My 1st English Brown Ale

[thehaze]

Hello,

The first 5 batches I will be brewing in 2018, will be English style beers, one of which will be a Brown Ale.

The recipe I have come up with is:

80% Crisp Maris Otter
8% Crisp Brown malt ( around 50L )
4% Crisp Crystal 60L
4% Crisp Crystal 90L
4% Crisp Crystal 150L

I like a slightly maltier, sweeter beer, hence my love for English crystal malts. I believe mixing different lovibond crystal malts will add complexity to the final beer, but correct if I am wrong.

OG: 1.056
FG: 1.015
SRM: 19 ( upper style limit is 22 )
ABV: 5.3%
Yeast: Danstar Windsor

Let me know what you think.

 

[Queequeg]

Looks pretty good, I would personally dial back the crystal additions each to 3%. I would also add about 3% of pale English chocolate malt.

I have never used windsor but have read it has low aa. I think I would use Timothy Taylor yeast personally.

 

[brewgar]

This will be a good beer. I'll never forget how different my first English Brown Ale was from other dark ales. Now it is one of my favorite beers. Brew on!

 

[timeasterday]

Looks pretty good, I would personally dial back the crystal additions each to 3%. I would also add about 3% of pale English chocolate malt.

^This. I think pale chocolate would be great. What hops? EKG or Fuggles would be good, keep the IBU's on the low side.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I have my first brown ale in my fermentors right now. I went a slighly different direction than you. I love brown malt and considered using it, but wanted to keep it very simple.
My recipe is 86% Maris Otter, 12% 60L and 2% Chocolate malt. Originally, I wanted to use EKG, but they didn’t have it at my brewing store, so I used Fuggles instead. This is my 14th batch of home brew.

 

[thehaze]

Thank you all for your input.

For the hops, I was thinking Northern Brewer for bittering and EKG for late additions. IBUs should come at around 25, so it's halfway for what the official style requires.

Regarding the yeast: seeing this is a low gravity beer, I thought I would give Windsor a try, as I have never used it. A proper liquid English yeast would be better, but I am willing to try the Windsor first. Looking at the Lallemand specs sheet, it should yield fine flavours. I guess I will ferment slightly warmer than say an American Pale or IPA.

 

[kevin58]

I rarely, if ever, use any crystal over 60L. I just don't like the sharp taste the darker kilned crystals give. @AZCoolerBrewer offers an excellent grist combination.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

For the hops, I was thinking Northern Brewer for bittering and EKG for late additions. IBUs should come at around 25, so it's halfway for what the official style requires.

I'm probably the wrong person to say this - but noone in Britain uses Northern Brewer any more. It's a horrible hop to grow so the farmers have mostly given up on it, there's a bit in Belgium and Germany but if you want a "cheap and boring" bittering hop then you should be looking at something like Challenger, although people are increasingly moving to the much higher alpha Admiral.

I would never argue against EKG in anything - indeed, I have a house rule that all my beers contain it in some form - but I wouldn't be afraid to play around with the late-kettle hops and dry hop, maybe the a blend that includes things like First Gold or new varieties like Jester if you can get them. Fuggles is probably more common in commercial dark beers here, but I'm more of a Goldings man.

For English browns you're way over strength - Mann's is 2.8%, Newky Brown is 4.7% and both around 20 IBU. I guess you could creep up the IBU a bit to maintain BU:GU if you're going stronger, but I'd rather see your ABV come down.

I guess a Mann-style beer is one of the very few styles where you can get away with >8% crystal, but like others I would sub some of it for chocolate. As I've mentioned before - let the yeast do the sweetness. If you're going for a Mann style then the vault strain WLP066 London Fog would be ideal as I suspect (with no hard evidence) that it could be a Mann strain, the attenuation is bad enough.

 

[thehaze]

I rarely, if ever, use any crystal over 60L. I just don't like the sharp taste the darker kilned crystals give. @AZCoolerBrewer offers an excellent grist combination.

I never got any " sharp " taste when using high kilned crystal malts. I usually use them for Dark Belgians, Stouts, Porters, but how exactly would you describe the taste? I usually get great great maltiness, some biscuit and crispy bread crust, combined with dark fruits, maybe some liqorice, nuts.

Regarding Pale Chocolate malt: I thought about it, but I have used Chocolate malt in some Red ales to get the colour and, by reading some articles, recipes, forums, a bit of roast as to match the style, and it was a miss for me. I could actually taste the roast and it collided with the sweet, malty taste from the Crystal malts, so next two time, I only used Crystal malts of different Lovibonds to get the colour. The taste was spot on for me.

About the hops: I can get all the new English varieties like Jester, Endeavour, Olicana, Archer, Minstrel, etc. so maybe I will try some of these.

 

[Hanglow]

Darker english crystal malts tend to add toffee notes to the flavour. They are less sweet than the medium crystals, perhaps that is what is meant by "sharp" ?

There's a famous beer in the UK called Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild - the homebrew recipes for it calls for loads of crystal malt (20% or so I think) in it and might be closer to what you are aiming for than the usual Manns/Dog/Sam Smiths Nut brown etc . Although it is quite well attenuated, which you won't get with windsor - nottingham would get you closer to that

 

[JKaranka]

I'd use less brown malt (and I love the stuff) as it has a different character than what you expect in a brown ale. Northern Brewer above has some good pointers. I've never seen a brown ale in Britain reach 5% abv. 4.2-4.7% would be fairly typical for what you find in pubs. Often it's pretty much a stronger, maltier mild and hop character is fairly negligible. Some dark malt to make up the colour is good so you don't have to go overboard with malts (chocolate or patent). If you want to try new British hops, I've had good experiences with Minstrel and Endeavour and I think they would suit here, although given the subdued use of late hopping they wouldn't shine (maybe you can split them with a different batch of something hoppier).

Also: I've not been that fond of Windsor yeast. If you use it, I'd consider replacing some malt with sugar to avoid it turning out under-attenuated. I'd consider S04 and even US05 decent, easy to find, yeasts for the style. I find the Mangrove Jacks yeasts easy to find and they work well.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I agree with this assessment of Windsor. I used it in my Whitehouse honey ale and is was great with all the honey. It didn’t dry out too much, but without adjuncts, I think Windsor might be a little weak. I wanted to do my brown ale with S-04, but I have had some bad experiences with that yeast, so I went with Nottingham. I expect my beer to be pretty dry.

 

[JKaranka]

Nottingham is cool. I'm curious about the bad experiences about S04 as I know commercial breweries in the UK that use it and their beer is fine.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

It’s not that S-04 is a bad yeast I’m sure, but for me it is difficult to use. I ferment in a cooler with ice packs to control the temp, S-04 is the most aggressive yeast I’ve used especially at the beginning. Once it was so aggressive that in spite of my ice packs it had heated itself up in the cooler to 80 degrees. Another time I was so aggressive with ice packs to make sure it didn’t get up too high that it fermented in the high 50s low 60s and got a peachy flavor and the beer never cleared. US-05 on the other hand bubbles away consistently and steadily. Many people love S-04, I bet if you love it though, you have automatically controlled temps.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I just bottled my brown ale. The tasting sample was excellent. Exactly what I was shooting for. Very malt forward and slick caramel flavor, with a subtle nutty finish. Mouthfeel was thick, but should thin out as the sample I tasted had the priming sugar. Fits the BJCP for all specs, but IBU, which I purposely kept a little low. IBU was calculated at 17, should be 20-30. I think it came through around 17. It may end up getting a little higher IBU in perception after carbonation, but I don’t think so. 1.042 OG. 1.010 FG. 4.7% ABV after priming. Color is great. I wanted it to be a little less dark so I am able to see the clarity, which unless there is chill haze should be very clear. When it is done I will post a picture and share my tasting notes.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Wow, I couldn’t be happier about how this turned out. Think of Newcastle except with caramel and vanilla notes with a nutty finish. The only down side is a little chill haze.

 

[jturman35]

Have you tried lil Spanky’s Nut Brown Ale? I’d be interested in how this compares.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Have you tried lil Spanky’s Nut Brown Ale? I’d be interested in how this compares.

I haven’t had that beer. I wouldn’t call my beer a nut brown either. The nutty finish is there, but I wouldn’t say it is the star of the show. One nice thing was that the Nottingham flocculated great and all of it sticks to the bottom of the bottle.

 

[thehaze]

I want to share my experience with the Danstar Windsor yeast, which I used for 3 different batches: 1 ESB, 1 Red ale and 1 Coffee Brown ale.

By using a lower mash temperature and some sugar in the boil, I was able to get better attenuation with this yeast: 70, 71 and 73% AA with the 3 batches.

The beers were fermented at around 64-65F ( 18C ) and they were finished in the course of 5 days. The beers do not feel overly dry or " empty ". There is a bit of body and mouthfeel, but the esters are weak. Some kind of apple/pear going on with some non-descript fruit, although nothing in the range of a liquid ESB / english strain.

The flocculation is not great, but with finnings in the boil, a bit of cold crash and some " gelatine ", the beer was clear in the glass and the sediment at the bottom of the bottle, was fast and did not " break " when poured in the glass. So I would say this was not an issue.

Overall, this yeast was not harder to work with than any others. The beers all taste great and are highly drinkable. For the price given, the yeast does its job.

I think next time, if I were to use the same yeast again, I would ferment it much warmer, in order to coax more esters, which i believe to be possible.

 

[JKaranka]

Hi thehaze

That's good feedback. I've found the same and as you mention a portion of sugar brings in line with other yeasts. I find it a bit more work than other yeasts with flocculation but the potential for lower alcohol beers is great.