Victory Brown Ale

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punkin

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I'm trying to find a use for a full bag of victory malt i bought and thought a Newcastle Brown Ale would be a good start.

Did a bit of googling and came up with this site which was really helpful...

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/07/09/b...brewing-styles/

Tried to follow the guidelines there and i came up with this for a start...

Victory Brown 1 (Northern English Brown Ale)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (P): 2.8
Alcohol (ABV): 4.90 %
Colour (SRM): 15.6 (EBC): 30.7
Bitterness (IBU): 26.0 (Average)

74.66% Pale Ale Malt
14.14% Victory
6.79% Caramunich I
3.96% Crystal 120
0.45% Wheat Malt, Midnight

1.4 g/L East Kent Golding (5.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
1.2 g/L East Kent Golding (5.1% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil)


Single step Infusion at 67C for 60 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 20C with Danstar Nottingham


Recipe Generated with BrewMate


I'm looking for discussion and advice from more experienced brewers. I'm new to recipe formulation and learning about beer.
 
I've only used small amounts of victory, and its very noticeable. BUt its a brown ale, and you've got a good whack of crystal. I'd be keen to see how it turns out. If you do it, let us know. Not sure about notto for a brown, if it attenuates like notto does, you might end up with a light bodied beer. Light bodied with lots of crystal can be a bit meh. If you use notto and love it, try it. I'd go for london ale or similar, but that's me.
 
I would not use the caramunich, not really a flavour you need in the mix and possibly look at Target for bittering and EKG for flavour and aroma, 15 and 2 min additions.

I personally love victory, let us know how this works out and your final recipe, if it changes....no need to change if you dont want.
 
Interesting comments yum beer. I use caramunich 3 in most of my ales, dark especially, yummo for me. Caramunich1 is basically a light crystal. Why wouldn't you want that in there?. You dont mention anything about the 120l crystal either. I would say that would bring more flavour than the caramunich 1.
 
Interesting comments yum beer. I use caramunich 3 in most of my ales, dark especially, yummo for me. Caramunich1 is basically a light crystal. Why wouldn't you want that in there?. You dont mention anything about the 120l crystal either. I would say that would bring more flavour than the caramunich 1.

Not saying that you cant use the caramunich in the style, yes it would bring less flavour than the crystal, but IMO you have some serious flavour coming from the victory and whatever crystal you use, so to throw an extra flavour into the mix just seems like a bit of overkill.

If I were making a Northern Brown I wouldnt have either crystal in there, but thats me, and as I said, no need to change if you dont want.

OP was looking for discussion, thats what I was offering.
 
Ok cool. How much victory do you normally use as a %age in your ales?? Im still a little unsure as it does give a big flavour contribution.
 
Keep it coming guys, i'm very interested in all opinions.

The only reason i said Nottingham is that i only have that or US-05.

I prefer the 05 but i thought the nottingham may be slightly more appropriate for the style.

I haven't brewed English ales before and prefer dry yeasts that i can buy in bulk 500 gm packs.



I picked the malt bill referencing what i have on hand and using the info in the link in the first post...

Brown ales are made from a base of English pale malt. Crystal malt is almost always used in brown ale, averaging about 10-15% of the total grain bill. Chocolate malt, too, is used but sparingly making up from 3-6% of the grain bill. Black and roasted malts are seldom used in brown ales, and if used make up as little as 2% of the grain bill.

Homebrewers use a variety of specialty malts to add character including aromatic malt, biscuit malt, wheat malt, toasted malt, special B, oatmeal and others. In some cases these specialty malts can make up as much as 5-15% of the grain bill. However commercial browns typically take a simpler approach using only 1-2 dark malts to provide the bulk of color and character.


I then tweaked it for colour to mid range and added hops to mid range. I used ekg as that's probably the only pure english hops i have.
i have a lot of US hops and some european ones i guess;

Saaz
Centennial
Cascade
Northern Brewer
POR
Citra
Nelson Sauvign
Amarrilo
Hallertau
 
I've recently done a Newcastle Brown Ale clone with help from MHB.

The grain bill & hops were: -

3.63kg Pale Ale (74.3%)
0.051kg Chocolate Malt (0.8%)
0.527kg Medium Crystal (8.9%)
0.452kg White Sugar (15.9%) - Added to boil

90 min boil with: -
Sugar @ 90 mins
Northern Brewer @ 90 mins
Target @ 90 min
IBU of 24.4

Done with Wyeast London Ale 1028.

It's only been in the bottle a week but I had to crack one to see and it's bloody beautiful.

I haven't had a Newy Brown in over 10 years but it was bloody close from what I remember and brought back memories of dodgy nights in the seedy parts of Chester. Loving it.

Come to think of it I might crack another.

I hope this helps.
 
Not so much, but thanks.

The point is to start using my Victory in a beer i'll enjoy.

Kent Brown was always my beer of choice in the pub when you could find it (ie one of the publicans/club directors drank it).



I bought the victory to use in my Cascadian Dark, but i'm going to try it without it next time.
 
Cracked the grain for this for tommorows brew. Only thing i changed was the caramunich1 to munich 1 as that's the one i had and i got confused when i was developing the recipe <_<

No chilling, so adding the hops at 50 min and flameout.
 
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