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BrewUnited Brown Porter Tasting

The BrewUnited challenge is coming up fast! I hope you have your entries prepared and delivered in time for the competition.

John shipped his off earlier last week, but saved a bottle of Brown Porter for us to taste.

To recap, the Brew United Challenge brewers were asked to brew a beer in one of three categories (Malty, Balanced, Hoppy). You could chose any yeast you wanted to brew with, but you were restricted to only four grains:

  • Pilsner
  • Munich 10L
  • Crystal 60L
  • Flaked Wheat

These grains had to be in your recipe no matter what. One of the style John chose to brew was Brown Porter. But wait, there is no chocolate malt or brown malt or black malt to be found on the approved list.

What’s a brewer to do? Well, you have to roast your own malt and so he did.

I really had mixed feelings about this format. I love brewing and I love working with ingredients but I had little belief that really good be could be made by tossing some pilsner malt in an oven and roasting it to make a decent substitute for the real deal from your favorite commercial source.

Man, was I wrong.

This Brown Porter is mind blowing-ly complex. It has plenty of roast and chocolate character.

The color is spot on. The aroma has a great toasted bread crust thing going for it.

I mean, it’s pretty damn fantastic! I think most people would be hard pressed to think that the base malt in this brew was Pilsner malt.

It changes my perspective quite a bit on ingredient choices and how we apply them. I believe now that sometimes you can get to the same place by taking different paths.

I am sorry I didn’t get registered soon enough to give this a try myself.

Here’s the recipe for John’s BrewUnited Brown Porter:

OG: 1.050
IBUs:
28
Color: 
29 SRM (estimated)

Malt:
63% American Pilsner Malt
13% Brown Malt (*Home roasted – see below)
6% Chocolate Malt (*Home roasted – see below)
6% Crystal Malt 60° L
6% American Munich Light 10°L
6% Flaked Wheat

Hops:
0.5 Oz Northdown Hops (8.5% AA) 60 min
0.5 Oz Challenger Hops (7.0% AA) 15 min

Mash:
60min @ 150F

Ferment:
10 days @ 67F with Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast from Danstar

*Home Roasted Malts:
Brown Malt-Roasted Pilsner malt 50min @300F
Chocolate Malt- Roasted Pilsner malt 30min @450F

We have written about toasting your own grains in the past and our first try at it was probably a bit of beginner’s luck but a lot of reading and preparation.

Let us know how about your roasting/toasting malts at home.

Brew On!

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2 Comments

  1. Caz

    This sound superb! Two things:
    I think the recipe is missing 6% C-60 ?
    And I wonder if you used the home rosted malt immediately or if it had ~two weeks rest – as I have seen elsewhere when it comes to roast your own malt?

  2. Hi Caz,

    Good catch. I added the 6% of Crystal 60 to the recipe. Now the recipe is correct.

    I did let it sit for two weeks in a brown paper bag before I brewed with the grain. It was the last beer I brewed for the competition.

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