Why'd is my Porter a Stout?

So I planned to brew a Robust Porter based off of Jamil’s Robust Porter Recipe (http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/Jam … orter.html)

The only thing I did different was beer up the Black Patent a smidge and lower the Chocolate. Here is my recipe

10.000 lb Pale Malt (74.07%)
1.250 lb Crystal 40 (9.26%)
1.250 lb Munich I (9.26%)
0.500 lb Black Patent (3.7%)
0.500 lb Chocolate (3.7%)

1.00 oz East Kent Golding Pellet (4.7% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes
0.50 oz East Kent Golding Pellet (4.7% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes
0.50 oz East Kent Golding Pellet (4.7% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes

Is this what made my beer taste more like a stout then a porter? It is definitely more roasty that I expected from the porter and I’m assuming its that balance of the chocolate/black patent vs. Jamil’s recipe. The beer itself is still very good and I’m not complaining and I’ll just call it an American Stout. I’m trying to use this as a learning experience for myself about how the different malts impact flavor and style.

Thoughts?

I generally think of the difference between a stout and a porter is: Stout=roast barley; Porter=chocolate malt. In general, a stout is darker as well (black vs dark brown)

Suggest you take a pinch of roast barley and smell/chew it, then do the same with choco malt and I bet you’ll quickly see what I mean.

As to the black patent, I think of it as roast barley that has been roasted and then roasted some more until it’s at a ‘charred’ level. Personally, I keep any BP at very low levels. You probably caused more “roasty” flavors and darkened the color by upping the BP and lowering the choc.

looks like a good porter recipe to me! i agree with beerme - that is a lot of black patent - my house porter recipe has only 4oz per 12gal, but a lot of chocolate, but I know a lot of folks use that level of BP or even more.

many porters come across as borderline stouts - Smuttynose Porter is one that is a favorite that is probably pretty aggressive relative to other examples.

what’s important is do you like what you made?

I do like what I made and in theory style doesn’t really matter. But I’m just starting to experiment with recipes and looking at others and making minor adjustment (due to batch size, etc).

So with that, I’m trying to learn why my porter is more stoutish. And I guessed it was from the Black Patent, but wanted to get some opinions since I’ve never used it before.

and BTW, feel free to use it since you think it looks like a good porter recipe hehe.

[quote=“raspsu1”]I do like what I made and in theory style doesn’t really matter. But I’m just starting to experiment with recipes and looking at others and making minor adjustment (due to batch size, etc).

So with that, I’m trying to learn why my porter is more stoutish. And I guessed it was from the Black Patent, but wanted to get some opinions since I’ve never used it before.

and BTW, feel free to use it since you think it looks like a good porter recipe hehe.[/quote]

There is such a fine line between the two “styles” . It’s all open to interpretation based on your own expectation of what the given “styles” should taste like and given that there is no rulebook dictating these things, there is LOTS of wiggle room.

As someone pointed out, it hardly matters if you like the end result, and fortunately you seem to have achieved that.
In any case…By my reckoning, you seem to have a very nice porter there. Or a nice stout. :mrgreen:
:cheers: