Porter Kit, any recommendations?

[proost]

Afternoon Chaps,
As the title says, any Porter drinkers recommend a decent kit? Preferably with some tasting notes.

:!:

 

[clibit]

I can't recommend a kit, but I can recommend an easy way to make a porter that will probably be better than a kit.

Start with a kit that doesn't have much going on - like a Coopers Draught, Real Ale, APA, or a Young's Harvest Pilsner or Lager. Or use a Young's Harvest Bitter or Mild kit. Then steep some grains and add some malt extract:

Ingredients:

One can kit
1kg light dried malt extract
340g Crystal Malt (reduce to 200g ish if you use a bitter or mild kit)
225g Chocolate malt
120g Black malt

25g Northdown hops

Steep the crystal, choc and black malts for 30 mins in about 3 litres water at 65-70C. Temp is not crucial, this is just a good temperature range for a 30 minutes steep. Strain, bring the liquid to boiling point, add the hops and then boil for about 15 mins.

While the grains are steeping, or the hopped liquid is boiling, make up the kit in your FV as usual and stir in the DME thoroughly. When the hopped liquid has been boiled, add it to the FV and top up to 20 litres with cold water. Pitch the kit yeast, or another yeast if you prefer, when the temp is around 20C.

I reckon this will take about an hour or so. You have a backbone of a decent kit plus malt extract to back up some fresh grain and hop flavour, which will really enhance the final product. Your bitterness comes from the hopped kit. Northdown provides a hop flavour which I find works well in dark beers. But you could use other hops. Bramling Cross suit dark beers too. Or Challenger.

 

[proost]

I can't recommend a kit, but I can recommend an easy way to make a porter that will probably be better than a kit.

Start with a kit that doesn't have much going on - like a Coopers Draught, Real Ale, APA, or a Young's Harvest Pilsner or Lager. Or use a Young's Harvest Bitter or Mild kit. Then steep some grains and add some malt extract:

Ingredients:

One can kit
1kg light dried malt extract
340g Crystal Malt (reduce to 200g ish if you use a bitter or mild kit)
225g Chocolate malt
120g Black malt

25g Northdown hops

Steep the crystal, choc and black malts for 30 mins in about 3 litres water at 65-70C. Temp is not crucial, this is just a good temperature range for a 30 minutes steep. Strain, bring the liquid to boiling point, add the hops and then boil for about 15 mins.

While the grains are steeping, or the hopped liquid is boiling, make up the kit in your FV as usual and stir in the DME thoroughly. When the hopped liquid has been boiled, add it to the FV and top up to 20 litres with cold water. Pitch the kit yeast, or another yeast if you prefer, when the temp is around 20C.

I reckon this will take about an hour or so. You have a backbone of a decent kit plus malt extract to back up some fresh grain and hop flavour, which will really enhance the final product. Your bitterness comes from the hopped kit. Northdown provides a hop flavour which I find works well in dark beers. But you could use other hops. Bramling Cross suit dark beers too. Or Challenger.

Cheers mate, now that's what I call a detailed answer ! The only kit I've got at the moment is a Wilkos Mexican kit. What's your view on that? I've got all the other ingredients.

 

[clibit]

I have never used it, but I reckon it would work. The roast malts will take over the flavour. I'm just unsure what the yeast will be like, it may be worth buying a different yeast. S04, Nottingham, Mauribrew Ale for example. I'd use US-05 myself, I like it in dark beers. Or Mauribrew Ale, it's good, for a dried yeast. Neither of these stick to the bottles very well, but they make tasty beer.

 

[MyQul]

The only two can kit I ever made was muntons gold docklands porter. Really nice brown porter - which you could definitely definitely tart up using clibits instructions, just omit the 1 can kit and 1kg of light dme

 

[clibit]

You could. I would prefer to start with a pale beer kit though, because if you add roasted grains to a porter kit you could overdo the roast grains, you've less control over the final beer. Using a bland kit means you are basically making an extract beer with a hopped pale extract, so you have bitterness built in and you don't need to boil for an hour. So you could take any porter extract recipe and replace some of the extract, and the bittering hops, with the kit. Which is wot I did, innit? :-?

 

[MyQul]

You could. I would prefer to start with a pale beer kit though, because if you add roasted grains to a porter kit you could overdo the roast grains, :-?

Deffo - I love the dry roastyness black malt gives to a dark beer but you have to be bit careful with it as if you overdo it you can end up with a beer tasting like you've licked the inside of a chimney :sick:

All depends on how confident you are with techniques. If you feel confident enough to follow clibit's recommendations for a pale kit as a base, I would definitely go with that, as it's only a short skip and a hop to full extract brewing - loads more control and options. If not a simple steep of some choccy plus adding some hops by dry hopping or hop tea will vastly improve the muntons kit

 

[MyQul]

Another thing you could do If you want to keep things simple-ish is get a Coopers English Bitter kit and add some steeped chocolate malt - not sure of amounts tbh*, but I'm sure clibit can help with this as he's far more experienced at steeping grains than I am. There's a craigtube video somewhere on youtube with him taste testing the results of doing this.

With clibits receipe you could also substitute the black malt (using black malt in a porter, as well as a bit higher ABV than a brown porter makes it into a 'robust porter' btw') for brown (again not sure of amounts) as adding brown malt adds extra complexity as well as a certain 'authenticty' to a porter. Crystal, Brown and Choccy are the specialty malts in Fullers London Porter which Is a really nice porter have made the G.wheeler receipe a couple of times





* @clibit- with steeping specialty grains do the amount's correspond exactly to an AG receipe or do you need to adjust for steeping and not mashing?

 

[proost]

Another thing you could do If you want to keep things simple-ish is get a Coopers English Bitter kit and add some steeped chocolate malt - not sure of amounts tbh*, but I'm sure clibit can help with this as he's far more experienced at steeping grains than I am. There's a craigtube video somewhere on youtube with him taste testing the results of doing this.

With clibits receipe you could also substitute the black malt (using black malt in a porter makes it into a 'robust porter' btw') for brown (again not sure of amounts) as adding brown malt adds extra complexity as well as a certain 'authenticty' to a porter. Crystal, Brown and Choccy are the specialty malts in Fullers London Porter which Is a really nice porter have made the G.wheeler receipe a couple of times





* @clibit- with steeping specialty grains do the amount's correspond exactly to an AG receipe or do you need to adjust for steeping and not mashing?

Ah, Fullers London Porter one of my favourites

 

[clibit]

* @clibit- with steeping specialty grains do the amounts correspond exactly to an AG recipe or do you need to adjust for steeping and not mashing?

Good question - it will have an effect, but I wouldn't know how to adjust for that, but I don't think it's essential to do so - steeping will give good results, I've done it. It doesn't provide as much fermentable sugar from the specialty grains, but you get plenty of flavour and colour, and you rely on the pale malt/extract for the bulk of the fermentables. The main issue is the brown malt in Fullers porter, as brown malt needs to be mashed. If you want to make a Fullers porter, or any beer with brown malt, you need to do a mini mash, or an all grain. Here is a partial mash recipe for Fullers London Porter, nicked from byo.com:

Fuller’s London Porter clone
(5 gallons/ 19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.054 FG = 1.014
IBU = 30 SRM = 46
ABV = 5.4%

Ingredients
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) Muntons pale ale malt
1.0 lb. (0.45 kg) crystal malt (75 °L)
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) brown malt
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) chocolate malt
1.0 lb (0.45 kg) Muntons Light dried malt extract
4.0 lbs. (1.8 kg) Muntons Light liquid malt extract
Fuggle hops (60 min) 37 g of 4.7% alpha acids)
Fuggle hops (15 min) 19 g of 4.7% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1968 (London ESB) or White Labs WLP002 (English Ale) yeast

Step by Step
Partial mash grains at 153 °F (67 °C) for 45 minutes. Collect wort and add water to make 3.0 gallons (11 L). Stir in dried malt extract and bring to a boil. Boil 60 minutes, adding hops at times indicated. With 15 minutes left in boil, remove from heat and add liquid malt extract. Stir well to dissolve, then resume heating. At the end of the boil, cool wort and transfer to fermenter, adding enough water to make 5.0 gallons (19 L). Ferment at 62 °F (17 °C).

 

[MyQul]

The main issue is the brown malt in Fullers porter, as brown malt needs to be mashed.

Didn't realise brown malt needed to be mashed because I mash all my grains anyway

 

[clibit]

I actually made a Fullers porter and steeped the brown malt, and it worked to an extent, but I didn't get much from the brown malt. Just a muted flavour.

 

[MyQul]

I've done basic brown porters with pale, crystal and choccy which were ok but just a bit 'flat' in flavour and Fullers LP which is essentially the same but with the addition of brown malt and the brown malt definately take the beer up a notch or two