Dear Replicator,
I have now tasted the best porter ever. This porter alone has thrust my wife and I deep into the world of homebrewing. I am hoping you can give me a hint as to the recipe used at The Fredericksburg Brewing Company in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Porter has always been my favorite style of beer and this one sounds great! Every homebrewer needs some inspiration and it appears that this porter is your inspiration.

Rick Green, the head brewer at Fredericksburg Brewing Co., told me it was one of their more popular beers. Rick was also generous enough to take some time during brew day to tell me how they make this porter, including giving out the full recipe.

This beer would fit into the brown porter style category due to its lower volume of specialty malts. This means that it is more on the mellow side than the assertive side, in comparison to a robust porter. Robust porters have a higher alcohol content, more dark grain flavor and greater hop bitterness.

The malt bill has six different grains in it, which lend the beer some nice, complex flavors. They hop to a low bitterness level. At about 15 IBUs, this beer is below the suggested minimum (20 IBUs) for the style. The low level of bitterness helps the maltiness come out even more. Northern Brewer hops are a neutral-tasting bittering hop, which further allows the maltiness to come to the forefront of this rich, dark beer.

As in many breweries, Rick limits the number of yeast strains used. He uses White Labs California Ale yeast on this beer because it is a neutral-flavored yeast able to make a large variety of beer styles. This yeast gives the beer a clean flavor that helps keep the beer well-balanced.

For more information on this beer and the Fredericksburg brewery, you can visit their home on the Internet at
http://www.mybrewery.com, or call them at (830) 997-1646.

Fredericksburg Porter
(5 gallons, extract with grains)
OG = 1.054 
FG = 1.012 
IBUs = 14–16 
ABV = 5.5%

Ingredients

• 6.6 lbs. Northwestern Gold malt extract syrup
• 10 oz. Hugh Baird Carastan malt
• 10 oz. Munich malt
• 7 oz. chocolate malt
• 5 oz. crystal malt (120° L)
• 1 oz. roasted black barley
• 3 AAU Northern Brewer hops
• (0.33 oz. of 9.0% alpha acid)
• 2.5 AAU Willamette hops (flavor)
• (0.5 oz. of 5.0% alpha acid)
• 2.4 AAU Goldings hops (aroma)
• (0.5 oz. of 4.8% alpha acid)
• 1 tsp Irish moss
• White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) yeast or Wyeast 1056 (American Ale)
• O.75 cup of corn sugar for priming

Step by Step
Steep the crushed grains in three gallons of water at 150º F for 30 minutes. Remove the grains from the wort, add the malt syrup and bring to a boil.

Add the Northern Brewer (bittering) hops and the Irish moss and boil for 60 minutes. Add Willamette (flavor) hops for the last 20 minutes of the boil. Add the Goldings hops (aroma) for the last two minutes of the boil.

When you are done boiling, strain out the hops and add the wort to two gallons of cool water in a sanitized fermenter. Top off with cool water to 5.5 gallons. Cool the wort to 80º F, aerate the beer and pitch your yeast. Allow the beer to cool over the next few hours to 68–70º F and ferment for 10–14 days. Bottle your beer, let it age for two to three weeks and enjoy!

All-grain option
Replace the light malt syrup with 8.25 lbs. of pale malt. Mash all your grains at 155º F for 45 minutes. Collect enough wort to boil for 90 minutes and have a 5.5-gallon yield.
Decrease the amount of bittering hops to 0.25 oz. of Northern Brewer to account for the increased hop extraction efficiency that comes with a full-wort boil. The remainder of the all-grain recipe is the same as the extract recipe.

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