Smoked Honey Porter

Recently Franklin's Brewery in Hyattesville, MD was kind enough to let my homebrew club, DC Homebrewers, collaborate with them on a beer.  My friend Jake and I were in charge of designing a recipe, and brewing a pilot batch prior to brewing the commerical version at Franklin's.  Being in DC and all, and since one of our club members successfully petitioned the White House last year to release their beer recipes, we thought it would be fitting to brew the White House Honey Porter. However, that recipe looks extremely uninspiring. So we decided to make some changes.  The idea was to brew a Honey Porter the way DC Hombrewers would.

We started off by adding Crystal 120 to introduce some more dark fruit flavors and Crystal 40 add a little caramel depth.  We upped the Chocolate Malt for more roast/chocolate flavors. Additionally, to make it more unique and our own, we used some Smoked Malt to give it some smoke undertones.  Hop wise we decided on Columbus to give the beer a firm bitterness (~30 IBU, far greater than 10 IBU WH verison), and also impart the dank, spicy, earthy, citrus flavors that an aggressive hop like Columbus can assert.

Oh yeah, there's honey too (after all this is suppose to be the White House Honey Porter), but we added it to the fermenter in order to get more honey flavor, as opposed to at the end of the boil, which basically just increases fermentability.

Currently (6/25/2013) the Frankin's version of the beer is on tap and is absolulely awesome. The bitterness is closer to 45 IBU, there is a nice smoke flavor, but it doesn't overpower any of the chocolate/roast/dark fruit flavor you expect to have in Porter.

"A More Perfect Union"
Brewed 14 April 2013 with Jake, Erich and the members of HOPS in the parking lot of 3 Stars Brewery
Batch Size: 5 gallons
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.012
SRM: ?
IBU: 29

Fermentables
9 lbs. US 2-Row
2 lbs. Munich Malt
12 oz. Chocolate Malt
12 oz. Crystal 40
8 oz. Smoked Malt
8 oz. White Wheat Malt
4 oz. Crystal 120
2 oz. Black (Roast) Barley
1 lb. Honey added to the fermenter

Hops
0.25 oz. Columbus (Pellet, AA unknown) @ 60 min
0.25 oz. Columbus (Pellet, AA unknown) @ 20 min
0.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet, AA unknown) @ 10 min
0.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet, AA unknown) @ 5 min

Yeast
1 cup of Franklin's thick house slurry (assumed to be WLP001)

Mash
Sacch. rest 154F for 60 min.

Water
3 Stars carbon filtered DC water

Notes
Keg kept at Jake's place.

5/11/2013 - Kegged and carbed, nice roasty, dried fruit, subtle smoke in finish. Perhaps too sweet. Increase IBU for Franklin's batch.  Jake quickly let some sit on oak for 30 min. and it tasted great.  We will probably but the rest on oak.