Recipe for brewing a homemade craft Porter-style stout

If there is one beer that stands out for its color, it’s dark beer. Even the most casual drinkers have tried a porter or a stout at some point in their lives. There are various myths surrounding these dark styles… That they’re stronger… That they’re heavier… Nonsense! Alcohol content and beer density are not related to its color. The appearance of these striking styles is solely due to the roasting of the malts. More heavily kilned malts impart that characteristic color as well as flavors reminiscent of coffee, chocolate and licorice.

So are porters and stouts made only with heavily roasted malts? Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, dark beers contain only a very small proportion of dark malts, because a minimal amount is enough to give them both the appearance and the character we’re looking for. Ready to brew your first homemade porter or stout?

For 10 liters of delicious stout you’ll need the following ingredients: 2.5 kg of pale malt, 350 grams of caramel malt, 75 grams of chocolate malt, 75 grams of black malt, 150 grams of rolled oats and 30 grams of Cascade hops, plus brewer’s yeast. This time we’re going to use quite a few specialty malts and, as you’ll have noticed, it won’t be a very hoppy beer. In this case we’ll use the hops for their bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malts.

After mashing the grain for an hour and a half at 67ºC with 8 liters of water, we add another 7 liters to sparge the grain. It’s then time to boil the wort for an hour. At the start of the boil we add 20 grams of hops and reserve the remaining 10 grams for ten minutes before the end of the boil. This way, all that’s left is to ferment the beer at around 20ºC for a week to ten days, and then allow a similar amount of time for conditioning.

This is how we’ll obtain what will be our first porter with an alcohol content close to 5%. Try tasting it alongside sweet chocolates or sponge cakes—you’ll be amazed! Are you ready to enjoy the best homemade beer brewed by you? After making your first porter, don’t hesitate to experiment and tweak the recipe to explore different nuances.