Brewing a 'traditional London porter'

[RoomWithABrew]

Perhaps for something " traditional"

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2014/02/lets-brew-wednesday-1823-devenish-porter.html?m=1

 

[jof]

What was wrong with black malt and in what way is chocolate more versatile?

Just my opinion. I like the colour & taste it imparts, so I order it in 3kg bags and use it in several of my brew permutations.

I'll often follow the recipie first time. If I like it, the next time I make it I will change it slightly depending on what ingredients I have available on brewday. The result isn't always better (my last dunkleweis turned out like a dark mild), but I find it's a fun way to gain knowledge.

I did buy a 500g bag of black malt in the past, and while it did the job, I preferred the flavour of the chocolate malt.

 

[YeastFace]

Has anyone had much experience with carafa special?

I'm a bit skeptical about the reduced bitterness due to dehusking - especially after I've had it delivered and it looks just the same as other malts!

Yes. In a Black IPA and Dunkel. And I have used Sinamar (which is a concentrated Carafa Special wort) to adjust colour in many beers.

Dehusking reduces the astringency associated with roasting, since there's no husk to burn.

 

[Agentgonzo]

Yes. In a Black IPA and Dunkel. And I have used Sinamar (which is a concentrated Carafa Special wort) to adjust colour in many beers.

Dehusking reduces the astringency associated with roasting, since there's no husk to burn.

Did you notice the reduced bitterness/astringency?

 

[YeastFace]

Did you notice the reduced bitterness/astringency?

I haven't compared like-for-like, but there's very little roast astringency in the Dunkel.

I have added some sinamar to a pint of Red IPA, and there is just a slight background hint of dryness.

Have tried cold steeping and mash capping my stout recipe, and get little difference than my normal mashing of the dark grains tbh.

 

[Wigglebutts Brewery]

Hold dark grains until the last 10 minutes of boil. You’ll get color and flavor with little of the bitterness. John Palmer mentions this process in his guidance.

 

[Agentgonzo]

Hold dark grains until the last 10 minutes of boil. You’ll get color and flavor with little of the bitterness. John Palmer mentions this process in his guidance.

I've read a variety of sources around this. A lot of them are anecdotal (like Palmer's) and as humans we are very susceptible to confirmation bias.

Experiments/side by side testing reveal that "mash capping" reduces bitterness along with flavour and colour.

So I remain skeptical as to whether leaving the roasted grains until the last 10 minutes offers anything above "using less grains in the first place"


I might use this as an opportunity to experiment myself

 

[Dark Arts]

Thought a traditional porter was 100% brown malt??? Until they could measure the gravity and worked out using a base malt+dark roasts was more efficient(cost affective) etc etc

Try something like,

Base malt=79%
Crystal=7%
Brown=7%
Chocolate=7%

Yeast Us05

Hopps fuggles/EKG to get 30-40ibu

 

[jof]

@DocAnna previously posted a summary page from crisp malt showing %malt type for a range of beer styles.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/homebrew-recipes-from-crisp-malt.102497/

 

[telenomus]

Haven't made it for some time but a big favorite of mine was a recipe from Durden Park Beer Circle's OBBaHTMT (#97) London Porter (1850) Whitbread's Porter Brewery (OG 60). A great beer, especially for the colder months.

 

[dtashmore]

Thought a traditional porter was 100% brown malt??? Until they could measure the gravity and worked out using a base malt+dark roasts was more efficient(cost affective) etc etc

Try something like,

Base malt=79%
Crystal=7%
Brown=7%
Chocolate=7%

Yeast Us05

Hopps fuggles/EKG to get 30-40ibu

brown malt has no enzymes as they are destroyed by heat so it wouldn't work, needs enough enzymes to convert the starch.

 

[RichK]

This is supposed to be a Fullers London Porter clone

 

[Dark Arts]

This is supposed to be a Fullers London Porter clone

I did the fullers porter clone from the big book of clones, if I was to do it again I'd us05 instead of us04, I thought it gave off too many esters for my liking.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

One of my friends has asked me to brew a traditional London porter for him... or at least what he thinks one was.
Traditional, in the sense that it's what London porters working on the Thames back in the 17/1800s.....

What he's after:

• 4-4.5%

Well by going down to 4% you're already being ahistorical, and you have the problem that modern malts are completely different - brown malt back then had enzymes, modern brown malt doesn't. But brown malt remains the defining malt of London porter.

• Fruitiness/Belgian spice: it's not a goal, but he's not averse to a bit of these flavours to add to the interest of the drink
• hops: enough to get a good balance, but definitely light on both the flavour and bitterness of the hops. When quizzed, he would prefer earthy flavours rather than floral flavours, so I'm thinking English hops like fuggles instead of American hops
• Mouthfeel: ideally silky.

We tried a few. Starting with Fuller's London Porter. This was about the right amount of 'quaffability' but he'd prefer it a little less bitter (roasted bitterness) and an increased maltiness

We have the brewbook for Fuller's Imperial porter, and a brief recipe from the then brewer for the "ordinary" - "74% pale ale to try and max OG, 13.5-14% Crystal and 9-10% Brown malt, 1.5% Chocolate malt" which I tried to translate into a homebrew recipe over on that HBT thread. But that's a good starting point - and it is the benchmark for modern London porters.

I'd be tempted to go with Fuggles mixed with a bit of Bramling Cross for interest. It's a London porter, so don't use foreign hops - why use Magnum when you could use Admiral as a high-alpha option - but being authentic would mean just using either Fuggles or Golding as the nearest "modern" hops to what they would have used. They do give a slightly different quality of bittering.

I don't keep liquid yeasts and tend to get the yeast from CML as they are the only ones who won't charge a fiver to post a sachet of yeast... what would people recommend for the yeast for a porter? S-04 is my go-to for english ales, and have some of that in the fridge

A lot of English yeasts have some phenolic character, contrary to what US yeastbanks would have you believe, so it's not out of place. But the obvious one is BE-256 - originally an English yeast but adapted to higher ABVs, allegedly at Rochefort. Will give you good attenuation, sticks like a rock, not that phenolic but will give an appealing fruitiness. Use MJ M31 if you want to push the attenuation even further, which I'm pretty sure is a mix of Belle and BE-256.

 

[Dark Arts]

brown malt has no enzymes as they are destroyed by heat so it wouldn't work, needs enough enzymes to convert the starch.

"The first porters were brewed in London using 100% brown malt but, once brewers back then realised it only produced about two-thirds as much fermentable material"

Quick google found the above on this page,

https://www.simpsonsmalt.co.uk/blog/the-best-malts-to-use-for-a-porter/

 

[Northern_Brewer]

"The first porters were brewed in London using 100% brown malt but, once brewers back then realised it only produced about two-thirds as much fermentable material"

Quick google found the above

Irrelevant - they may share a name but brown malt 200+ years ago was different to modern brown malt. Back then it wasn't as cooked so the enzymes survived malting, now it's cooked more so it doesn't have active enzymes.

So you could make a beer with 100% old-style brown malt, but not with 100% modern brown malt. Somewhere around 10% brown malt is common in modern London porters - but they do vary quite a bit, and some people really don't like certain brands.

 

[Agentgonzo]

This is supposed to be a Fullers London Porter clone

Nice. I've seen a few recipes like that. There are a variety of different recipes saying they are London Porter clones, so I'm going to take an average of all of them (which happens to be pretty-much the LAB recipe), brew it and then see where it goes from there.

If it's ready in time, I'll send it in to this month's freestyle comp

 

[Dark Arts]

Irrelevant - they may share a name but brown malt 200+ years ago was different to modern brown malt. Back then it wasn't as cooked so the enzymes survived malting, now it's cooked more so it doesn't have active enzymes.

So you could make a beer with 100% old-style brown malt, but not with 100% modern brown malt. Somewhere around 10% brown malt is common in modern London porters - but they do vary quite a bit, and some people really don't like certain brands.

I wasn't suggesting using 100% brown malt for a porter, I was pointing out that a "traditional" porter back in the day did and explained that modern advances in measurements had lead to alternate recipe's or at least I alluded to this? In my original post, so to sum up

1700s Traditional porters used 100% brown malt

At some point maltsters stopped making brown malt and when they started making it again it wasn't the same as the browns from back in the day.

Modern porters if they used brown malts at all would be upto 10%???