NE Brown Ale

[Beercules1]

This is my first attempt at a NE Brown Ale. Used a few vials of WLP002 English Ale yeast I harvested from my Irish.

We've been having some issues with efficiency, no idea why but we are. Instead of coming up short, we just account for the loss and increase the grains needed. Well, today...we were much more efficient and ended up over shooting the OG by a good amount, the first photo is the intended recipe the second photo is it with the efficiency adjusted to match the measured OG. Anyway, let me know what you think of the recipe, and if this beer will suck due to the OG issue.
Also, it came out WAY too dark. not sure why. Beer smith gives British Choc malt at 450L, whereas the LHBS has it listed at 350-415SRL


Intended

Actual

 

[forstmeister]

Do you batch sparge or fly sparge? False bottom? Not sure why your efficiency would be as low as 55%. I get about 72-75% batch sparging usually.

The recipe looks fine. Just call it an imperial and enjoy!

 

[Beercules1]

I fly sparge with a pvc sparge arm, at 167deg and I let it run for about 35minutes on a 10g batch, with occasional stirring to make sure everything gets washed.

I use a bazooka screen, but I'm leaning towards building a false bottom.

 

[forstmeister]

Fly sparging a 10G batch should probably take about an hour at a slow trickle to make sure you get all of the sugars out. If you are using a bazooka screen then you are better off batch sparging. It takes less time typically and increased my efficiency by over 10% when I switched. The bazooka screen promotes channeling of the run off.