Wednesday 30 May 2012

Tasting : Deschutes Black Butte Porter clone

Even though I bottled this clone about 6 weeks ago, I really took my time writing up an actual review of the beer. I've had several of them over the past few weeks, and was a little wary of it overall at first. The carbonation took longer to develop compared to most of my beers. I'm not sure if this was due to pooped-out yeast or not, but I'm quite sure it had nothing to do with temperatures, as the bottles were sitting in a room set at about 70 F, which is my typical bottle-conditioning temperature. After awhile, however, the carbonation finally came around.

I was also worried that the beer would be too sweet, as my FG was high at 1.018, compared to the 1.012 target given by the brewer. I admit that that number seems a bit odd to me; with the target OG of 1.058, a FG that low would give an ABV of about 6%, which is much higher than the actual 5.2% listed by Deschutes for the real Black Butte Porter. This would also indicate an apparent attenuation of 79%, much higher than the average of 69% for Wyeast 1968. Either way, I'm pretty happy with how the beer came out. As usual, I don't have any of the commercial beer on hand to compare, unfortunately!

Appearance: Poured with a moderate-large, very creamy tan head. Pretty good retention, sticks around for quite awhile before fading to 1/2-finger. Body is a very dark brown, even black, and appears opaque... but when held to bright light, yields some ruby highlights and excellent clarity.

Aroma: Aroma of mostly dark, rich chocolate... slightly sweet. Some coffee and roasted notes as well, but maybe not as much of the roasted character as their should be. Perhaps a touch of spicy hops in there.

Taste: Again, while there ARE roasted and coffee notes present, the chocolate really wins out in this beer. There is a touch of tartness that may be from the wheat malt. Hop bitterness is moderate-low in the finish, which is more on the sweet than dry side. No diacetyl.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied, moderate-low carbonation. Just a bit of astringency (ok).

Overall: My porter experience is much lower than with other beer styles, but this is a pretty tasty beer. I don’t remember the Black Butte being overly roasty, and wouldn’t have expected as much with this recipe, so I think it’s probably in the ballpark of the commercial beer. Pretty enjoyable overall.

4 comments:

  1. Although I haven't tried the original yet, I'd like to give this one a go. Looks gorgeous!

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    1. When I get off my lazy ass and send your package, I'll be sure to include a bottle!

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  2. I think I might give this one a go as well. I have some pale chocolate and regular chocolate I'm going to use. I also found some specs on their site that corrects some misinformation... http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/recipe/black-butte-porter-clone
    OG is 1.055-1.060 and FG can be 1.016-1.019, so say an OG 1.057 and a FG of 1.017 will give you the 5.2% that it is, probably more in line with the attenuation.
    Any further tips/notes to consider?
    I have some WLP002 that I will use along with cascade/Nugget(instead of galena) and Tettnag ...

    trick is the calcium level. I don't want too much sulphate in there, so I'll to play with the levels of CaCl & CaSO4. Just nailed a brown Porter this past week. I added 1g of table salt to 5 gallons. A great new trick, really makes it shine, just like in food....

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    1. There's been several times where recipes given by the actual brewer on CYBI don't seem to quite match up with specs on their website, bottles, etc. I think what you're suggesting would definitely be the way to go.

      I hope you try it... I still have a lot of bottles left, so we could try to compare sometime down the road.

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