Increase toffee flavor in a porter

[jay3847]

I have a porter recipe I like but want to up the toffee notes in it. I have read that reducing some of the wort by half (maybe a couple pints) will do that. For an experiment, I reduce some of the final beer. Bleah! I forgot that method would also double the bitterness. But that failed experiment also got me to thinking about what part of the wort I really wanted to bump up. Certainly not the Black Patent.

So, would it make sense to make a small wort from 2 row and reduce that by half? SHould I also include some of the chocolate malt in there or some of the roasted barley? Or just make some dark invert sugar?

 

[Bubba Wade]

Have you tried Special B malt? It may not be exactly the flavor profile you are looking for, but it does not have any of the acrid character that you sometimes get with the highly roasted malts.

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

Repeat your experiment but just grab the wort before you add any hops. I think you'll get what you are looking for without having to alter the grist. I batch sparge and take one gallon of the first runnings and boil that down to one quart. Really brings out the toffee & caramel flavors.

 

[jay3847]

Repeat your experiment but just grab the wort before you add any hops. I think you'll get what you are looking for without having to alter the grist. I batch sparge and take one gallon of the first runnings and boil that down to one quart. Really brings out the toffee & caramel flavors.

Just to clarify, you take one gallon of the first runnings, not the results of the sparge.