Revival Porter

Classification: porter, all-grain

Source: Tony Babinec (tony@spss.com), HBD Issue #1026, 12/4/92

The Belgian Cara-Pils ARF mentions in a previous HBD is best thought of as a light crystal malt. It has a color rating of 8L. It should not be confused with U.S. Cara-Pils, which has very little color, is very hard and "glassy," and is generally used to add dextrins, and therefore body, to the beer.
It seems that the way to get caramel/crystal malt flavor is to add larger proportions of a lighter crystal malt to your grain bill. The Belgian Cara-Pils, at 8L, and Belgian Cara-Vienne, at 20L, are two good lighter crystal malts for this. Being crystal malts, these malts can be steeped.
To get malt flavor, use Belgian Munich (8L) or Belgian Aromatic (25L), or equivalent German light or dark Munich malts, in some proportion. Note that these malts must be mashed.
The Belgian Biscuit malt can be used in recipes that call for "amber" malt. It has a color rating of about 22L, and has a "biscuity" flavor.
To make "brown malt," take pale ale malt and toast it in your oven for 50 (that's right!) minutes at 400 degrees F. This is a suggestion from Randy Mosher.

Some old recipes for porter called for 9 parts pale malt, 5 parts amber malt, 5 parts brown malt, and 1 part black malt. So, in that spirit, we offer the following recipe.

Ingredients:

5 pounds pale ale malt
2.5 pounds amber malt (Belgian Biscuit)
2.5 pounds brown malt (homemade, see above)
0.5 pound dark (80L or dark) crystal malt
0.5 pound black patent malt
10-15 HBUs Fuggles for bittering, plus whatever flavor and aroma additions you want
ale yeast

Procedure:

Your mileage may vary with the above grain bill. Also, given that this is a revival porter, you might adjust the grain bill so that your starting gravity is higher, say 1.070, rather than adhere to current AHA porter style guidelines. You'll be brewing a stout porter.