Honey Chocolate Smoked Porter

So after hearing the Basic Brewing Radio podcast on "Smoked Beers" on my way up to visit some DC friends last month, I decided I wanted to try producing a smoked beer.

While I like a nice smokey taste, I figured too much smoke can easily over power the beer, and perhaps not allow the taste buds to find anything else. I decided to try to go with 30% of the grist as Rauchmalt (Smoked Malt) as a baseline, and adjust up or down from there depending on how this turned out. I wanted a good flavor in the beer to compliment the smoke. Searching for recent smokey tasting experiences, I remember getting a Mo's Bacon Bar produced by Vosges chocolate awhile back. One wouldn't figure bacon and chocolate to go hand in hand, however the salty smokiness of the bacon meshed really well with the smooth sweetness of the chocolate.

So my smokey concoction was starting to take shape! I figured since I'd be using a chocolate malt, obviously I would have to be brewing a dark style. I decided to go with Porter

Here is what the Campaign for Real Ale has for the history of the Porter (and its brother Stout):

Porter was a London style that turned the brewing industry upside down early in the 18th century. It was a dark brown beer - 19th-century versions became jet black - that was originally a blend of brown ale, pale ale and ‘stale' or well-matured ale. It acquired the name Porter as a result of its popularity among London's street-market workers. At the time, a generic term for the strongest or stoutest beer in a brewery was stout.

The strongest versions of Porter were known as Stout Porter, reduced over the years to simply Stout. Such vast quantities of Porter and Stout flooded into Ireland from London and Bristol that a Dublin brewer named Arthur Guinness decided to fashion his own interpretation of the style. The beers were strong - 6% for Porter, 7% or 8% for Stout. Guinness in Dublin blended some unmalted roasted barley and in so doing produced a style known as Dry Irish Stout. Restrictions on making roasted malts in Britain during World War One led to the demise of Porter and Stout and left the market to the Irish.

So back to the chocolate.... The Earth Day Ale was a great beer! And I really liked the flavor that came out of the brew. There was definite chocolate/coffee flavors. However for this beer, I wanted more of a smoother cocoa flavor to shine through. This brought about the idea of boiling and "dry-cocoaing" with baking chocolate. I also wanted to up the ABV of the brew, so I went with 2 lbs of honey. It will be interesting to see if the honey can actually shine through both the smoke and the chocolate. I may have just been better off using corn sugar. We shall see.

Amount      Item Type                            % or IBU 
5.00 lb     Mild Malt (4 SRM) Grain              37.04 % 
4.00 lb     Smoked Malt (5 SRM) Grain            29.63 % 
1.00 lb     Biscuit Malt (23 SRM) Grain           7.41 % 
1.00 lb     Chocolate Malt (350 SRM) Grain        7.41 % 
0.50 lb     Caramel/Crystal Malt (80 SRM) Grain   3.70 % 
2.00 lb     Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar                14.81 % 

0.75 oz     Chinook [13.00 %] (60 min) Hops     31.2 IBU 
0.25 oz     Chinook [13.00 %] (7 min) Hops       2.8 IBU 

1.50 cup    Malto-Dextrine (Boil 5.0 min) 
2.00 oz     Cocoa (Boil 10.0 min) 
2.00 oz     Cocoa (Secondary 2.0 weeks) 

1 Pkgs      British Ale (White Labs #WLP005) Yeast-Ale 

Original Gravity: 1.063 (missed target by -.002)
Bitterness: 34.0 IBU
Est Color: 30.8 SRM
Calories: 274 cal/pint

We brewed her two weeks ago. The inital tasting on first racking was a very nice chocolate flavor, however there was definitely some astringent tannings in there as well. Suprisingly even with as little as 30% rauchmalt the smoke flavor was going strong! I want to bulk age this baby for a bit longer then normal, but I'm guessing she'll be ready to bottle when I get back from my trip to KC in mid February.

I'll post an update when I have some tasting notes and a final gravity