American Brown Ale Recipe
Here is the recipe for the American Brown Ale I brewed last night. This recipe is a tweak on a a previous attempt. I hope it comes out great, although it seemed a little darker than I anticipated in the fermentor.
| Amount | Item | Type | % or IBU |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11.00 lb | Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) | Grain | 76.34 % |
| 1.00 lb | Caramel/Crystal Malt – 15L (15.0 SRM) | Grain | 6.94 % |
| 1.00 lb | Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM) | Grain | 6.94 % |
| 0.66 lb | Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) | Grain | 4.58 % |
| 0.50 lb | Special Roast (50.0 SRM) | Grain | 3.47 % |
| 0.25 lb | Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) | Grain | 1.73 % |
| 0.75 oz | Magnum [14.00 %] (60 min) | Hops | 29.2 IBU |
| 1.50 oz | Cascade [5.50 %] (10 min) | Hops | 8.3 IBU |
| 1.50 oz | Cascade [5.50 %] (1 min) | Hops | 1.0 IBU |
| 1.00 items | Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) | Misc | |
| 1 Pkgs | California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) | Yeast-Ale | |
| 1 Pkgs | English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) | Yeast-Ale |
For this recipe I employed a 90minute boil. 30 minute preboil before first hop addition. I split the batch into to carboys and pitch one vial in each to compare the yeast side by side. I am also experimenting with the wheat. I actually used torrified wheat as some brewing friends of mine really swear by it when you want to add some head retention properties without the wheaty character of a traditional wheat malt.
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Original Post
The Friday after Thanksgiving I got up before the sun on that cool autumn morning and fired up the kettles to make this starting attempt at an American Brown Ale. I had over half a pound of Cascade hop pellets (5.8%AA) sitting around which I used exclusively. My main reason for this was that I have an single hop American Pale Ale I want to make in a manner very similar to this brown ale just without the roast.
The other unique part of this brew was that I had two packets of dried yeast that I were close to their expiration date. So I re-hydrated both and pitched them in. That doesn’t sound very novel does it….well one packet was US-05 the other was S-04. So this brown has a yeast blend of my favorite American yeast and my favorite English yeast. More on yeast blending in another post…
Here is the recipe:
Malts
10.0 lbs American 2-row
1.0 lbs Crystal 15L
0.25 lbs Crystal 125L
0.5 lbs Special Roast
0.75 lbs Chocolate Malt
2.0 oz Roasted Barley
(Mash temp 155 F)
Hops
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 60min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 10min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 1min
Yeast
1 packet US-05 (Fermentis)
1 packet Safale-04 (Fermentis)
I made this as a 6 gallon batch and my OG was riding a little higher than I wanted at 1.055, so I diluted it out to 1.048 with some cold water in the fermentor. (Total fermentor volume was 5.5 gallons) I anticipate the IBUs at ~43, a little high for my tastes but it think it will work well with the crystal and special roasts in the grain bill… and the other hop heads in my life.
Keep you eyes peeled for my Cascade Pale Ale recipe which will eerily mirror this one just minus the roasted malts. I hope to use the cake from this brew to ferment the next!
BREW ON!
Check out our other homebrew recipes.
on December 4th, 2008 at 8:33 am
[...] seen in my American Brown Ale and Cascade Pale Ale recipes I combined two yeast strains into the same wort. I had a couple [...]
on December 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am
I think American Brown Ale is my favorite style. I made one a month or so ago and it came out great. Can’t wait to hear how this one turns out.
Cheers,
Jason
on December 4th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Where’s the ABV, Gravity and IBU for this recipe? Those can be calculated ahead of time.
on December 4th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
my dad loves to brew american pale ale. usually it comes out overly hoppy, but when it’s right… heaven
on December 5th, 2008 at 1:34 am
This is not a brown ale. It is too hoppy. It fits the profile of am American IPA if you give it a lot of carbonation.
on December 5th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Thanks for all the great comments.
Stephen Marcus:
I never worry about ABV. I brew good beer first and whatever the ABV comes out to be is an after thought. On top of that, you can’t really calculate ABV ahead of time, you need the ACTUAL final gravity. I can easily estimate with a supposed %attenuation figure, but again I never worry about ABV when making recipes.
The OG and IBU are in the post 1.048 and ~43IBUs (or are you happier with 42.7?)
Joe:
The Bitterness here is not going to be anything like an IPA. Only 1.5oz of hops for bittering. While there will be some bittering from the 10min charge, it will be minimal, mostly flavor. (I really like the 10min addition for focusing in hop flavor). While the total IBUs does come in slightly over BJCP Guidelines for the style, most calculators don’t do a great job of calculating bitterness from late additions like I have it. So while the raw # is 43IBU, the percieved bitterness is likely to be less. Lastly, I think that all the crystals and roasted malts will lower the perceived bitterness too, which is why I pushed it to the higher end. The real impact will be how bitter the Cascade Pale Ale will be. I would agree there that it will likely be IPA like.
Thanks for the input and insight.
on December 5th, 2008 at 7:09 am
[...] is the follow up recipe to my American Brown Ale Recipe. I wanted to brew a single hop pale ale using an abundance of Cascade Hops that I had tucked [...]
on January 22nd, 2009 at 8:48 am
[...] several posts ago I whipped up an American Brown Ale in which I chose to blend to strains of dried yeast. I spoke about the purposes of trying the [...]
on March 11th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Delightful, I passed this on to a friend of mine, and he actually bought me lunch because I found this for him, so let me rephrase: Thanks for lunch.
on March 18th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I like the use of “Roasted Barely”, no need to over do it, that’s for sure!
on March 19th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Ha Ha. Mike has a hard time spelling sometimes. I fixed it.
on April 28th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
It might be a bit dark because you added TWO THIRDS of a pound of chocolate malt. It will probably be a bit chocolatey too! Not that this is a bad thing in an american brown ale.
on April 28th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
I agree with the torrified wheat guys, it does give good head. However i’d have been tempted to skip using the english ale yeast. I’ve been consistently disappointed with the results (i’m English, this was a bitter pill to swallow). The california 001 yeast is a fabulous beer making organism and if you want some fruitiness try California V (WLP051) its reliable too.
on April 29th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Do you use the beer calculus on hopville.com? I typed in your grain bill and it came out as ‘black’.
on April 29th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
@ Hestor I use beersmith. I find the color rating on Beersmith to be a bit darker than reality in the end. I certainly wasn’t black in the fermentor, a very deep brown. We’ll see. I’ll put a picture up of the beer in the pint glass. We’ll judge the color then.
on November 14th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
[...] night my wife and I were drinking some fine Brown Ale from a previous brew session. The beer was from an experimental batch where I split the batch between two different yeasts, as [...]
on January 4th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
[...] let you compare your recipe agains all the BJCP Style Guidelines. For instance, if you create a Brown Ale recipe, you can quickly see how it compares to the several different versions of Brown Ale. What’s [...]