I compared 3 Porters last night - all visually the same so only 1 picture:
To establish a baseline I started off with the final bottle of my Mk.I Hurricane Porter, fermented with CML Beoir in September 2020 so I'm sure it's changed a bit as it's conditioned. It's fairly sweet, but in a good way. Hard to pinpoint the exact flavours but maybe raisin, a hint of chocolate, dark toffee perhaps - dark flavours but not roasty. @pilgrimhudd tried it and his feedback was he wanted a bit more roast, so.....
For my Mk.II Hurricane Porter I added 50% more brown, crystal and chocolate rye malts. I also then split the crystal into dark, extra dark and Special-B. It was a split batch fermented with:
WY1318 - I really like this one. It's not roasty as such, but it's more roasty than Mk.I if that makes sense, drier and less sweet. This might sound weird but I get something that reminds me of leather, or maybe just a hint of smokiness.
Vs.
MJ M36 - I'm surprised how different this is. Compared to the Wyeast version it's somehow rounder and more fruity. I like this one too.
Really pleased with this, fascinating as always what a difference yeast selection makes. For the next version I'm planning to leave the recipe unchanged, but once fermentation is complete I'll only bottle half. Then I'll transfer the other half to secondary to age it with some brettanomyces claussenii, taking some inspiration from how porter may (or may not!) have been done historically
To establish a baseline I started off with the final bottle of my Mk.I Hurricane Porter, fermented with CML Beoir in September 2020 so I'm sure it's changed a bit as it's conditioned. It's fairly sweet, but in a good way. Hard to pinpoint the exact flavours but maybe raisin, a hint of chocolate, dark toffee perhaps - dark flavours but not roasty. @pilgrimhudd tried it and his feedback was he wanted a bit more roast, so.....
For my Mk.II Hurricane Porter I added 50% more brown, crystal and chocolate rye malts. I also then split the crystal into dark, extra dark and Special-B. It was a split batch fermented with:
WY1318 - I really like this one. It's not roasty as such, but it's more roasty than Mk.I if that makes sense, drier and less sweet. This might sound weird but I get something that reminds me of leather, or maybe just a hint of smokiness.
Vs.
MJ M36 - I'm surprised how different this is. Compared to the Wyeast version it's somehow rounder and more fruity. I like this one too.
Really pleased with this, fascinating as always what a difference yeast selection makes. For the next version I'm planning to leave the recipe unchanged, but once fermentation is complete I'll only bottle half. Then I'll transfer the other half to secondary to age it with some brettanomyces claussenii, taking some inspiration from how porter may (or may not!) have been done historically