BeerSmith Forums user recipe collaboration idea.

[Brewmex41]

I had a hard time deciding between Carastan, British crystal 60 and brown malt, but i think two pounds of brown malt should give us the color and depth of an English porter.
10lb Maris Otter
2lb Brown Malt
1.5 lb Munich
1 lb pale chocolate malt

Right now im getting this on my recipe app:
1.068 OG
26.4 Srm

[cmbrougham]

YES! I'm digging it. This is a very British-y porter, as it's shaping up from the grain bill, and I think the brown malt will go a long way to add a warm, roasty undercurrent to the rather beefy malt backdrop provided by the MO and the Munich. I certainly didn't think we'd need additional sweetness or mouthfeel added by crystal/caramel specialties, so I'm fully in favor of this choice.

[grathan]

156*F /69*C

[all grain]

156 is the highest I have mashed at in the past and I ended up with a beer that tasted like Scottish ale. not that's that is a bad thing just not what I was looking for. since this is my 1st porter I can not say more then 156 is good for me. 

[Brewmex41]

156*F /69*C

Would you share why you decided on this temp?

[Scott Ickes]

We're moving right along.

Here is where we're at:

DRB1215                           Style of recipe to be designed.                            Chose Robust Porter
Road Rocket                      Base Grain and quantity.                                    Chose 10 lbs. of Maris Otter Malt
All Grain                            Specialty grain and quantity.                               Chose 1 lb. of Pale Chocolate Malt
Scott Ickes                       Second specialty grain and quantity.                    Chose 1.5 lbs. of Munich Malt
Brewmex41                      Third specialty grain and quantity.                        Chose 2 lbs. of Brown Malt
Grathan                            Mash Profile.                                                          Chose Mash Temp of 156F/69C for a full body beer
WinnepegFats                  First hop type, quantity and time added.
Billy Brew                         Second hop type, quantity and time added.
Bucknut                           Third hop type, quantity and time added.
CMBrougham                   Yeast selection.
I love Grathan's choice of Mash Temp!  A lot!!  I love my Porters to be sweeter and with this mash temp we should have some residual unfermentables to add a sweet touch that goes well with the grain bill and keeps it very much an English Style Robust Porter.

Let's pause for a moment and get comments on this.

For example:
   We are over the target OG for the style about .002 to .004 points.  With my equipment, I'd have an estimated OG of 1.067. 
              Is everybody ok with this?
   I'm showing an SRM of 26.9.  This is just a tad below the middle of the styles range.  Is everybody ok with this.
   Any comments on the quantities in the grain bill, now that we have all four selected?
   Any comments on if we need any additional grains?
   Does anybody think we could substitute a different grain than what has been selected?

We won't move on to the hopping until we have a consensus on the grain bill.

We're open for comments on everything up to this point in time.

[Brewmex41]

I think whoever though to add brown malt is a genius We should elect him our leader.

I am liking the grain bill and I have never mashed that high before. This is all uncharted territory for me and I'm pretty excited for this one.

Scott, You will end up brewing this one, wont you? If you do, maybe I will brew some sort of variation and we can exchange a couple bottles. Like maybe I'll use a baltic lager yeast or something, or use exclusively German Malts to really see the differences all these ingredients make.

[Scott Ickes]

I just made a clone of Brews Brothers Porter.  I got the recipe from the head brewer at the Brews Brothers Microbrewery at the Silver Legacy Casino in Reno, Nevada.  He suggested I mash at 156F.  So I did.  It turned out fantastic!  Some residual sweetness, which I really like in an English Porter. 

My measured OG was 1.065 with a grain bill almost identical to this one.  The only difference was that I had some crystal malts (20L and 120L) in small amounts.  My grain bill was 14.5 lbs. total.  We're at the same 14.5 lbs. with ours.  I only had 1 pound of Brown Malt in mine.  In place of the 1 pound of Brown Malt that my recipe didn't have compared to this one, I had 12 oz. of the 120L Crystal and 4 oz. of the 20L Crystal.

I'm freakin' amazed out how close this recipe has turned out grain-wise to the one I just brewed.  Unbelievable!!  You can see my Brews Brothers Porter Recipe in the recipe threads.  I called mine a Baltic Porter, just because it fit the guidelines for Color, OG, Bitterness and ABV of a Baltic Porter.  Maybe when I enter it into competitions, I'd be better off entering it as a Robust Porter.

[Scott Ickes]

I think whoever though to add brown malt is a genius We should elect him our leader.

I am liking the grain bill and I have never mashed that high before. This is all uncharted territory for me and I'm pretty excited for this one.

Scott, You will end up brewing this one, wont you? If you do, maybe I will brew some sort of variation and we can exchange a couple bottles. Like maybe I'll use a baltic lager yeast or something, or use exclusively German Malts to really see the differences all these ingredients make.

Since we only live a few miles apart, it would be very beneficial if we brewed them side by side, as close to the same as we can.  We'll get a great comparison of our two brews to give feedback to the group.  I suggest that you and I should use the same yeast.  Actually, I think that we should have me make a huge starter of the yeast (large enough to pitch both batches!), so that the yeast starting conditions are as identical as possible.

It will be a great beer for our club meetings when we get to our Malt Forward tasting night.  We'll get great feedback from about 20 homebrewers on the two beers tasted side by side.  We could even do it as a blind tasting, so that they don't know which one is which.  We might not want to tell them that they recipes were identical.

[Brewmex41]

This is true. Maybe I can come over on a saturday once this bad boy is hashed out and We can do it same day. Only tough thing would be keeping ferm temps the same and hoping mine doesnt slosh too much on the drive home.

I had a baltic porter the other day, and I really liked it. From Poland. It was similar to a German dopplebock, just with more chocolatey porter like flavors.

[Scott Ickes]

You could leave your fermentor here and let them ferment side by side.  I can keep the temps under control and pretty much identical.

[all grain]

are we using 65% or 70% efficiency

[Scott Ickes]

I have mine set at 70%.

[all grain]

my #s all look good. I'm going to the lbs on Thursday to get everything I need. I'm in Minnesota and the temps have been below 0 at night for to long, like two weeks. Thursday it is said that it will be 28 and that's a sign from the brew gods to brew.
 pretty sure we will be done and ready by then? 

[cmbrougham]

I'm looking at 1.077 OG/25.2 SRM as it stands right now, brewing 5.5G on my system. I don't have qualms about that necessarily, but it just feels a little out-of-bounds. I'll scale down to get a little more in line with the rest of you, but it might be worth toning down the grist a little bit. I'm of the opinion that it should be a little darker, but it's within style as it is. Maybe I'll just drink it in the dark, or with my eyes closed... or maybe I'll just toss in a small handful of black malt

I do like the mash temp choice, however; I think that will nicely round out the maltiness of the beer. That will make my yeast choice a bit more challenging!

Any thoughts on the above concerns? I'm not going to fight it too hard, but thought I'd throw it for discussion. I think we should lock down this part of the recipe with every participant's stated or unstated (by means of no comment) approval before setting the hop dogs loose.