First time brewing a Porter - Need help!

[Kunal Vanjare]

Hello guys, hope you'll are doing well.

I am 6 months into this hobby and have brewed 3 Pale Ales which have ranged from disastrous to pretty bad.

I now am eager to brew a Porter (1 Gallon). All the 3 brews I have done so far have been using the Brewers Friend Windows Software which has stopped working. So I have tried Beersmith and the Brewfather app, must say, I found Brewfather to be much more suitable so I am going to use that.

The recipe goes like this :-
BIAB
Pale 2-row : 980grams
Caramel 60 : 90grams
Chocolate : 60grams
Roasted Barley : 60grams
Flaked Oats : 30grams

Hops include Cascade & Centennial (target - 36 IBU).
Pre-Boil Gravity : 1.054, Original Gravity : 1.072, Final Gravity : 1.018

The recipe calls for 3.2Ltrs of Strike water & 3.49Litrs of Sparge water. Is this correct? Beersmith & the Brewer's Friend web-tool show very much different volumes of water mostly due to the boil-off rate. Boil-off on Brewers Friend is somehow stuck at 1.5 Gallons per hour i.e around 6 Litres per hour which does not usually happen on my 10Ltr Stock Pot. I end up losing around 1.5-2 Litres.

I would love for somebody to tell me if I am doing something wrong here because I don't want to end up throwing darts in the dark, again!

Also, the recipe calls for salt additions of Gypsum, Calcium Chloride & Baking Soda to hit a pH of around 5.5. Hope this is correct, as I would be using RO to begin with (don't have a water quality report of my local water here in Mumbai, India).

Any help will be great. Thanks

 

[AdeDunn]

If you like porters, do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Brewing Porters and Stouts by Terry Foster, so much good advice, and recipes, in that little book. For example, I switched to using some brown malt in my recipes after reading it, and they tasted so much nicer.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

No need for the roast barley and oats, but brown malt is the defining ingredient of London porters, although it seems to be a bit of a Marmite ingredient.

See this thread for a picture of one of Fuller's brewbooks with enough information to take a stab at their porter, which is pretty much the definitive example of the London style : Fullers recipes for ESB/Pride/Chiswick, Imperials, NEIPA - from the horse's mouth

 

[MrRook]

If you like porters, do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Brewing Porters and Stouts by Terry Foster, so much good advice, and recipes, in that little book. For example, I switched to using some brown malt in my recipes after reading it, and they tasted so much nicer.

The best porter that I ever brewed used marris otter, brown malt and black patent

 

[Slid]

I agree that Brown Malt is the ingredient for a Porter. The Durden Park pamphlet has an Appendix with instructions for roasting Pale Malt (uncrushed) into Brown in an oven - preferably fan-assisted. I have only done this once and very recently, but you line a large roasting tray with aluminium foil and fill to about 0.5 inch with whole grains. Roast at 110C for 45 mins (to dry) then @150C for 30mins, and then @ 175C until it reaches the "colour of brown wrapping paper". (This is a bit mumbo-jumbo, but if you peer at it and stir the grains a bit to get even-ish colouring, every 20mins or so, it will be fine. It may not be a Brown Malt technically, but it should do the job OK.

On the subject of recipes, the GH Brown Porter is a brilliant and session-able beer.