Brewing a plum porter, advice on recipe and process

[MartinF]

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.

I've read varying accounts for anything between 1Kg and 4Kg - presumably for a 5 Imp Gal / 23 L batch, so I'll probably go for the middle ground & use 3Kg.

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

Yes, that would probably be a far better, consistent, infection free, repeatable way to do it. But did I mention I have 4Kg of frozen plums in the freezer

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.

Ok, thanks for those thoughts.

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 think that's a must: Boiling them in the main boil would release too much pectin and probably too much tannin from the skins. I'll definitely use pectic enzyme anyway, but the short boil should sterilise them whilst still retaining the flavour & aroma.

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.

Great. Many thanks. I'll post back on here when the deed is done. Or is doing.

 

[Leon103]

Will be bottling my plum porter at the weekend. Using flavouring, god knows what it will turn out like

 

[foxy]

Of course prune juice is made from plums no one said they weren't , but the taste is different, in the plum porter I had it wasn't a plum taste, it was definitely more prune juice. Prune juice is readily available already sterilised, far easier to use than plums and can be purchased in bulk.
If I was to make this again it would be from prune juice concentrate, more for the taste of the Titanic Plum Porter.

 

[H0PM0NSTER]

I wouldn't recommend using prune juice as a substitute for adding plum flavour. I tried this method for a plum porter/ stout last year using a coopers stout kit as a base and adding extra malt and the prune juice. The high sugar levels in the juice created quite a dry, sharp taste and although it had a slightly raisiny taste it lost all of the fruity prune taste and aroma from juice.

 

[foxy]

I wouldn't recommend using prune juice as a substitute for adding plum flavour. I tried this method for a plum porter/ stout last year using a coopers stout kit as a base and adding extra malt and the prune juice. The high sugar levels in the juice created quite a dry, sharp taste and although it had a slightly raisiny taste it lost all of the fruity prune taste and aroma from juice.

Been there and done that, that is why it will be the concentrate next go, its what Titanic use apparently.

 

[MartinF]

I found this page today which seems to give some interesting advice about fruit additions to beer - including plums... https://homebrewanswers.com/adding-fruit-to-your-home-brew/

 

[MartinF]

The high sugar levels in the juice created quite a dry, sharp taste and although it had a slightly raisiny taste it lost all of the fruity prune taste and aroma from juice.

I guess this might be a danger of using using actual fruit, too. Hmm let's do some sums/thinking out loud:

Ripe plums contain something like 100 sugar per Kg of fruit. Let's assume we can extract 75% of that => 75g. I though originally it was about 300g/Kg, but I now believe the figure to be closer to 100g/Kg).

Assume extracted sugar has same fermentability as glucose (not sure how realistic that is, but I don't think it'll matter too much). i.e 1Kg glucose/litre => 360 degrees of gravity.

Therefore 75g/litre => 0.075 x 360 = 27 degrees of gravity per litre.

So for 23 litres, we'll have 27/23 = 1.2 degrees of gravity per Kg of fruit added.

So 3Kg of plums (which is what I thought I'd need for the flavour) will add about 3 x 1.2 = 3.5 degrees of gravity in a 23 litre batch. And that will make practically no difference at all to the body; shouldn't make it ferment out too dry.

 

[Clint]

Prune juice....you'll be cacking up your back!

 

[BeerisGOD]

Glad you went for it simon82, i tried a mango IPA ok the flavours didn't have the wow factor I was after but still had a suttle taste that made it a stand alone beer.
The 'i wouldn't bother' posts really don't have a place in home brewing IMO

 

[foxy]

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.

You can eliminate the harsher flavours found in stouts and porters by a 24 hour cold steep of the speciality malts, boil the liquor for a short time and add to the fermenter with the boiled wort from the base malt, makes a lot smoother drink.

 

[Simonh82]

You can eliminate the harsher flavours found in stouts and porters by a 24 hour cold steep of the speciality malts, boil the liquor for a short time and add to the fermenter with the boiled wort from the base malt, makes a lot smoother drink.

The carafa special did an excellent job of avoiding the harsh flavour from roast grain. In fact I think it lacked a bit of roast character for a porter, hence my suggestion to add some chocolate malt. If you had drunk it with your eyes closed, it could have tasted like an strong bitter before I added plum essence.

 

[MartinF]

So at the moment, it's looking like a complete disaster with the plum porter. I used 3Kg of plums from the freezer. As they thawed, I had ~ 250ml of clear plum juice - SG 1052. Seems useful, I thought. Removed all the stones, & chopped: very, very messy! Heated plums up to 66C for 10 mins to kill off any unwanted bacteria/yeasts. When cooled, slung the sloppy mess into the fermenter after wort had fermented down to about 1019.

After leaving this for 4 days, I had a taste - absolutely vile. No infections or off flavours, but incredibly acidic & tart. So I'm guessing the plums (actually, I think they were damsons) weren't ripe enough.

Anyone know of any means of de-tarting acidic wort? I'll leave it a little while longer to see if it mellows out at all but I think it may have to go down the drain, though :-(

 

[Clint]

Lactose?......

 

[Sadfield]

Yes, lactose will sweeten and round out the harshness. Time will also help. Personally, I wouldn't resort to pouring it away, at the very least I'd bottle it and tuck it away somewhere to mellow out, might make an excellent and complex Christmas drink next year.

 

[terrym]

So at the moment, it's looking like a complete disaster with the plum porter. I used 3Kg of plums from the freezer.

After leaving this for 4 days, I had a taste - absolutely vile. No infections or off flavours, but incredibly acidic & tart. So I'm guessing the plums (actually, I think they were damsons) weren't ripe enough.

Even if ripe, damsons are far more acidic and tart tasting than plums. I love them in jam though, and they are probably good for making damson gin or vodka. Sadly it seems the number of damson trees are few and far between nowadays.
Anyway it's early days yet for your porter and lots of complex stuff going on at present so I would at least let it properly ferment out, rack off, and then crash cool it for a week or so to get rid of the solids in suspension some of which may be responsible for the bitter taste, before deciding what to do with it.

 

[MartinF]

Lactose was my first thought too, but it's only a mask over the acidity. I was wondering if there might be any "caustic but otherwise benign" means of neutralising it. I've already fished out most of the plums, but racking is the next step.

Bottling? What's that?

OTOH, I need to do a couple more brews now in rapid succession, so FV and keg space is going to be at a premium. I would like to hang on to this brew - at least for a while - just to see what happens to it; if just for the academic exercise.

I might need to consult the boss...

 

[Zephyr259]

For overly acidic wine you can treat with calcium carbonate (precipitated chalk) but I'm not sure what that would do in a beer.

 

[MartinF]

So to finish off my plum porter experiences...

As I lack the necessary storage facilities to keep the "tart damson-not-plum porter" for a year or so, I'm afraid it went down the drain :cry:. First time I've done this in over 40 years of brewing.

Plum Porter v2 followed very soon after, with a very minor tweak to the grain bill, a complete absence of damsons, and 1 teaspoon (5ml) of Old Roy's Plum Essence. At first, there was a fairly artificial touch to the plumminess, but it has mellowed out somewhat. However, I find that 5ml of essence in 24 litres is slightly too much for my taste; with a little too much flavour and aroma that gives a sweet initial impression before giving way to the porterey dryness I was seeking - though nothing like as dry as a dry stout. It's a good 5.8% winter drink, that definitely won't last the winter!

Cheers & Merry Christmas to all.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

FWIW, the new Titanic Plum Porter cans have an ingredient list as follows :

INTERNATIONAL BITTERING UNIT
IBU 52

INGREDIENTS :
Water, Malted Barley, Wheat Malt, Malts ; Maris
Otter, Pearl Wheat, Dark Crystal, Hops ;
Pilgrim, Hercules, Goldings, Celeia,
Natural Plum Flavouring, Yeast.

That's how it is laid out - I suspect the text was designed for a different layout, then they changed it so the lines aren't right. The use of semi-colons is a little random, and I think there's a comma missing - what they're saying is that they use the Maris Otter and Pearl varieties of barley, plus malted wheat, rather than pearl wheat (which is a thing, it's dehusked like pearl barley).

Presumably Pilgrim and Hercules are used for bittering.