Base Porter recipe to build on

[Reman]

Using your recipe as a base this is what I brewed over the weekend, I think it's pretty close to your base recipe so I'm hoping it turns out similarly.

Style: Brown Porter (12A)
Boil Size: 14.98 l Style Guide: BJCP 2008
Color: 54.4 EBC Equipment: Pot 15l - BIAB to 10l
Bitterness: 30.0 IBUs Boil Time: 60 min
Est OG: 1.055 (13.5° P) Mash Profile: BIAB, Medium Body
Est FG: 1.015 SG (3.8° P) Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage
ABV: 5.3%

Amount Name Type #
2.32 kg Voyager Pale Malt (4.5 EBC) Grain 1
278.5 g Voyager Brown Malt (180.0 EBC) Grain 2
183.8 g Voyager Chocolate Malt (900.0 EBC) Grain 3
29.3 g Fuggles [4.5%] - Boil 60 min Hops 4
11.7 g Goldings, East Kent [5.0%] - Boil 15 min Hops 5
1 pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast 6

I ended up at an SG of 1.058, so I may need to up my efficiency in Beersmith.

I also took the chance to use the Australian grown Voyager malts and I also cold steeped the Brown and Chocolate malts before adding for the last 10 minutes before mash out. Mashed around 68 which I though might help for a nice chewy porter.

I'll update with how it goes, currently in the fermenter at about 17 (learning from my attempt at an ESB that was undrinkable after fermenting at 24)

 

[Nizmoose]

Using your recipe as a base this is what I brewed over the weekend, I think it's pretty close to your base recipe so I'm hoping it turns out similarly.

Style: Brown Porter (12A)
Boil Size: 14.98 l Style Guide: BJCP 2008
Color: 54.4 EBC Equipment: Pot 15l - BIAB to 10l
Bitterness: 30.0 IBUs Boil Time: 60 min
Est OG: 1.055 (13.5° P) Mash Profile: BIAB, Medium Body
Est FG: 1.015 SG (3.8° P) Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage
ABV: 5.3%

Amount Name Type #
2.32 kg Voyager Pale Malt (4.5 EBC) Grain 1
278.5 g Voyager Brown Malt (180.0 EBC) Grain 2
183.8 g Voyager Chocolate Malt (900.0 EBC) Grain 3
29.3 g Fuggles [4.5%] - Boil 60 min Hops 4
11.7 g Goldings, East Kent [5.0%] - Boil 15 min Hops 5
1 pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast 6

I ended up at an SG of 1.058, so I may need to up my efficiency in Beersmith.

I also took the chance to use the Australian grown Voyager malts and I also cold steeped the Brown and Chocolate malts before adding for the last 10 minutes before mash out. Mashed around 68 which I though might help for a nice chewy porter.

I'll update with how it goes, currently in the fermenter at about 17 (learning from my attempt at an ESB that was undrinkable after fermenting at 24)

Definitely let us know how it goes! The cold steep was a great idea, I wanted to cold steep my chocolate and brown Malt but it came milled and mixed. I think the cold steep will do a good job of bringing out that chocolate!

 

[seamad]

Brown malt I thought required mashing, as you added it for last 10 minutes then some conversion would have occurred, but hardly enough I'd think. Interested to see how it turns out.

 

[Nizmoose]

Brown malt I thought required mashing, as you added it for last 10 minutes then some conversion would have occurred, but hardly enough I'd think. Interested to see how it turns out.

I do believe that brown Malt is a specialty Malt and thus requires only a steep and not mash, if it required a mash then the cold steep would be fairly pointless but I do believe it falls with chocolate Malt under roasted Malt

EDIT: I'm happy to be proven wrong as I am far from an expert btw

EDIT: Nope Nope I am wrong, Brown malt should be mashed! There you go learn something new everyday, so Reman I'd recommend throwing the choc for a cold steep but the brown malt in the mash as seamad has pointed out

 

[Nizmoose]

 

[gap]

Craftbrewer shows Brown Malt as " mashing required"

 

[seamad]

malt_chart.gif

I'd split that roast section into 2, the first being "kilned malts ", amber,biscuit and brown included which I would mash, and then the roast section choc, black,carafa etc that I would steep ( either hot or cold depending on the profile I'm after )

 

[Nizmoose]

I'd split that roast section into 2, the first being "kilned malts ", amber,biscuit and brown included which I would mash, and then the roast section choc, black,carafa etc that I would steep ( either hot or cold depending on the profile I'm after )

Yep That'd definitely be a more helpful split if showing mashing vs steeping

 

[Reman]

I've also been doing a bit of reading and it does get a little confusing.

1st thing is that brown malt is usually around 70L, the Voyager Brown I used is around 180L - this is important due to what comes next.

Munich, Vienna and typical Brown Malts are kilned versions of the base malts we all know and love and need to be mashed. Chocolate and Black Patent are roasted and can be mashed or steeped.

What's the difference between making kilned and roasted malts? Doesn't seem to be much, roasted is just a very highly-kilned base malt. Take a kilned malt and leave it in the oven, and voila, you get a roasted malt.

So my conclusion is that if you can steep 400L chocolate and need to mash 8L Munich as you move from 8L to 400L the more you get out of steeping. Which means that while I probably should have mashed a 200L Brown malt to get 100% out of it, I still got a fair bit out of it by steeping and a 10 minute mash.

All that being said, next time I'll mash it!

References
http://www.barleyman.com.au/products/malts-grains/voyager-schooner-brown-malt.html
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/Malt_AK0996.html
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-1.html

 

[Nizmoose]

I've also been doing a bit of reading and it does get a little confusing.

1st thing is that brown malt is usually around 70L, the Voyager Brown I used is around 180L - this is important due to what comes next.

Munich, Vienna and typical Brown Malts are kilned versions of the base malts we all know and love and need to be mashed. Chocolate and Black Patent are roasted and can be mashed or steeped.

What's the difference between making kilned and roasted malts? Doesn't seem to be much, roasted is just a very highly-kilned base malt. Take a kilned malt and leave it in the oven, and voila, you get a roasted malt.

So my conclusion is that if you can steep 400L chocolate and need to mash 8L Munich as you move from 8L to 400L the more you get out of steeping. Which means that while I probably should have mashed a 200L Brown malt to get 100% out of it, I still got a fair bit out of it by steeping and a 10 minute mash.

All that being said, next time I'll mash it!

References
http://www.barleyman.com.au/products/malts-grains/voyager-schooner-brown-malt.html
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/Malt_AK0996.html
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-1.html

I do see where youre going with that bu I think the actual thing is that stteping extracts sugars, whilst mashing turns starch to sugar as we all know. Now crystal is kilned at a temp where the starch is converted to sugar (to my understanding) so that the sugars simply need be extracted in water, the same applies for choc malt. Brown malt it seems has not had its starches converted and therefore needs a mash OR the kilning process has destroyed the enzymes/starch/sugar and therefore means you are simply extracting the roast character from the grain. I dont actually know which is the case and dont want to mislead but the mash/steep situation depends on whether you're converting starches or extracting sugars. And im not sure which if any brown malt contains,

 

[Reman]

Niz, you are correct. Mashing the grain will convert the starches to sugar, steeping will only release the simple sugars. A caveat is that the more kilning the malts get the more enzymes are destroyed, these enzymes are used to covert the starch to sugar during mashing. This is what's referred to as the diastatic power or Lintner of the grain. Higher kilned malts have a lower diastatic power which is why they can't be mashed alone, there aren't enough enzymes to convert the starches.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/11/17/brewing-beer-with-dark-grains-steeping-versus-mashing/
Suggests that the higher kilned malts, eg. chocolate, will have some starches coverted and the rest mostly destroyed so thats why you can mash or steep. They definitely have had all their enzymes destroyed so they can't be mashed by themselves.

So I spose the question is, how much starch was left in the brown malt I got? The answer is...? I think I might ask the malsters!

 

[Nizmoose]

Niz, you are correct. Mashing the grain will convert the starches to sugar, steeping will only release the simple sugars. A caveat is that the more kilning the malts get the more enzymes are destroyed, these enzymes are used to covert the starch to sugar during mashing. This is what's referred to as the diastatic power or Lintner of the grain. Higher kilned malts have a lower diastatic power which is why they can't be mashed alone, there aren't enough enzymes to convert the starches.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/11/17/brewing-beer-with-dark-grains-steeping-versus-mashing/
Suggests that the higher kilned malts, eg. chocolate, will have some starches coverted and the rest mostly destroyed so thats why you can mash or steep. They definitely have had all their enzymes destroyed so they can't be mashed by themselves.

So I spose the question is, how much starch was left in the brown malt I got? The answer is...? I think I might ask the malsters!

Ahh okay thanks for the info! So does that mean there's any sugar in the Malt? If no conversion has happened during the kilning process what do you extract during a steep of brown Malt? Sorry for all the questions but it is interesting!

 

[Reman]

Reply from Voyager

Voyager Craft Malt Hi Chris, sorry for the late reply, we've been flat or keeping up with orders of late.
Thanks for message, we love hearing from brewers who have developed beers using our range of malts.
All our malts are designed to be mashed. This is to cater for the processes used by most of the craft breweries we deal with. Whilst it certainly would impart more tannin and astringency, we've worked hard to develop our roast malts to keep this to a minimum. Lower temps and longer periods of time in our roaster(along with a few other special processes)have had a significant reduction in these characters at the end of our 90min congress mashes in the lab.
It's interesting that you say our brown malt is darker than most, one comment we regularly hear is that our malts appear lighter than others(this is due to the process we use, where essentially we are trying to roast the grain but not the husk.) So with our grains the husk is much lighter than most other malts, but inside that husk you will find its true colour, this has been key for us in keeping astringency low, but still imparting classic characters of the malt.
In the image attached it shows our pale malt, brown malt, chocolate malt, roast malt and roast barley.
The key to all our specialty malts is using them fresh.
Feel free to give me a buzz 0427683272 to discuss further.
If you like I can send you some of our brown malt to compare colours with the brown malt you have?
Voyager Craft Malt's photo.

So, short answer is mash it like a boss!

 

[Reman]

Tasted a sample out of the fermenter, it's pretty damn good. After a week it's dropped from 1.058 to 1.022, meant to be an FG of 1.015 so I wonder how close I'll get....

 

[Nizmoose]

Tasted a sample out of the fermenter, it's pretty damn good. After a week it's dropped from 1.058 to 1.022, meant to be an FG of 1.015 so I wonder how close I'll get....

Good to hear it's going well! I'd say you should hit 1.015. Also that response from the maltster is insanely good customer service imo

 

[Reman]

Famous last words, it spent a week at 1.020 or there abouts even after some agitation to try and get some more action. So it's been bottled, interesting to see how it turns out, non-carbed it's pretty nice.

My theory on stalling at 1.020 is the price of not mashing the brown malt and also mashing high at 68 degrees. (See http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/54793-mash-temperature-effect-on-final-gravity-formula/)

Here's hoping the 30 IBUs will be enough to balance out the extra sweetness

 

[Nizmoose]

Famous last words, it spent a week at 1.020 or there abouts even after some agitation to try and get some more action. So it's been bottled, interesting to see how it turns out, non-carbed it's pretty nice.

My theory on stalling at 1.020 is the price of not mashing the brown malt and also mashing high at 68 degrees. (See http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/54793-mash-temperature-effect-on-final-gravity-formula/)

Here's hoping the 30 IBUs will be enough to balance out the extra sweetness

1.020 is high but so was the mash so yeah see how it goes, let us know how it tastes carbed, my bulk priming sunk on this batch and so I have many uncarbonated porters, the first I tried by chance was a good one I'm hoping there's a few more carbed ones in there because it was a great beer!

 

[Reman]

This is how it turned out, I'm very pleased



Straight out of the fridge it's a little bland with a touch of roast bitterness, but let it warm up a bit and all the flavours come out to play - coffee, chocolate, a little bit of floral and earthiness from the hops and a touch of fruit from the yeast.

It's definitely a drink to savour and not drink too quickly, let it wash over your tongue and slip down your throat. There's a pleasant oiliness that coats your tongue after swallowing, which leaves residual flavours.

Improvements? I'm not sure, I think it would take more educated taste buds than mine!

Niz, I know our recipes differ slightly but I think they are close enough to each other And I think they will work as a great base for porters and variants.

 

[Nizmoose]

This is how it turned out, I'm very pleased

image.jpg

Straight out of the fridge it's a little bland with a touch of roast bitterness, but let it warm up a bit and all the flavours come out to play - coffee, chocolate, a little bit of floral and earthiness from the hops and a touch of fruit from the yeast.

It's definitely a drink to savour and not drink too quickly, let it wash over your tongue and slip down your throat. There's a pleasant oiliness that coats your tongue after swallowing, which leaves residual flavours.

Improvements? I'm not sure, I think it would take more educated taste buds than mine!

Niz, I know our recipes differ slightly but I think they are close enough to each other And I think they will work as a great base for porters and variants.

Awesome work it looks good! Glad to hear that it turned out a nice beer! When it comes to improvements I'm in the same boat, its a bit out of my league. All I can say is that since brewing this I have gone out of my way looking for porters to try to compare to my own and haven't really liked any of them as much as my own which is a nice feeling. How was the roast in yours Reman? Happy with the amount of roast? The one thing many commercial examples have is too much roast for me but that's a me thing, I'm slowly coming round to it. When this gets brewed next I'll add some coffee and cacao nibs and see where it goes. Good to hear yours has turned out well and I agree both very similar recipes and both seem to be great base porters!