London porter - dirty dish water

[Portreath]

Just bottled up my first London porter and it smells, and tastes fine for now, however it looks more like dirty water than a dark porter. Not sure when went wrong as I followed GW's recipe to the letter!!

 

[foxbat]

I don't think it's you... Fuller's London Porter is one of the recipes in BYOBRA that I typed into Beersmith. It gave me an EBC of 49 whereas Graham has it down as 100. I just can't see how he gets that number from the ingredients in his recipe.

 

[Sandimas]

I just can't see how he gets that number from the ingredients in his recipe.

If you read the smallprint, you'll see he recommends using an unspecified amount of black malt to hit the target EBC. This has caught me out a few times as it's not listed in the ingredients. This Porter is next on my to-do list, probably mid-Aug, I'll report back how much black malt I had to add to get the right colour, if I remember.

 

[BeerCat]

Get some of this stuff https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/nbs-black-malt-liquid-extract-250ml/
I have just made a Black IPL and it has no taste. I know its kind of cheating but you could add it to the keg if needed.

 

[ACBEV]

If it were my brew, I'd add in 100g - 150g of blackstrap molasses. Would darken the beer quite a bit and add some depth to the flavour...

 

[Portreath]

@darrellm I have the third ed (the one with the nice pics) and there is no footnote, but thanks for the info. I guess I was just expecting it to look like the brew in the photos just from the ingredients. Making more notes in my learning journal

Get some of this stuff https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/nbs-black-malt-liquid-extract-250ml/
I have just made a Black IPL and it has no taste. I know its kind of cheating but you could add it to the keg if needed.

This looks like a great addition to a brew kit, I'm going to order some as a back up.
I've just pitched the yeast in the Burton Bridge top dog stout I brewed last night, GW's recipe called for approx 300g of chocolate malt, I only had 100g left so used 200g of black malt. I took a reading and get 1.052, and colour wise it's blacker than Jack Blacks big fat black cat

 

[BeerCat]

Its amazing, really has no taste which is good for me as i have gone off dark malts. I used about 180ml to darken 27l to about 50 ebc.

 

[Sandimas]

@darrellm I have the third ed (the one with the nice pics) and there is no footnote, but thanks for the info.

I'm on holiday at the moment so don't have the book with me, it may have been in the intro to the recipe section. It's well hidden and caught me out, it was only when I put a few recipes into brewing software that I realised something was up and the colours of the beers were lighter than expected.

 

[Portreath]

Well the porter has been in the bottle for 10 days, so I thought I'd try one. The taste is really good, and as I dry hopped it (well why not eh!) it also has a lovely hoppy mouthful too, so happy days for this brew. Oh, but I failed to mention, it still looks like $#!!!....So will be drinking this with beer goggles, or in the dark. I might try this again but add some finings to see how it comes out.

 

[Martybhoy]

Would be interesting to see a picture. Probably not as bad as you think

 

[Portreath]

I'll be opening another later so will take a pic or too. I'm also considering @BeerCat 's suggestion and add some of the black malt liquid extract to get the colour right.

 

[Martybhoy]

Get some of this stuff https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/nbs-black-malt-liquid-extract-250ml/
I have just made a Black IPL and it has no taste. I know its kind of cheating but you could add it to the keg if needed.

Beercat, is there a certain point in the process for adding this?

I have a stout in the FV, which has just finished fermenting. Looks like a brown ale though. Have I missed the opportunity to add this extract? Or could I still do it?

 

[Portreath]

As far as I can make out form the product description on the Malt Miller site you can add this at any point before bottling as it only imparts a colour.

 

[BeerCat]

I added mine to the boil but as said above you can add it at any time to adjust the colour. As my bottle is opened I would probably put it into a small amount of boiling water before adding to the fermenter. Great product.

 

[Martybhoy]

Thanks guys I'll give it a try

 

[Martybhoy]

As I was ordering it I got confirmation from Kyle at the Malt Miller saying it'll be fine to add at this point, with no fermentables in it, bottle bombs are not an issue.