempted it but overdid the prune juice, a bit of trial and error called for, also as the juice is already sterile can go straight into the secondary.

 

[MartinF]

... but to me the taste was more of a prune juice rather than plum...

But prune juice IS from plums. Ok, prunes are dried plums, so to get prune juice, you have to rehydrate the prunes, which begs the question of 'why bother to dry out the plums to make prunes in the first place'? Beats me.