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AR15.COM
8/9/2025 7:53:05 PM EDT
I've done this several times with bourbon, but never with beer.  

The three porters I have here:

Deschutes Black Butte Porter (a brown porter)
Founders Porter (a robust porter, which is just a more roasty brown porter)
Homebrew Imperial porter (a Deschutes Black Butte Porter 5 gallon kit brewed as a 3 gallon batch with two pounds of DME, milk sugar and blackstrap molasses added.  

The Black Butte and Founders are both excellent and quite different.  I can't decide which I prefer, but I lean towards the more roasty Founders.  My homebrew imperial porter is way too sweet, with an FG of 1.034.   The underlying beer is pretty good, but that cloying sweetness takes a lot away from it.

My Imperial Porter was an attempt to move in the direction of Deschutes "The Abyss", an 11% barrel aged stout with a ton of roast flavor.  

This was a fun experiment and I'm going to turn my attention toward brewing beer more like the first two (5.3% to 6.5% ABV), rather than the 8% ABV of my homebrew.  

Attached File
Pour over coffee is best coffee.
8/9/2025 8:42:56 PM EDT
[#1]
All three look delicious!!
Wild Man of East TN
8/9/2025 11:23:06 PM EDT
[#2]
Quote History
Originally Posted By 19Charlie278:
All three look delicious!!
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The first two were!  

The third was "okay", at best, but I'll keep working at it with more modest goals.
Pour over coffee is best coffee.
9/9/2025 2:33:55 PM EDT
[#3]
I'd say you're going for an imperial stout there. I wonder if a different more robust yeast strain could take it up to 10-11% to take some of the sweetness off. I'm going to be making a lighter smoky porter soon but I want to do a old Rasputin clone this winter and I'll need a yeast that can take it up past 10%. I don't like high FG beers either.
9/21/2025 6:13:39 PM EDT
[#4]
Quote History
Originally Posted By SBR300BLK:
I'd say you're going for an imperial stout there. I wonder if a different more robust yeast strain could take it up to 10-11% to take some of the sweetness off. I'm going to be making a lighter smoky porter soon but I want to do a old Rasputin clone this winter and I'll need a yeast that can take it up past 10%. I don't like high FG beers either.
View Quote
I've struggled to find the dividing line between porters and stouts and finally just decided there is no consensus.  Some really credible people think it's about ABV, others think it's about ingredients (ie, stouts have roasted barley, porters don't).  

The beer I was aiming for is most definately an imperial stout, but I stuck with the porter label since it was a porter kit.

I've had a continuing problem with my beers being overly sweet and I'm starting to lean toward under-hopping being the problem, rather than the yeast I use.  I used to love those super high FG beers that were literally syrupy, but now I can only drink one of those on occasion and it has to be a really good one.  I've poured $13 bottles of BA stout down the drain, just because they were too rich.  

I probably won't brew until the temperatures have been cool for awhile, so I'll have colder tapwater to chill my wort.  I'll probably go for a lower ABV beer, like a brown ale or even a dark mild.  I had a dark mild and a cream ale at a local brewery and they were amazing.  I didn't know that such a low ABV and low FG could have so much flavor!  The Apartment Brewer just posted a video where he brewed a dark ale, so that style must be getting popular right now.
Pour over coffee is best coffee.

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