AG - Porter

[willabur]

Choc Ice Porter

5kg MO
400G Chocolate Malt 700 SRM
300G Chocolate Malt 350 SRM
200G Crystal 30
250G Lactose
200G Oats

40G Fuggles @60m
40G Fuggles @10m

1 Vanilla Bean
100G Cocoa Nibs soaked in whiskey - Both added in after 5 days of fermenation. I don't use secondary fermentation any more but I am afaid that these additions will drop right into the trub and their effects will be stifled.

Ended up with 26 litres of 1060
Fermented down to 1017 using harvested US05 (only yeast I had in the house)

Aiming for a big chocolate flavour in this one. Hoping the lactose and vanilla to extenuate the milk chocolate.

[cruiscinlan]

Can you add the nibs during the mash? How did it turn out?

[willabur]

A quick google suggests that you can indeed add them to the mash, the main issue it seems to be that they contain oils and oils are not good for head retention.

I opened a bottle of the beer last Sunday. It was 9 days in the bottle at that stage.
Poured Jet Black, even when held up to light it was still black. Nice frothy head though. I was hoping to achieve a bold creamy, chocolate vanilla flavour which I managed before with an extract brew but this is still not there. Its perhaps a bit too bitter, maybe the yeast characteristic that the us05 has brought isn't best suited to allow the chocolate and the vanilla to shine through. All that said its less than 2 weeks in the bottle so another 2 or 3 weeks and it could come good. It is by no means a bad beer, just not what I had envisaged.

Would welcome any comment on the recipe. My thinking is that I need to row back on ingredients. Drop the dark chocolate roast and the crystal, up the lactose a little bit. Drop the hop rate down by a quarter or a half.