Whitbread's London Porter (Durden Park)

[Zephyr259]

Just looking back through my notes and I see that I used fuggles to 35 IBUs. Haven't reworked the figures to see how I arrived at that, but definitely didn't go as high as 51. The amount of amber malt gives a bitterness of its own. I should say that this definitely mellows down with age.

Thanks for that, the high bitterness of the recipes does worry me somewhat, but I'll see how the porter and Simonds Bitter come out before making changes.

 

[Zephyr259]

That's 3 weeks in the bottle and I had to try one to see how it was doing to get me through the long maturation suggested. Quite pleasantly surprised, at 6% and 61 IBU it's the most bitter beer I've ever made on paper and in no way tastes it in the glass. Very smooth, chocolatey and rich but not toasty,. I can tell it's got some mellowing to do, mostly with the brown malt which is still a touch sharp but not as much as I was expecting. I find 5-8% in a stout takes a month or so to mellow but this has 17%. Should age into a very nice beer I hope and gives me hope for the other recipes with equally high bitterness to gravity ratios.

 

[An Ankoù]

That's 3 weeks in the bottle and I had to try one to see how it was doing to get me through the long maturation suggested. Quite pleasantly surprised, at 6% and 61 IBU it's the most bitter beer I've ever made on paper and in no way tastes it in the glass. Very smooth, chocolatey and rich but not toasty,. I can tell it's got some mellowing to do, mostly with the brown malt which is still a touch sharp but not as much as I was expecting. I find 5-8% in a stout takes a month or so to mellow but this has 17%. Should age into a very nice beer I hope and gives me hope for the other recipes with equally high bitterness to gravity ratios.

That's all very encouraging. I'm racking mine into secondary this morning so I'm a good way behind you.
Edit: Had a crafty taste while racking. It's powerful stuff with, at this stage, an overwhelming flavour of liquorice, which is going to mellow down to something very nice indeed.