Robust Porter Recipe – Be Bold!

If you are trying to get into the world of darker beers but you just aren’t ready for a stout yet, this might be a good beer to try out.   This style of beer is called, “Robust Porter”, they have an explosion of bold flavors and what some refer to as, “purple” in color.  Honestly today when you go to the beer isle and see Porter and think, “What’s the different between that and a stout?”  I could give you a technical answer and maybe that will be a post in the future but just know it’s a lot of brewers discretion  This is a simple recipe and we have a quick break down about the different aspects of it at the end.  Conversion Chart for DME-LME-GRAIN.

Ingredients

1 lbs Chocolate Malt

.5 lbs 80L Crystal Malt

1 lbs Carafa I

2 oz Roasted Barley

.5 lbs Dextrine Malt

.5 120L crystal Malt

6 lbs Liquid Malt (light)

.75 oz Northern Brewer (60min)

.5 oz Cascade (60min)

WLP 005

Specs

OG: 1.058

FG: 1.014

SRM: 36.34

IBU: 39.4

ABV: 5.8%

Directions:

• Steep grains for 30 min at 150 with 2.5 gallons of water
• Take out, don’t ring bag, add LME
• Bring to boil
• In beginning of the boil, add hops
• Boil for 60min
• Cool down wort, put in fermenter, fill up to 5 gallons of water pitch yeast

Primary 7-14 days

Bottle: 21 days

Taste Profile

This beer has 80L crystal malt and 120L crystal malt.  Both of these malts are sweet in flavor and will give a darker color to the beer.  There will be a nice balance of sweetness to this particular beer. The carafa is a German malt, it really just gives color and doesn’t impart too much flavor in my opinion.  It will also make the head of this beer tan – pretty cool.

That dark malt with conjunction of the chocolate and the roasted barley you are going to get some of the robust flavors out of the beer.  This is going to be straight forward once you sip the beer, which it is nice to have that sweeter finish from the crystal – it’s a nice balance.

As for the hops, we only have bittering hops.  Both of these hops are moderate in the alpha acid which will, “cut through” the robust flavors.  Nothern Brewer have an early flavor and the Cascade have a citrus like flavor.  There are no flavor or aroma hops to this beer.  The purpose for this is to not distract the drinker from anything other than the robust flavors.  The hops are merely a balance to this beer, nothing more, nothing less.  Not having a huge alcohol, this beer is pretty easy to drink and have a few of them.  Also on the plus side, it’s going to be a quick beer to brew, 5 weeks and you are ready to drink.  However, this beer will get better as you cellar it.
Cheers!

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