Extract Chocolate Honey Porter Help

[durbo]

Hi all, I'm fairly new to this whole home brewing business. The next brew I want to do is a porter, and I've done a bunch of reading of recipes and ingredients and such and I have come up with one I think will be good. I'm aiming for strong chocolatey and honey flavours and aromas with an ABV of about 6-6.5%. I'll be doing a partial mash by steeping specialty grains then adding the DME late in the boil.

As this is the first recipe I've actually come up with, I'd appreciate some comments on quantities/ratios, ingredients used (or overlooked) and temperatures appropriate for the porter style of beer.

Chocolate Honey Porter

Fermentables
- 7.5 lb Pale DME
- 1.3 lb dextrose

- 12 oz crystal malt
- 14 oz chocolate malt
- 4 oz Black patent malt

Hops and adjuncts
- 1 1/2 oz East Kent Goldings (60 mins)
- 1.8 lb honey (60 mins ?)
- 1/2 oz Fuggles (20 mins)
- 1/2 Willamette (20 mins)
- 12 oz cocoa powder (10 mins)

Yeast
- English Ale Yeast


If you could also comment on how best to utilise the honey to extract flavour that would be great too.

Cheers!

 

[Bretheren]

I could be wrong, but that's a lot of honey and you might overshoot your abv, like I said I may be wrong. Honey is 100% fermentable, the best examples I have tasted, the beer was actually bottled with honey, not used in primary or secondary.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[RM-MN]

You would probably get more honey flavor by using Gambrinus Honey Malt in your steep. Try about half a pound. If you decide to keep the honey in the recipe too, add it at flameout so the boiling doesn't drive off the very flavor you are looking for. The time it takes for you to chill the wort should be enough to pasteurize the honey.

 

[durbo]

Cheers guys, that helps a lot. Bretheren I'm not too worried about overshooting the ABV, that was more of a minimum of what I wanted for the porter. And you might be right with the level of honey being high. I've just read that honey also increases the fermenting time so might dial that down a little.

And RM, I live in Australia and I have done a little bit of digging and unfortunately it doesn't seem that honey malt is sold here. So I might follow your advice in adding it at flameout and hope for the best. On that note, is any type of honey better than another? As in, can I just go down to my supermarket and buy a regular jar and add it in?

 

[Bretheren]

Try something floral and sweet, like orange blossom (we get it at the supermarket here in South Africa) (worked well in my honey wheat beer).

Like RM said add at flameout if abv isn't an issue. Just watch out to prime a bit less as per usual. I don't know why but my first batch came out too fizzy and then when I cut back about a third (as for an ale) it came out perfect.

 

[durbo]

I've just plugged this recipe into my recipe calculator and its come out with an EBC of about 190. Is this ridiculously high, or standard for the kind of beer I'm going for? Most of that colour is derived from the chocolate malt. I also think this might come out more like a stout, which is also fine by me...as long as it tastes good.