American Brown 2 Review

The pace of my brewing has slowed. I've been busy, and at the moment I have nearly 3 gallons of this brown ale in bottles, 3 gallons of APA in the carboy, and around another 6+ gallons of beer in bottles, not to mention 3 gallons of mead and 5 gallons of souring beer in carboys. Not even the combined drinking power of my wife and me can handle so much beer quickly. So I've held off on brewing for a while.

In any case, this brown ale is a little over a month old, so time to review:

Appearance: Deep brown with a reddish tinge. Transparent around the bottom of the glass. Off white head that fades a little too quickly, but sticks to the side of the glass. A bit hazy.

Aroma: Malty sweetness, with some toasty character. Minimal earthy and floral hop notes.

Taste: Sweet but not cloying due to a moderate bitterness. Again malty and toasty, with moderate to low caramel flavors. A dark bitter chocolate note is in there as well but its subtle. The bitterness is there, maybe a little too much.

Mouthfeel: Moderate to low carbonation, medium body. Slightly bitter aftertaste.

Overall: Pretty solid brown ale. Easy drinking, tasty and moderate alcohol. I like it. Maybe next time reduce the bitterness slightly. Also I'm not sure why the head on this particular bottle wasn't good as previous bottles have had better foam.

American Brown 2 Brewday

Unfortunately I have been busy / lazy for the last few weeks and as I result I am just now getting to writing up a brew day log to an American brown I brewed on April 20th. I'll only post the recipe below, since I didn't really take notes and I can't remember how exactly it went.

The recipe is based on a clone recipe for Bell's Best Brown:

Bell's Best Clone
3 Gallons
6.5# US 2-Row
9oz C-60
9oz Special Roast
9oz Victory
2oz Chocolate

.35oz Nugget, 13.2% 60min
. 25oz Cascade, 6%, 15 min
.25oz Willamette, 5%, 10 min
.25oz Willamette, 5%, 1 min
.25oz Cascade, 6%, 1min

WLP001

Expected OG/FG/ABV/IBU: 1.058, 1.015, 27, 5.6%

Mash @ 152F.

Brewed: 4/20/14
Made a yeast starter the day before. 
Fermented @ 60F, then after one week moved to 68F ambient to finish fermentation.

Bottled: 5/11/14
Tasted good, but body seemed a little bit thin.

Janet's Brown #3

Appearance: Off white foam that sticks around a long time and laces the glass nicely as I drink. Dark brown in color, but not opaque. It appears to be fairly clear and lets some light through.

Aroma: Piny and resinous hops dominate. A little bit of roasty aroma as well.

Taste: Interesting combination of bitterness, roastiness and sweetness. I would again say that the bitterness is the most prominent feature, but the roastiness and sweetness provide a solid backbone. Maybe I get some dried fruit tastes in there.

Mouthfeel: Moderate body, good carbonation. Does not have the oily or resinous mouthfeel of some highly hopped beers.

Overall:A hoppy brown ale, with a really interesting combination of hops and roasty flavors. Unlike my previous brews of this beer, it does not have the minty or woody quality in the taste, perhaps because of a different choice of hops. The recipe's use of Northern Brewer hops must probably be followed to get that minty quality. I like it quite a bit but it does not taste like my previous brews of this beer.

Janet's Brown #3

I have brewed the Janet's Brown Ale recipe from Brewing Classic Styles two times before. The first was really good, with a great balance of hops and malt, while the second came out significantly under-gravity because the shop where I bought the grains had a really crappy mill that didn't crush the grains properly, resulting in poor mash efficiency. Anyway, both my wife and I really like this beer so I thought I would try it again. Sorry, no pics today.

7# American 2-Row
10oz White Wheat
8oz Carapils
8oz Crystal 40L
5oz Chocolate

.825oz Northern Brewer, 9.6% 60min
1oz Northern Brewer, 9.6%, 15min
.5oz Cascade, 6.4%, 10 min
1oz Homegrown Cascade, ?% Flameout
1oz Centenial, 9.6% Dry Hop 7 days

US-O5 Yeast

Expected OG/FG/IBU/SRM/ABV: 1.069 / 1.017 / 67/ 20 / 6.7%

Brewed 3/24/13
Mashed for 1:15, kind of a hectic day so I don't know if I hit my temps.

Got about 4.5 gal of pre-boil wort, OG of XXX. Will boil for an extra 30 min to reduce the wort volume, aiming for about 3.25 gallons of wort at the end of the boil.

Got 1.049 pre-boil OG. If I hit my target post-boil volume I'll be just slightly over gravity.

Didn't boil enough, ended up with about 3.5gal in the fermenter, but that includes trub. I just poured in the wort, and then squeezed out the hop bag into the fermenter (wearing sanitized gloves.)

Cooling went OK except that I really need to upgrade my wort chiller so that it doesn't leak. Some of the cooling water got into the wort, so I'm pretty scared of an infection. At least the hoppiness of the beer and its highish alcohol will inhibit contamination... a little bit. And when I saw that some cooling water was getting in the wort, the temp was still around 130F. After that I removed the IC and used the tub of water method. I pitched after about 4 hours of cooling. We'll see if I get an infection. I hope not.....

Pitched at around 70F, let cool to 62F. Got a good bubbling after a couple of hours.

Added 1oz of Centenial pellet hops in a sanitized hop bag, with no weight in the bag. Unlike the last dry hopping I did, the hops just sank down to the bottom right after putting them in.

American Brown Tasting

Wanting a cheaper American brown ale than the very tasty but relatively pricey Janet's Brown Ale, a few weeks ago I brewed the Dirty Water Brown, also from Brewing Classic Styles (though I had to substitute the hops). The results are quite pleasant, but unsurprisingly not as distinctive and enjoyable as the Janet's Brown. My first tasting was three weeks after brewing, at which point it had a "green" taste. It has however improved significantly since then. Again, more and more I have seen that most of my brews should not be consumed at less than a month old.

Appearance: Coppery brown in color with moderate chill haze despite that this bottle has been in the fridge for 5 days. Good off-white head from the initial pour, which over time fades to a light coating of bubbles on the surface of the beer and sticks to the side of the glass.

Aroma: A good whiff of Cascade hops greets the nose upon the initial pour, combined with a slightly sweet and toasty smell. Pleasant. The hoppy smell fades as I drink, with the toastiness becoming more prominent.

Taste: A really nice combination of slightly sweet / malty / toasty character combined with a fruity hoppy character and moderate bitterness in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, moderate body, with a slightly sweet aftertaste.

Overall: A moderately hoppy, moderately malty brown ale, well balanced between malt and hops. No alcohol bite. Not a strongly flavored beer but very pleasant. I like it a lot.

For Next Time: I don't think I would change anything with this one except for finding some way to reduce the chill haze. I did put Irish moss in the boil. Maybe I could make improvements to the wort chiller or boil more vigorously?

Dirty Water Brown Ale Brewday

I have brewed two of the brown ales from Brewing Classic Styles, both of which turned out very well. The Nutcastle recipe turn out with a nice nutty taste, for a pretty easy drinking British style beer. The Janet's Brown Ale had a wonderful minty quality from the Northern Brewer hops combined with some great malt flavor. In fact my own special lady likes the Janet's Brown so much that I brewed it again, although the second attempt didn't turn out as well because the grain wasn't crushed properly at the nearby LHBS since they had a crappy hand-cranked crusher that was out of adjustment. (The not-so local shop had a much better system but was obviously a longer drive away.)

However I did find the Janet's Brown to be an expensive brew because of both the high gravity and the large amount of hops needed to brew it. The below recipe is also from BCS - the Dirty Water Brown. It comes in at a lower gravity and uses less hops than the Janet's Brown, so it will be more feasible to brew it often. Not sure if the wife will like it as much, but we'll see...

Dirty Water Brown
3.5 gallons (4.5 gal boil, 3.25 into fermenter, 3 into bottles)
5# 12oz American 2-Row Malt
0# 4oz Chocolate Malt
0# 4oz Crystal 40L
0# 2oz Crystal 60L
0# 2oz Victory Malt
------------
6# 10oz

.3oz Horizon, 12%AA, 60min
.5oz Cascade, 9%AA, 15min
1.25oz Cascade, 9%AA, flameout

US-05 Yeast

Expected OG / FG: 1.048 / 1.013
Expected IBUs: 36
Expected SRM: 20, light-medium brown

Brewed 8/25/12
Today for a variety of reasons my my note-taking was a little lax. Sorry, none of my amazingly beautiful pictures today. Meh!

Calculated mash and sparge volumes using .2gal / lbs of water absorption by grain. This proved to be on the high side, resulting in too much wort. But I did hit my mash temps exactly, with 152F for the mash and 166F for the mash-out.

Made a 1L yeast starter with recycled US-05. Pitched the starter yeast at around 2:30pm

Started mash around 2pm.

First runnings were about 2.5 gallons, 1/4 gallon above target. Second runnings were nearly five-gallons, again above target.

Boiled for 90 minutes, the first 25 of which were split because my 5-gallon brewpot can't safely boil more than 4.75 gallons. When the wort in the small pot was reduced in volume I poured it back into the main pot.

Also I followed the advice in Brewing Better Beer to steep the dark grains for 5 minutes rather than adding them to the mash. I placed the chocolate malt into a nylon mesh bag, steeped at 165F for 5 minutes, strained the grains, and then poured the resulting dark liquid into the boil. Apparently this process reduces the ashy, acrid and harsh flavors associated with tannins and such that can be extracted when dark grains are mashed. 

Cooled with the IC to 110F, then placed the brewpot in a bin of 69F water, at around 4:45pm.

The post-boil hydromenter sample read 1.043. A few points off because I collected more wort than predicted.  Efficiency was a little less than usual, around 67%.

At 11:45pm the starter was bubbling away. Transferred and aerated the wort into the fermentor leaving behind the trub. The wort was nice and clear because it had time to settle in the brew pot. Got about 3.6 gallons, a bit more than planned. Pitched the starter and placed some ice packs in the bucket where the beer was sitting.

8/26/12, 8:45am. The beer was at 68F and actively fermenting. Put some new ice in the water bath to keep the fermentation temps in check.

8/27, 9am. Fermentation still active. Freshened with new ice-packs.

9/6, 3pm. Bottled today with 1.75oz table sugar and .5 oz brown sugar, aiming for about 2 volumes. Got 6 x 22oz, 25 x 12oz = 432oz or about 3.4 gallons. In the bottling bucket it looked more like 3.6 gallons or so. Hmm. The hydo sample tasted good. Review to follow in a few weeks.