Nestle's Tollhouse Porter

Classification: porter, cocoa, chocolate, all-grain

Source: Pat Babcock (pbabcock@oeonline.com), HBD Issue #2150, 8/19/96

About a month ago, Rich Byrnes alluded to this creation and had some requests for the recipe. I had some commercial plans for the recipe (which I decided not to pursue. Think I'd rather be a homebrewer...), so I had asked him NOT to share it.

After reading Don Trotter's treatise on recipe sharing (yes, Don. I understand the vein in which you claim to have written it, but your insistence that you'll not share recipes is... well, let's just say that it's not in character with your claim.), and being a devoted formulator of recipes, I decided to share this.

Ingredients: (for 20 gallons)

26 pounds pale malt
1 pound black patent malt
2 pounds chocolate malt
4 pounds crystal 80 malt
1 pound belgian malted wheat
2 pounds flaked oats
2 ounces perle leaf hops (8% alpha, first wort hopped)
2 ounces perle (60 minute boil)
4 ounces Styrian Goldings (2.5% alpha, 60 minute boil)
8 ounces Willamette hops (2.5% alpha, 15 minute boil)
24 ounces Nestle's Tollhouse baking cocoa powder (add 15 minutes before knockout)
1 ounce Irish moss
Wyeast British ale yeast

Procedure:

52-1/2 quarts of mash water, strike temperature 109 F. During and following mashout, and prior to transferring to the boil kettle, remove a gallon at a time of the first runnings to a pot. Boil until caramellized and return to the mash tun. Continue until 1/4 to 3/8 of the final volume has been caramellized. (Five gallons in the 20 gallon case). Throw the first wort Perle into the boil kettle prior to beginning the sparge.

Mashing Schedule: 15 minutes 104 F
15 minutes 140 F
45 minutes at 158 F
15 minute mashout at 170 F

Fermented with starter in carboys. 3 days at 60 F, 3 days at 63 F, 28 days at 66 F (You don't _need_ to leave it this long. I didn't get an opportunity to rack before then...)

Batch will require rousing. Transfer to secondary will normally be sufficient, but an occasional swirl after transfer will do no harm. Transfer to secondary is HIGHLY recommended due to the incredible amount of sediment from the chocolate powder dropping out of suspension after the most vigorous fermentation has subsided. (Wait until the kraeusen falls before racking.)

Sub 8.5 # LME, 7.5 DME for pale malt for extract/specialty grain based (5 gallons). Scale everything else down accordingly. IBUs should scale fairly linearly.

Specifics:

OG: 1.060
FG: 1.027