All grain porter recipe?

[YogiBearMead726]

Well, having just made my first beer ever, I want to do it again...and instead of something I can't drink for a few months, I wanted to try something that I could enjoy sooner. Here's my proposed grain bill:

-9.2 lbs of Pale malt
-1.6 lbs of Munich malt
-1.1 lbs of Crystal malt
-1.1 lbs of Chocolate malt
-0.4 lbs of Roasted barley
-0.3 lbs of Wheat (flaked)

Now, I calculated this grain bill with a 70% efficiency for the mash and a target OG of 1.060 in a 5.5 gallon batch size. If I'm a bit off, please let me know, but this calculation worked pretty well for my last recipe, so I'm using it again.

First question I had was, what hops should I use? I was thinking of Goldings for bitterness, Cascade for flavor, and Fuggle for aroma, but being a complete newbee to brewing, I'd like to hear what some of you more experienced brewers think.

My second question is about using turbinado sugar or brown sugar as an adjunct...I really like the flavor of them, and think it might add something nice to the porter, but again, as a newbee I'm totally in the dark on this one. What would adding half a pound of sugar do to the final product?

Finally, should I consider some different malts like Brown or Amber for historical accuracy? I don't really know what these taste like, but I could always tack on another 0.5 lbs of grain and still come out around my target gravity. A caveat to this is, do I need to do anything special for the specialty grains in my grist? Or just toss it in and step-mash everything together?

Any thoughts/comments are greatly appreciated! ;D

 

[akueck]

I'm a fan of brown malt. You could stand to drop out some of that crystal malt if you wanted to sub it in. I haven't used amber malt, so can't help you there.

Goldings and Fuggle are good choices. Personally I wouldn't put Cascades into a porter (too citrusy).

Adding sugar will thin out your beer. This probably isn't necessary for a beer with an OG of only 1.060 unless you want it to be on the dry side. I'd say leave out the sugar for now, you can try it later and see if you like the difference.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Awesome, thanks for the advice. I picked up some intense dark malts today, so maybe next time I'll try the brown.

And thanks for the tip on the sugar. Something to experiment with, but I'll leave it and the Cascades out of this batch.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Well, I went to my LHBS, and officially the grain bill is as follows:

-9.2 lbs of British Pale Ale
-1.6 lbs of Organic Munich
-1.1 lbs of Chocolate
-1.0 lbs of Crystal C 120
-0.4 lbs of Roasted Barley
-0.4 lbs of "Special Roast" (a specialty toasting of something similar to Victory, but not quite as biscuit-y, nice caramel notes)
-0.2 lbs of Flaked Wheat

Pre-boil, my wort is sitting at around 1.034. Will this go closer to my target of 1.060 after boiling? I know there's about a 5% water loss during the boil, but will I need some DME to help get this to where I want it? What about a few pounds of honey? I know this will probably lighten the mouthfeel, but I'm just wondering what I can do. Any advice?

Edit: Also, do you call grains "malt". Like, would I call something Chocolate malt, or just Chocolate?

 

[wayneb]

Seems odd to me that you're so far off from your target 1.060 gravity - can you tell us a little more about your mash steps, and have you tested to see if you've gotten reasonably complete conversion?

Oh, and "malt" is a term reserved for grains that have been sprouted (allowing the enzymes that perform starch to sugar conversion to be released) before kilning/roasting. Generally unmalted grains will be referred to as "roasted barley, wheat, etc...." You will get different flavor and mouthfeel constituents from the unmalted grains. Generally speaking, Chocolate malt is used to describe a degree of roasting of malted grain. So you can generally use "chocolate malt" or "chocolate" interchangeably and people will usually know that you're referring to the malted grain.

 

[akueck]

The wort will concentrate during the boil, but not enough to get you from 1.034 to 1.060 unless you wanted to boil for a few hours. Sounds like your efficiency was low (or your reading was off). How did you do your mash? Don't worry, improving efficiency is not that hard until you're trying to get past about 70-75%.

DME or any other sugar can be used to boost up the gravity. Of course, honey will leave less body than DME. A 1.040 beer isn't that terrible a thing either, so you could just leave it as-is.

Not all grains are malt. Malt has been sprouted to activate the enzymes and start the breakdown of the kernel. Chocolate malt is malt, but it has been kilned to make it dark (and thus has no remaining enzymes). Roasted barley, flaked grains, etc are not malt, just raw grains that have been processed by heat and/or pressure. Crystal malts are malts that were kilned wet (basically steamed or stewed), which produces the enzymatic conversion and some caramelization. The sugary kernel is glassy, thus "crystal" malt (also called caramel malt for the flavors).

 

[YogiBearMead726]

So here's my process:

-Add half the grains to grain bag (mash tun limitations)
-Place grain bag into ~1.5 gallons of water
-Heat until 125 degrees F
-Remove from heat, let rest at 125-130 for 30 minutes
-Continue heating until 150 F
-Remove from heat, let rest at 150-152 for 10 minutes
-Continue heating until 158 F
-Remove from heat, let rest at 158-160 for 15 minutes
-Sparge once with 180 F water (~3 quarts)
-Repeat for second half of grains

This is basically what I did last time (for my barleywine), although I might've used more sparge water on this run.

Thanks for the help! I'm thinking of just adding some DME to get the gravity higher. Do I need to boil the extract too?

 

[wayneb]

Noting strange then - just not great efficiency from this batch!

You can use DME to augment the SG, and you don't need to boil it, but if I were adding to an already mixed batch I'd bring a little water to a boil, then dissolve in the DME, then add the lot to my main batch to help it to dissolve into the wort.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Noting strange then - just not great efficiency from this batch!

You can use DME to augment the SG, and you don't need to boil it, but if I were adding to an already mixed batch I'd bring a little water to a boil, then dissolve in the DME, then add the lot to my main batch to help it to dissolve into the wort.

Good to know. Maybe the Pale malt didn't have as many enzymes? Either way, I'll reformulate the grain bill for the next batch.

Thanks for the directions for adding some DME. I think I might add two pounds just to bump this up to around 5%. Looks like I'm headed back to my LHBS tomorrow.

Edit: I've read that a way to do the mash is to add a specific amount of water, pre-heated, per pound of grain. Is this more efficient? Is there any problem with letting the grains steep as the water gets up to temperature?

 

[akueck]

Two basic kinds of mash: single-infusion and step. Unless you've got a lot of adjuncts (non-malted grains) in there, you don't need to do a step mash to get good conversion and clear wort. Step mashes are good for breaking down undermodified malts and high protein adjuncts. Certain styles of beer benefit from step mashes since you can get very specific sugar ratios and/or certain complex polysaccharides.

For both mashes, you generally are going to heat some water and stir the grains into the water. For single infusion mashes, usually you use about 1.25 qt of water per lb of grain. Overheat it (usually by 5-10 degrees F, depending on your system), and toss the grains in. You should hit your mash temperature, or close to it, in one step. Wait, sparge, done. Step mashes (not counting decoctions) start with less water, about 1 qt/lb, and do one or more rests before coming to the saccharification rest. Hot water is added to get from one step to the next, diluting the mash so you wind up around 1.3-1.5 qt/lb at the end.

Letting grains steep while you warm up the water is kind of like a continuous step mash. You will overconvert well-modified grains (might lose some head retention), but otherwise nothing terrible will happen.

Question for you though: sounds like you used about 4.5 gallons of water for the mash and sparge? That's not enough, you left sugar behind. Did you dilute to 5.5 gallons after that? For an all-grain batch, you should wind up with more volume after the sparge than you will get at the end of the boil, I'd say for your grain bill you would be looking at at least 6 gallons of runoff, maybe more depending on how much you wanted to sparge and how much boiloff you expect. Grains will absorb water too, about 0.1 gallons per lb, so you'd have lost like half your water to the grains. For reference, the batch I did yesterday had 3.5 lbs of grain and I used over 3 gallons of water for mash and sparge (that's a bit much since I was making a dilute beer, but if should give you a sense of scale).

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Oh wow, lots of good info in there! Thanks for the in-depth answer. ;D

Um...yes, you are correct on my water usage. I wasn't sure how many times to sparge my grains. I tried tasting some to see if it was still sweet, but I guess that's not efficient for telling how much is still locked away.

I also realized after I had started that I never did the "net water needed" calculations, and just winged it. Again, this might've played into the volume/gravities being off.

For sparging, should I let the grains soak in the 170+ F water before straining? Also, does it matter if the sparge water temp is above 170 F? I've just been boiling some water in a kettle to sparge with.

 

[akueck]

Sparge temps above about 170 purportedly leach tannins from the husks. However, there is some pushback on this since pH is probably more critical than temperature. In any case, you can't go wrong sparging at 170.

The 1-1.5 qt/lb is for the mash, you'll use about the same amount for the sparge. Ideally you measure the gravity of the runnings and stop when it gets down to about 1.010-15, or whenever you have collected what you need. Alternatively, you can calculate the total water you need (including absorption loss) and put it all in at once--the Brew-in-a-Bag method which is very popular in Australia and catching on here. Of course you need a giant kettle for this, but on the other hand you can use just one.

Good news is that you left half the sugar behind, all you needed to do was rinse. That's an easy fix and your next batch should be much better.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Sparge temps above about 170 purportedly leach tannins from the husks. However, there is some pushback on this since pH is probably more critical than temperature. In any case, you can't go wrong sparging at 170.

The 1-1.5 qt/lb is for the mash, you'll use about the same amount for the sparge. Ideally you measure the gravity of the runnings and stop when it gets down to about 1.010-15, or whenever you have collected what you need. Alternatively, you can calculate the total water you need (including absorption loss) and put it all in at once--the Brew-in-a-Bag method which is very popular in Australia and catching on here. Of course you need a giant kettle for this, but on the other hand you can use just one.

Good news is that you left half the sugar behind, all you needed to do was rinse. That's an easy fix and your next batch should be much better.

Hurray! Glad to hear that. I'm starting an all grain stout today, so this is definitely all very good to know. No repeating this...oversight.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

So...I think I figured out the problem.

After sparging my latest batch (a stout), I went to dump the spent grains in the compost bin. Upon spreading them out, I noticed some from the center of my grain bag were still dry!! And, the grains went from dry in the center, to very dark (probably still had sugar locked away), to very light and definitely spent. Soooo...that's the end of me using grain bags for brewing.

Not to be disheartened, I boiled the stout for 90 minutes to get somewhere close to my target gravity. I ended up at 1.052, so not too shabby.

Now, while that cooled down in an ice bath, I ran over to my LHBS to get attachments for making an Igloo cylindrical cooler into a mash/lauter tun (simple, yes, but much better than my current system of grain bags...). I'll be making a rye IPA soon to test this new toy out, but something tells me this was the smoking gun of my mash inefficiency...especially since my first batch of beer was made without grain bags, and that came out almost right on par with what I had calculated. *fingers crossed*

 

[akueck]

Aha! I used a grain bag once as well. That was the last time I did that. Now I have a little cooler (a tiny 2 gallon one...the ball valve looks comically large) and it works great. Usually I have efficiency close to 80-85% (batch sparge, two rinses).

 

[Chevette Girl]

So...I think I figured out the problem.

After sparging my latest batch (a stout), I went to dump the spent grains in the compost bin. Upon spreading them out, I noticed some from the center of my grain bag were still dry!! And, the grains went from dry in the center, to very dark (probably still had sugar locked away), to very light and definitely spent. Soooo...that's the end of me using grain bags for brewing.

Golddiggie has been trying to convince me that I want to do beers etc. so I thought I'd ask, since it's relevant and I probably will go with a bag when I start out with grains - is it possible that the grain bag was just too full so the water couldn't circulate? I know he uses a grain bag, and I'm sure others must... how do you folks who use them get it to work?

 

[akueck]

The rule for bags (which I learned too late as well) is: your pot/kettle/tun should fit inside the bag. If the bag is big enough for that, it won't constrain the grain. Stirring to make sure the grain is nice and wet is important.

 

[YogiBearMead726]

The rule for bags (which I learned too late as well) is: your pot/kettle/tun should fit inside the bag. If the bag is big enough for that, it won't constrain the grain. Stirring to make sure the grain is nice and wet is important.

Hahaha, well that would've been good to know...I can fit about 2-3 of my grain bags (3/4 full...probably too full) into my old mash kettle. None of them could've fit the kettle itself either...

Also, I wasn't able to stir the grain, just the bags. If I could've stirred the grains up, it probably would've worked, but now I'm just going to use the bags to strain my hops out after the boil. Now THAT, they work great for. ;D