Cheshire India Porter

Andy and I both particularly like The Kernel Brewery’s Export India Porter. It’s a forthright little beer – deeply dark, with roasty coffee flavours but also hugely bitter with assertive hop flavours and aromas. You might think such strong hop flavour and aroma wouldn’t work with the dark malts, but it does. They complement rather than compete.
I bought a “bookazine” called The Complete Homebrew Handbook ages ago. Read it. Enjoyed it. Put it on the shelf. Only recently did I stumble upon the Export India Porter recipe in it. So we had to give it a try.
I have to admit I was astonished how much US hops were in the recipe. There’s 152g in there, if you include the dry hops. And they’re high alpha hops too (ie very bitter). Andy usually hates hops like that. But he’s a good sport and agreed to give it a go anyway since he likes the Kernel original.
We weren’t disappointed. I think this is a pretty good version of the original. Not a beer where you would drink more than one, but certainly a great one to have in store. Having said that, with all those hops flavours in there it probably should be drunk fairly soon before they fade.
I made one adjustment to the recipe because of what I had available, using amber malt rather than brown malt. I also note that the original Kernel beer states the hops as Columbus, Chinook and Motueka. The recipe used Magnum rather than Motueka and I went along with that.
One last point: the Columbus and Chinook hops we used were pellets rather than compressed whole hops. Usually I buy vacuum packed whole hops from either Morris Hanbury or The Malt Miller. But my local homebrew store is now stocking a range of pellets from Bulldog. I have to say I’ve been pretty impressed. They are easy to use (no hacking the cake of hops apart with a knife), pretty cheap and don’t fill your boil kettle with masses of vegetable matter which makes running off a bit easier. Hop pellets seem to be the only option in the USA. Looks like they are coming over here too.

Export India Porter

Grain bill
Maris Otter  4111g  72.7%
Amber Malt  500g  8.8%
Chocolate Malt  373g  6.6%
Munich Malt  373g  6.6%
Black Malt  150g  2.7%
Crystal 70  150g  2.7%

Hop schedule
Magnum  17.3%AA  14g  60min  23IBU
Chinook  13%AA  4g  15min  2.5IBU
Columbus  13%AA  4g  15min  2.5IBU
Chinook  13%AA  16g  10min  7.2IBU
Columbus  13%AA  8g  10min  3.6IBU
Chinook  13%AA  39g  5min  9.6IBU
Columbus  13%AA  17g  5min  4.2IBU
Chinook  30g  dry hop  5 days
Columbus  20g  dry hop  5 days

Water treatment: None
Yeast: 1 sachet Safale US-05, 1/2 sachet Safale S-04.
Batch size: 23l
Mash temp: 67C
Mash time: 60 min
Boil time: 60 min
OG: 1.061
IBU: 52.6 (Rager)
Colour: 30 Lovibond, 40 SRM, 79 EBC
Target FG: 1.013



Target ABV: 6.5%