What with the wearying demands of fatherhood and Fendog inexplicably active social life, there seem to be very few weekends when we can actually get together to brew. With this in mind, we have decide that all future brewdays will be double brewdays. Now that I have two mash tuns, we can overlap the mashing and sparging, but sadly we only have one boiler at the moment so that part of the process will have to be done one after the other. Still, its much more efficient than having two separate brewdays, and I’m keeping an eye out for a cheap option for a second HLT.
Today we made an American Brown Ale and a basic English Pale Ale. For a long time, brown ales didn’t appeal to me at all, but that was when my only experience was Newkie Brown which was always a staple in Middlesbrough where I grew up. More recently I realised there are other brown ales. And they are good. In fact the style is really broad. The only American brown I’ve tasted is the “Cleveland Brown” Spiceballs brewed which I had the priviledge of sampling when I was in NYC last summer, but being a big fan of American styles I was keen to make one.
Perhaps the most well known recipe is Mike “Tasty” McDole’s “Janet’s Brown Ale” which is much discussed on the forums and features in Jamil’s Brewing Classic Styles. The recipe looks outrageous – about 300g of hops for a 5 gallon brew. Certainly much hoppier than your average American Brown, and of course that makes it more expensive too. But it gets rave reviews so we went for it. Well kind of – I didn’t have any CaraPils Dextrin Malt (whatever the hell that is) so I just added a bit more crystal instead, and I didn’t have enough Centennial, so I subbed in some Willamette and extra Cascade (luckily I’ve got that big bag I nabbed at the Meet the Brewer event – that’s kept the cost down too).
Here’s the recipe I went with:
Town and Gown brown ale
Grain bill:
5.40 kg. Maris Otter Pale Malt
0.54 kg. Wheat Malt
0.67 kg. Crystal 30L
0.27 kg. Chocolate Malt
Hops:
38g. Northern Brewer Whole 10.6% 60 min.
4g Northern Brewer Whole 10.6% 15 min.
20g. Northern Brewer Whole 9% 15 min.
50g. Cascade Pellet 5.75% 10 min.
50g. Cascade Pellet 5.75% 0 min.
39g. Centennial Whole 10.50% Dry Hop
7g. Cascade Pellet 5.75% Dry Hop
10g. Willamette Whole 6.3% Dry Hop
12g. Cascade Whole 7.4% Dry Hop
Yeast
—–
US-05 starter
For the English pale, I wanted something like the Lovey Warne I tried at the Meet the Brewer event – pretty simple with a nice fruity citrus punch to it. So I just did a single malt beer and just used whatever hops I was needing to use up including a healthy dose of Cascade at the end and I’ll stick another wad in the secondary. Here’s the recipe:
Pollen Count pale ale
Grain bill:
4.50 kg. Maris Otter Pale Malt
Hops:
5g. Target Whole 12.5% 60 min.
8g. Target Whole 11.12% 60 min.
5g. Fuggle Pellet 3.81% 10 min.
15g. Goldings – E.K. Pellet 5.9% 10 min.
20g. Perle Whole 6.9% 20 min.
15g. Cascade Whole 7.4% 0 min.
20g. Cascade Pellet 5.75% Dry Hop
20g. Fuggle Whole 3.81% Dry Hop
Yeast
—–
Safale S-04
Both brews went smoothly although I hugely undershot the target gravity on the Brown. I was aiming for 1.066 and got 1.056. Really annoyed with that especially as I usually go the other way. The English end up at 1.051, a little higher that I was hoping. Oh well, lets see how it turns out.
*** UPDATE 9/6/13***
Just dry hopped the American brown ale with a beefy 70g of Centennial, Cascade, and Willamette. They were all leaf hops and even with two spoons in the hop bag they were floating on the top. It smells amazing, but seems such an extravagance! Also dry hopped the English pale with good amount of Fuggle and Cascade. Both of these are going to have plenty up front.
*** UPDATE 17/6/13***
Bottled both beers on the same evening (double brewdays call for double bottling sessions!) with 51g sugar for the English pale and 114g for the American Brown. Fendog dug out some funky orange caps for the Brown Ale. Check out these badboys: