Anyone have a clone of this delicious porter recipe??
Brewing my porter is complicated by the fact that we use so many different malts: pale malt, caramel malt, chocolate malt, black malt, as well as peat-smoked malt (our only imported ingredient, from Britain). The peat-smopked malt--the same kind of malt that's used to make Scotch whiskey--is included to give a hint of the smokiness that surely was present in the original English porters, which were developed at a time when all malt was dried over smoky direct fires. To provide a little bit of the vanilla character you might have gotten from oak casks, we originally aged the porter with wood chips for a day or two. You might still detect a hint of vanilla in it today.
We call it Perfect Porter because it's a balancing of all those different kinds of malts, plus the suggestion of oak or vanilla. One day, back when we were developing it, we had done five or six trial brews. On the sixth batch, all the right tastes came together. Most porters taste like coffee; ours tasted like chocolate. Everyone who tried it said, "This is perfect." The name stuck, and so did the beer.
I've never had this beer (or any of Bert's others) but just this past weekend picked up a copy of "The Ale Master" from Powell's in portland (a used copy that was signed "To Laura. Bert Grant. 9/1/98"
I haven't read it yet and there is no index but I flipped through it till I found some perfect porter info.
Theres a few more paragraphs in that section but I think this is the important stuff.
Thanks for the help again Bokonon,
What about this updated grain bill? Comes out to 1.040 at 83% efficiency
5LB 2-row Pale 66.6%
1.25LB Peat Smoked malt 16.66%
.75LB C60 10%
.25LB Black Patent malt 3.33%
.25LB Chocolate Malt 3.33%
Do you think that 16% smoked malt would make this too smokey? Beersmith says 20% max in a batch.
Ok, here is an updated grain bill. I saw the other thread started back in June and they are looking close except the starting gravity.
I am wondering if the starting gravity should be higher than 1.040. The beer is listed as 3.8% ABV so I thought 1.040 would be good. 1.040 to 1.010 will get 3.9%
6LB 2-row Pale 81.41%
.50LB Chocolate Malt 6.78%
.25LB C40 3.39%
.25LB C80 3.39%
.25LB Black Patent malt 3.33%
.12 LB Peat Smoked malt 1.63%
I don't think you have enough dark malts in there. I would raise it up to 1 pound of chocolate malt, and 3/4 of a pound of black patent malt. I don't know how it will be having such a low OG..... I feel like it would have the body of a schwartzbier (like saranac black forest) rather than a true porter.
I was doing some research for a future brew (plum/prune porter or stout) and came across this post. Bert Grant's Perfect Porter is possibly the first porter that i liked. Now porters are my favorite. I would love to brew it. I haven't had one in a few years but i remember it being easy to drink. I wish i could remember more to help with recipe.
Cool thread. Subscribed.
I love porters and used to drink a lot of Grant's back when I lived in Seattle.
FWIW, before they stopped brewing, Grant's Perfect Porter was listed as having an OG of 1.049, a FG of 1.015, a bitterness level of 25 IBUs and an ABV of 4%. The only hop listed is Willammette.
The original web page is preserved here:
Perfect Porter
I'm eager to see how the recipe develops.
My blind stab at 5.5 gallons of it:
7 lbs 2 Row Pale
1 lb Crystal 90L
1 lb Crystal 60L
10 oz Chocolate
4 oz Black
2 oz Peated
1.5 oz Willamette 60 minutes
Danstar Windsor yeast or another low attenuator like Wyeast 1968
The original web page is preserved here:
Perfect Porter
I noticed they list the color units at 90. How does this scale compare to SRM?
BTW, to anyone who hasn't read this, this always chokes me up:
Michael Jackson's Beer Hunter - How Bert Grant Saved The World
We lost two "beer greats" in Bert and Michael.
BTW, my earlier post was just a guess that color was EBC...but it makes sense.
Nice. Let us know what your recipe reformulation ends up like.
FWIW, I'm thinking of using Windsor for my version of this.
Here's my current version of Grant's Perfect Porter (been toying with it for a while now )...will brew it once I'm done with two brews I've got coming up. At this point I'm planning it as a PM:
5.5 gallons:
3 lbs Light DME
3 lbs 2 Row Pale Malt
1 lb Crystal 60L
1 lb Chocolate Malt
2 oz Black Patent
1 oz Peated Malt
1.25 Willamette 60 minutes
Windsor Ale Dry Yeast
I just finished a beer recently with 2 oz of Peated and it just wasn't subtle enough, which is why I'm lowering my original recipe's 2 oz of Peat down to 1 oz.
I switched the Crystal over to only 60L as that was probably all that was readily commercially available in volume when Bert was first brewing this.
I've upped the Chocolate but lowered the Black Patent so as to still hit 34° SRM as that was just too much Black Patent.
carbon 111. i would really like to know how this turns out..i have been searching for this recipe for some time now. if this is close it will almost be heaven in liquid form.
I will be brewing a second version of this soon too, should be pretty darn close this time.
I'm looking forward to comparing notes!
I'm looking forward to comparing notes!
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