Recipe Help, Brown Ale

[mje1980]

Well, i have under 3 months to go before my 1st child is born, and i am brewing like mad!!. I've just bottled a bitter and an ESB and have a german decocted pale ale in primary. When that is done i will be doing a munich helles style lager, and after that, a brown ale. But, i need help with the brown ale recipe fella's. Here is what i have so far :

4.3kg Maris otter 83.5%
.5 british crystal 55l 9.7%
150g Pale choc 2.9%
100g Toasted maris otter ( 15 mins in 180c oven ) 2%
100g Dark crystal 1.9%.

10g Pacific gem 14.7% for 60
20g EKG 5.9% 30 min

1084 Irish ale

1049
22 SRM
27.6 IBU's

Mash at 68c.

My question is, is that too much crystal??, i know brown ales are supposed to have a lot of crystal, but i am a bit worried about using so much. I think the choc will help balance it out, and the toasted MO, but am not sure. If it ends up with a slight roast/nut finish, i wouldn't mind ( it's sort of what im after ), but i dont want it to overpower the crystal completely.

Any hints and suggestions would be much appreciated. Thankyou.

 

[johnno]

Hi mj
Here is a partial mash recipe i did last year.

100 gm Choc malt
250 gm amber malt
250 gm crystal 120 ebc
1 kg Light Munich
I kg ale malt
1.5 Kg Light DME

28 gms UK Challenger at 60 mins
28 gms Ahtnum at 30 mins
14 gm Ahtnum at 5 mins

Wyeast 1335 British II

The amber malt gave the beer an awesome biscuity taste if you like that sort of thing.
I have used amber in a stout as well and I am really enjoying the use of this malt for these styles of beers.
Depending on how much you toast the MO yoiu may be able to use a bit more.

From this thread here.
cheers
johnno

 

[colinw]

With over 10% crystal and a 68C mash, I think this would tend to come out too sweet, particularly as you have some dark crystal in there. Maybe pull the total crystal back to 5 to 7.5% and consider some Amber malt for more nutty/toasty flavour, and even a little bit of brown sugar to lighten the body a bit.

A few months ago I made a smoked brown ale with 8% 55L English Crystal, a 67C mash, and 25 IBUs, and it was a little bit on the sweet side of balanced - but that worked fine with the smoked malt.

Here's a 1.040 OG / 4% ABV brown ale I made last year. This turned out beautifully balanced - a real quaffer. The recipe was actually an accident. I got distracted while milling the grain and only put 2.5kg of pale malt through where I meant to use 3.5kg, hence an OG of 1.040 where I intended about 1.052. But, I accidentally created a great session brown.

"Oops, Left the Last Kilo of Malt Out Brown Ale"

2.5kg JW Traditional Ale Malt (76%)
240g English Amber Malt (7.5%)
180g English Crystal 55L (5.5%)
180g Flaked Maize (5.5%)
120g Torrefied Wheat (3.5%)
100g English Pale Chocolate Malt 340L (3%)

Infusion mash, 60 minutes at 67C.

100g Dark Brown Sugar in boil.

35g Fuggles (3.8%) @ 60 minutes
10g Fuggles (3.8%) @ 15 minutes
10g Fuggles (3.8%) @ 1 minute

OG = 1.040, FG = 1.010, Approx 4% ABV
16 SRM
24 IBUs

I used 1 sachet US-56 ale yeast for a crisp, clean, dry finish which put the accent on the the specialty grains. For a more English brown ale flavour a yeast strain which throws a bit of diacetyl would have been great here - Wy1084, Wy1968, WLP004, even the dreaded Ringwood.

cheers,
Colin

 

[Duff]

MJ,

This is one of my variants, a pretty tasty drop. I think your receipe needs some more flavour/aroma closer to flame out.

Enjoy.

----------

King Brown

Starting Gravity: 1.052
Ending Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol (w/w%): 5
Bitterness (IBU): 28.6
Size of Batch: 20
Batch Size Unit: Liters
Extract Efficiency: 72

Fermentables:

4.0kg JWM Ale
0.25kg JWM Wheat
0.23kg German Light Munich
0.12 TF Crystal 145EBC
0.075kg JWM Chocolate

Hop Additions:

29gm Fuggles @ 60 min
14gm EK Goldings @ 15 min
14gm Fuggles @ 1 min

Single infusion mash @ 67C
WLP023 Burton Ale

 

[mje1980]

O.k, i may add amber to 150g, and some hops ( probably willamette ) at 2mins. It shouldn't be too sweet after adding that should it??. Will plug it into beertools and see what happens.