Caledonian Porter Grist

[Scooby]

I normally only brew pale Ales and bitters but thought I would try
a porter it's from BYORAAH and the grist is:

3350 gm Pale
215 gm Crystal
215 gm Amber
140 gm Chocolate
435 gm Wheat

The colour is stated at 70 EBC

When I put the recipe into BeerAlchemy I get less than 30EBC.

Not having brewed this style before I'm not sure what's going on, but
140 gm Chocolate seems a bit short. Anyone brewed this and can shed
some light?

Cheers

[Graham]

I normally only brew pale Ales and bitters but thought I would try
a porter it's from BYORAAH and the grist is:

3350 gm Pale
215 gm Crystal
215 gm Amber
140 gm Chocolate
435 gm Wheat

The colour is stated at 70 EBC

When I put the recipe into BeerAlchemy I get less than 30EBC.

Not having brewed this style before I'm not sure what's going on, but
140 gm Chocolate seems a bit short. Anyone brewed this and can shed
some light?

Cheers

Before I open my big mouth I will point out that I do not know anything about Beer Alchemy, cos I haven't got a mac, for one thing. You might, of course, be set to SRM, not EBC.

All of the brewing software that I have seen (except my own) uses a curve-fitting formula to estimate colour. This curve is based on an erroneous idea that beer colour does not follow the Beer-Lambert law - it does. This error began because someone did some measurements on a dark beer with a photometer and he came up a non-linear result. Unfortunately, not only was bad laboratory technique employed for this experiment, but he was also using the photometer well outside of its stray light specification. He would never have got accurate results the way he was using it. Unfortunately this bloke was one of those that are never wrong and stuck to his guns even though he was challenged numerous times about it. He was still arguing eight years later. He even argued the toss with the Technical Director of Perkin Elmer, probably the largest manufacturer of infra-red spectrometers in the world, who also happened to be a keen home brewer. Several people, including said Perkin Elmer bloke, have repeated his experiments and found no non-linearity. The myth persists though. Quite frankly there is no curve to follow.

Another problem is that American home brewers tend to use Lovibond (visual and used for grain) and SRM (photometric and used for beer) interchangeably. They are not interchangeable; they are two different scales. They are very close at lager colours, which suited the Americans until recently, but the two scales diverge greatly at dark colours.

Being less than half does seem a long way out, even with all the above, so I'd check that you are definately set to EBC

[Scooby]

Being such a long way short and not wanting to make a fool of myself I checked the preferences
before I posted. EBC using Morey formula.

I also know nothing about BeerAlchemy but find it trustworthy and use it as a guide for all my
brews. This is the first time something has struck me as wrong.

[Graham]

Being such a long way short and not wanting to make a fool of myself I checked the preferences
before I posted. EBC using Morey formula.

I also know nothing about BeerAlchemy but find it trustworthy and use it as a guide for all my
brews. This is the first time something has struck me as wrong.

Yes, I guessed that was the case. It is not Mr. Morey's fault (well not entirely anyway), he was using someone else's flawed research. Regretfully, it is so ingrained in folklore that the Americans are probably stuck with it for ever. Fortunately, we are not, (if I have anything to do with it, that is).

I guess also, that Beer Alchemy does all its internal stuff in American units and converts to European units for display. Converting from SRM to EBC is another thing that is damn nigh on impossible to do. It is one of the reasons that I have been forced to ignore the Americans with the software that I'm writing. I can cope with everything else, but not colour - not without a lot of research and back to first principles stuff, stuff that I am either too old or unwilling to do. The American methods, as they stand, are not that good for dark beers anyway, in my view. They appear to be too hung up on single-frequency photometric methods, which do not match the eye. The whole point of standardisation of beer colour is so as not to offend the eye. Also a reference method (SRM) is not an absolute method, but home brewers seem to be treating it as such.

[Stonechat]

To return to the original question of Scooby's post, I can confirm that I have brewed it and would advise leaving the recipe alone.

I have not tasted the commercial product so can not make taste comparisons, but GW's recipe gives a rich coffee like flavour to the porter.

When the CBA asked for freebies to give out at the Colchester Winter Beer Festival run by Camra earlier in 2008 I donated 22 bottles of it and got no complaints, but they might have been very polite in Colchester

[Scooby]

Many thanks to both of you for those replies.

There was little chance that I would have changed the recipe without brewing
The original first, just thought I would raise the question. Sounds a very tasty
brew though

[Graham]

Many thanks to both of you for those replies.

There was little chance that I would have changed the recipe without brewing
The original first, just thought I would raise the question. Sounds a very tasty
brew though

Sorry, I forgot about the original question. I was too concerned about explaining away my discrepancies.

[Scooby]

Many thanks to both of you for those replies.

There was little chance that I would have changed the recipe without brewing
The original first, just thought I would raise the question. Sounds a very tasty
brew though

Sorry, I forgot about the original question. I was too concerned about explaining away my discrepancies.

Your explanation was very informative.