A robust porter is a roasty tasting dark ale full of bitter chocolate and coffee flavors. I have seen examples that are dark brown and others that are almost black in color. This style is bolder than a Brown porter but less intense than an Baltic porter. If you are looking for a great beer to brew for the colder months, this recipe is for you.
I tend to use English malts and hops for porters, but if you find American or even German varieties are more to your liking – go ahead and substitute.
Yeast strain should be a clean one. No funky Belgian strains if you are looking to brew to style.
Nice and Roasty Robust Porter Recipe
Ingredients:
10 lbs Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
1.5 lbs Crystal 60°L
1 lbs Chocolate Malt; Thomas Fawcett
0.50 lbs Black Patent Malt
1.5 oz Fuggle Pellets, 4.75 %AA boiled 60 mins.
0.5 oz Goldings Pellets, 5 %AA boiled 15 mins.
0.5 oz Goldings Pellets, 5 %AA boiled 1 mins.
Yeast: White Labs WLP002 English Ale
Instructions
Mash the malts at 155° F for 60 minutes. Boil for one hour and add the different hops amounts at the times specified above. Cool wort to 66° F and ferment for two weeks at that temperature. Bottle or keg as usual.
Predictions
Original Gravity: 1.059
Terminal Gravity: 1.014
Color: 30.95 °SRM
Bitterness: 35.7 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.9%
This is my tried and true robust porter recipe. It’s a style that is offered by many craft breweries and certainly many homebrewers as well. Again, you can substitute malts with ones that you like or have available to you. The black patent malt is the key to the complex, almost burnt flavors that you are going after with this beer. The chocolate malt give you that coffee roastiness. You can play around with different crystal or caramel malts for some different sweetness in the beer to counter the darker malts’ flavor.
brewella deville
Thanks for posting this recipe. Porter is one of my favorite styles, and you’re absolutely right about the black malt. I accidentally doubled the amount of black malt in my mash once, and it came out much more roasty than I intended, almost ashy. I let it bottle condition twice as long as normal and was surprised by how much it mellowed out.
John
Thanks brewella – yes, we learned over the years that black patent is the key to a good robust porter but not necessarily great in stouts.