Porter/Brown ale

[alefric LeHendz]

I was planning to brew this porter/brown ale next as my first BIAB and was wondering I should add a bit more pale chocolate, and any general thoughts on this recipe. I'd also like to try using both Nottingham and Windsor

 

[dave_77]

I have recently gone up to 6% of pale chocolate in recent porters and American Brown, but I tend to use Brown malt also. I have not had any experience in using imperial malt or Simpsons DRC so not sure what that brings flavour wise.

 

[matt76]

I was planning to brew this porter/brown ale next as my first BIAB and was wondering I should add a bit more pale chocolate, and any general thoughts on this recipe.

I can't comment on brown ale as I've never made one and I'm not familiar with the style - but I have made a few porters. It depends exactly what you mean by porter as there are different kinds... But if we're talking London/English/Brown Porter...

To my mind (others will justifiably disagree!) you'd be better using brown rather than amber malt as the flavour is really an interplay between brown and dark crystal malt, with a bit of chocolate malt to add colour and complexity.

In the GH book for his brown porter (excellent BTW) he uses about 13% brown, 10% dark crystal (the one I use is about 80L I think) and 4% chocolate malts - so you're maybe not a million miles off apart from the amber/brown malt thing, though I'm not s

Also excellent is a Josh Weikert recipe which uses 10% each brown, dark crystal and chocolate rye malt (I'm tempted to up the brown and dark crystal to 15% next time as an experiment just to see).

So to answer your question - yes I think you could up the chocolate a bit of you want to, but equally your probably fine as you are. Use a recipe calculator to check the colour - 20 SRM or just over will be plenty dark enough, very dark brown to black with red highlights if you hold it up to the light.

I'd also like to try using both Nottingham and Windsor

Regarding yeast, in my English Porters I've used WY1056, S-04 and most recently CML Beoir (still conditioning!). I've never used Nottingham or Windsor so can't comment directly, but.....

I recently did a split batch ESB between CML Midland and Beoir - Midland is supposedly the same strain as Nottingham. Both were good, Midland attenuated a little more and was more bitter whereas Beoir was more malty. The latter is why I chose Beoir for the porter I have conditioning now.

Now I believe Nottingham is quite a high attenuator - I suspect either (or both) or your yeasts will make a fine beer but I wonder if Nottingham might end up a bit drier? I might be inclined to look for a yeast that attenuates a little less and/or accentuates the malt a little more - but like I say I can't speak from experience with Notty. I don't know enough about Windsor to know if it fits the bill here.

But if I read you right you're planning a split batch between Notty and Windsor, in which case I'd say go ahead - I've only done a split batch a couple of times but I kinda wish I'd do it more as it's the easiest way to experiment (compared to malt, hops or water) and the results are usually really interesting.

Good luck,

Matt

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Depends what you're going for. As others have said, brown malt is the defining flavour of a London porter - the Fuller's one which is pretty much the benchmark uses 14% crystal, 10% brown, 1.5% chocolate. Brown is one of those Marmite ingredients though, some people love it, some just don't get on with it.

I've not used DRC or Imperial but hear good things about them.

I suspect OP was talking about the classic combination of adding Windsor *and* Notty (often adding the Notty at high krausen, to get the most benefit from the better flavour of Windsor). It's fine - one of the best dry yeast options for British ales, although it might be interesting to try the new Lallemand Verdant.

 

[alefric LeHendz]

I kinda realised after I ordered the ingredients I had forgot to add any brown malt, hence I'm thinking this may be more of a brown ale than a porter. I do have a packet of beoir in the fridge actually so but as northern alluded to it's the combination of Nottingham and Windsor I'm planning for this brew

 

[peebee]

I have tried Imperial and DRC together. Or I should say "trying" because it is not due to be broached until next month. But I've got nothing darker in it; it isn't a "Porter".

The Imperial certainly adds flavour. But I can't describe well just yet. Just to say it's no bad thing. But I'm also using 70% 'cos I want to know for sure what flavours it brings. I made the mistake of assuming efficiency will take a plunge because it's roasted to such a high colour (45EBC), but none of it. No idea what they do to it but it seems as enzyme active as pale malt.

I'd probably agree with posts that say use brown malt in place of amber, though I am rather fond of Simpson's Amber Malt! Perhaps changing some (50%) of the amber for brown? The pale chocolate might be a good substitute for brown, so I wouldn't worry much about it.

Crystal DRC seems to be Simpson's answer to Special-B. Some consider "Special-B" to be the strongest flavoured crystal. It isn't! In fact its surprisingly feeble in flavour compared to the "Very Dark" crystals (400EBC+) we have here. But I'm testing DRC all the same.

As for yeasts: I use Nottingham as a high-attenuating, relatively (but not quite so) taste-less substitute for recipes using US-05. That statement will gain me lots of "likes" about here! I used Liquid Wyeast 1099 in mine, which won't be far removed from using all "Windsor". Although in dried yeast I do use S-33 more then Windsor; perhaps I should reverse that trend and go back to Windsor?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I do use S-33 more then Windsor; perhaps I should reverse that trend and go back to Windsor?

Much of a muchness - like the ordinary Munton's they all seem to come from the same original source (allegedly the old EDME yeast) so just use whichever is most convenient/cheapest.

 

[An Ankoù]

ublke
I was planning to brew this porter/brown ale next as my first BIAB and was wondering I should add a bit more pale chocolate, and any general thoughts on this recipe. I'd also like to try using both Nottingham and Windsor

It looks a fine recipe as it is. I wouldn't increase the light chocolate at this stage. Simpson's Imperial is an Amber Malt even though it's fully diastatic so, with the additional amber malt, the beers going to be dryish and biscuity on the palate. The Double Roasted Crystal is an interesting crystal with a flavour all of its own. I'd be very interested to know how this turns out. In fact I might knock up a batch myself just out of curiosity. Where did you get the recipe from?

 

[peebee]

Much of a muchness - like the ordinary Munton's they all seem to come from the same original source (allegedly the old EDME yeast) so just use whichever is most convenient/cheapest.

I've heard that about S-33 and Windsor (same?) but I'll have to try them together a bit more to be convinced. As for sourced from the old EDME yeast, that I certainly find doubtful. I have some memories of the old yeasts before we had the Danstar yeasts (talking getting on 40 years ago!) and they were all aggressive attenuators. FGs of 1.010 or more were pretty near impossible. Just getting 1.010 out of S-33 is impossible (by a big margin) in my book.

… Simpson's Imperial is an Amber Malt even though it's fully diastatic …

An amber malt perhaps, but Imperial and straight Amber malts are far from the same. We were discussing Imperial Malt not long ago as a substitute for Light Amber Malt but concluded UK Munich Malt might be a better match 'cos Imperial falls somewhere between.

But I agree, The recipe does look fine. Nothing darker than pale chocolate: My own Xmas porter is 4.5% black malt (1350EBC) (which in Martin Cornell's book, "Amber, Gold, etc.", would be a "London Neoporter") is proving to be a bit "charcoally" for my tastes whereas the OP recipe ("Late Mesoporter" in that book, although it would probably mean old style brown malt) is far more suitable for my likings.


My earlier mention of pale chocolate being closer to brown than amber is twaddle: I was reading the numbers wrong. Amber Malt is much closer colour-wise than pale chocolate.

 

[An Ankoù]

Nothing darker than pale chocolate: My own Xmas porter is 4.5% black malt (1350EBC) (which in Martin Cornell's book, "Amber, Gold, etc.", would be a "London Neoporter")

Wish I could get hold of a copy of said book at a decent price. I know it's available on Kindle, but I don't really do Kindle.

My earlier mention of pale chocolate being closer to brown than amber is twaddle: I was reading the numbers wrong. Amber Malt is much closer colour-wise than pale chocolate.

So it is, and yet Brown Ale Malt has a flavour all of its own. It's hard to believe that in days of yore it used to be diastatic, too!

 

[peebee]

...
Wish I could get hold of a copy of said book at a decent price. I know it's available on Kindle, but I don't really do Kindle.
...
So it is, and yet Brown Ale Malt has a flavour all of its own. It's hard to believe that in days of yore it used to be diastatic, too!

Haven't tried to get the "real" book, I guess that's a hairy experience? But you can get the Kindle reader for Web browsers. The book is a great take on the history, but don't expect recipes!

I emulated diastatic brown malt, which required a good guess at what's going on from various sources about it. But you can then imagine how it could be diastatic; basically you are making pale malt like the rich boys in the country, but on the cheap. So shortcut all the fuel intensive kilning, and chuck the wet grains on top of a wildly hot fire. So a few grains get scorched. So a few damp grains explode (call it "blown" and people will presume its clever). So the whole mass looks brown rather than pale (a bit of marketing that brown beer is best will sort that). So a few malt-houses burn down ... ah, bit of a bummer that.

So I emulated it with a mix of modern malts to follow what might happen in reality (based on a distribution curve with positive skew - the excellent bit being no-one can say it's wrong 'cos they won't have the real stuff for comparison).

 

[alefric LeHendz]

It looks a fine recipe as it is. I wouldn't increase the light chocolate at this stage. Simpson's Imperial is an Amber Malt even though it's fully diastatic so, with the additional amber malt, the beers going to be dryish and biscuity on the palate. The Double Roasted Crystal is an interesting crystal with a flavour all of its own. I'd be very interested to know how this turns out. In fact I might knock up a batch myself just out of curiosity. Where did you get the recipe from?

The recipe is something I put together when I was playing around with brewfather I think, I knew I was looking to use a combination of pale and Imperial for the base and kinda went from there.

 

[peebee]

... So I emulated it with a mix of modern malts to follow what might happen in reality (based on a distribution curve with positive skew - the excellent bit being no-one can say it's wrong 'cos they won't have the real stuff for comparison).

Couldn't leave it like that. The following is an example of one of those "curves". I'm not giving a recipe of what I created because it had crystal malts added as an after-thought (about 5%) instead of padding out the curve with it (traditional brown malt making could create some "crystal" components). I had 15% smoked malt (Warminster) which adds what I think are important elements to the finished beer - not smoky elements, they are matured out, but elements that the smoke matures into.

By comparison, a modern malt could be represented as a narrow spike on such a graph.

Modern porter/stout doesn't usually deviate much from such a line either. Some modern home-brew recipes I've seen that are a 1/3 / 1/3 / 1/3 of different shades of malt will deviate but probably don't make a pleasant beer either. Some stouts can be a bit two dimensional too (just pale and too much black). But it wasn't drawn as a rule, it's just an estimation of what might happen in a fairly chaotic process.