Smoked Malt in a Porter

[craiga79]

Hello, first time poster but long time reader over the years!

I am about to brew a Fullers London Porter clone using Graham Wheeler's recipe. However I thought the recipe might work well will a little added smoked malt. I've never used smoke malt in a beer before and want to make sure I don't ruin it, so thought I would see if anyone can suggest how much would be suitable?

The GW recipe calls for 4.23kg of Maris otter, 0.665kg of brown malt, 0.555kg of crystal malt and 0.11kg of chocolate malt.

Can anyone suggest how much smoked malt would add some smoky depth without taking over completely? And would it be a straight addition or should I reduce, for example, the brown malt to compensate?

Fully appreciate that experimenting is the key to success, but also want to minimise the risk of destroying it! Any tips greatly appreciated.

[Digby]

Hi,

I used around 25% Weyermann beech smoked malt in a strongish 6% porter. It had a distinct smoke character but nowhere near that of a rauchbier.

If you want to be cautious, I would suggest 10 to 15% would give some smoke but not overpower the beer at all. The problem is that it depends what you think is too much, and we are all different. I love Schlenkerla which is approaching 100% smoke malt!

Oh yes, and replace base malt with the smoke. It should not impart much colour on its own.

Matt

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[craiga79]

Perfect, thanks Matt. 10 to 15% instead of base malt it is. Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

[Digby]

You are most welcome. That percentage is my suggestion for the Weyermann beech smoked malt. Be much more cautious with peat smoked as that is on another level!

Matt

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[craiga79]

Its the beech smoked malt I've ordered. I'll steer clear of the peat smoked stuff for now!

Thanks again.

[Kingfisher4]

Perfect, thanks Matt. 10 to 15% instead of base malt it is. Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

You shouldn’t go far wrong at that percentage. One of my favourite beers recently is Anspach and Hobday, The Smoked Brown. They use 30% beech smoked malt and it is not overpowering. My guesstimate of the recipe is weighed out and ready to go, using 25%.

[ingo]

The Weyermann is rather lightly smoked, but for a first indeed the 10-15%. Their oak smoked wheat is very nice, also lightly smoked.

Ingo

[Binkie Huckaback]

Years ago I made a very nice smoked brown porter with some peat smoked malt. Here's the recipe if it's of any help:

Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 8 lbs. 2.5 oz 3700 grams 74.4%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 0 lbs. 10.9 oz 310 grams 6.2%
Brown Malt 150 EBC 1 lbs. 1.6 oz 500 grams 10.1%
Chocolate Malt 1050 EBC 0 lbs. 3.7 oz 105 grams 2.1%
Peat Smoked Malt 3.75 EBC 0 lbs. 3.5 oz 100 grams 2%
Torrefied Wheat 4 EBC 0 lbs. 9.1 oz 260 grams 5.2%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 26 grams 60.5%
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 20 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 23.3%
Target Whole 11.4 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.2 oz 7 grams 16.3%

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.4 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 25.8283925188039 EBU
Colour: 80 EBC

[craiga79]

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions and recipes. Will get cracking with some experimenting this weekend.

[Northern Brewer]

JFTR, a Fullers brewer recently posted a recipe for their Imperial Porter on Twitter, from which I extrapolated a recipe for the regular porter, sort of from the horse's mouth :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/thre ... st-8674860