Export Porter Recipe

[alwilson]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to work out a recipe for an export porter - or rather im trying to convert the recipe from just some brewers notes.

I have the malt sussed - finally.

but hops, im stuck at "4.47 lbs hops per barrel" EKG and Spalt. No actual qty of each or any AA values. Or even when the additions would be.

Being a porter its fair assumption that these are just bittering additions and nothing late.

But I dont really know what kind of IBU to aim for, at 4.47 lbs per barrel.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Cheers
Alex

[Eadweard]

The recipe is probably from before they'd worked out IBUs. A barrel is 164 litres.

[alwilson]

Hi Eadweard,

Yeah, thats what I thought. So whilst I know its impossible to say for certain, what do you think the AA% of EKG and spalt in those days were?

Or perhaps AA% hasn't changed much between then (1850s) and now?

Alex

[Eadweard]

As hops are grown from cuttings the plants are the same. And with hopping rates like that I suspect you'll be up at >100 IBU anyway.

[alwilson]

Sodding hell thats quite hoppy.

[dave-o]

Yeah, working that out on Beer Smith, it comes out at over 200IBU if all boiled for 90mins.

What's so special about this recipe? here are plenty of porter recipes that sound more exciting.

[alwilson]

Nothing particularly special - im just interested in brewing old beers, and this was struck me as interesting.

But I lose interest rapidly at 200IBU

[Blackaddler]

A 4%AA hop would work out to about 80IBU, so might not be too extreme, depending on the rest of the recipe.

[alwilson]

Blackaddler,

74.25% Pale
21% Brown
1.25 % Black
3.5% Amber

[Blackaddler]

With that much Brown, it'll have quite a strong flavour, so you'd probably need quite a lot of hops to balance it.

I brewed with 10% Brown, recently [to 1.052OG], but with an IBU of 30. It was nice, and lots of people liked it, but in my opinion, it would have benefited from a few more hops.

I rarely brew to much over 30IBU, but with twice as much Brown, 80-100IBU could be about right for an older [stronger?] recipe.

[alwilson]

Ah, now that makes sense.

I'd probably want this beer around 6-7%

[Barley Water]

Humm, something looks a bit odd with that recipe to me, do not most porters contain a fairly large dose of crystal malt? Of course, I have never screwed around with any of the historical formulations but my idea of a good porter has both the roast flavors as well as the sweet carmal flavors, am I missing something here? I guess when I think of English Porter, I automatically think of Fuller's London Porter but of course it could be that I am fix'in to learn something here. It would seem to me that the formulation you mention would taste more like a full bodied dry stout than what I normally think of as a porter, let the education begin.

[alwilson]

Barley,

MY somewhat minimial understanding of porter and stout is that the term 'stout' was originally a word used to mean 'strong' - so you'd often see 'Stout Porter' to imply a strong porter. I get the impression from what I've read the lines between what we now know as porter and as stout are fairly blurred.

Alex

[Barley Water]

Well, perhaps I should just brew some then and see how it comes out. I guess if the OG is really high, the beer will end up sweet just because the yeast can't handle all the sugar so attenuation goes down, similar to what happens with Barley Wine. I'll PM you but I can think of a couple of ways to play games with this whole thing and perhaps make things really interesting, perhaps in an historically accurate manner.

[kaymak]

Some historical porters were made with 100% brown malt and very heavily bittered,

Brown malt, back in the day, was a lot different form today's brown malt, it was smoked , leading to a more smoother flavour which is why so much could be used.

Traditional ales would have been heavily bittered also.

If your aiming for 6-7 then I would aim for 60-70 ibu's