The following is my notes on a recent completed brew: a  robust porter. This personal favorite is an old beer style, of British origin, characterized by a dark color, a fair amount of roastiness, and mild to firm hop bittering. For reference to commercial beers, it would fit somewhere between a Newcastle and a Guinness,  a Northern brown ale and dry stout, respectively.  Porters are not all that common in the US anymore, although that is changing. Historically, several of the founding fathers of the United States had recipes for a porter-like ale. Also, I find it interesting that this was considered the beer of the working class manual laborers of Great Britain, hence the name, porter.

In the name of experimentation, I decided to split this batch into two beers at bottling time. One half I left as a standard robust porter and the other half I dubbed a Mexican Coffee porter. To accomplish this, I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder, a pinch of cinnamon, and 2 cups of cold-brewed coffee. Cold-brewed coffee is created by leaving coffee grounds in water overnight in the fridge, which are then filtered out. The resulting coffee is very smooth, and acid-free; it really allows the flavor of the bean to shine through. I recommend trying it, if you are a coffee-lover.

I submitted a few of these beers into the Coconut Cup homebrew competition in Miami, FL under the “specialty beer” category because of the extra ingredients. I was not able to attend unfortunately, but recently received my scoresheets in the mail. My score averaged out to 36/50 which is not bad, but not medal-worthy. Both judges seemed to think I had a bit too much coffee flavor and aroma and not enough body and mouthfeel. Next time I will cold brew with fewer beans and probably increase the malt extract level for more body. I also intend to add more cinnamon and cocoa because they were almost indetectable in the finished product.

For those seeking further edification, I have included some further details:

• Scoresheet1 (pdf)
• Scoresheet2 (pdf)
• ProMash recipe report (html)

Here are some resources for learning more about the porter beer style:

• Ratebeer’s Top Porters
• BeerAdvocate’s detailed Porter description
• Wikipedia: Porter (beer)

Please feel free to comment or email if you have any further questions.