Does this look like a reasonable Brown?

[mumblecrunch]

So next weekend I'm planning to finally bite the bullet and do my first brew. All grain because head-first off a cliff is the only way to fly. I will theoretically have Mr. Ben Wedge on hand as brew guru, so I'm not flying totally blind, but that's going to depend on finding a spatula large enough to remove him from his perch at Stillwell and leg irons to keep him from running back before the brew is over.

My original intention for brewing was to try to roughly approximate my favorite easy drinker, Big Rock Traditional Ale, after the NSLC stopped carrying it. I found this clone recipe from the mid-nineties and was going to give it a go:

http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/1664.html#1664-3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the time it's taken for me to get set up and ready do actually do a brew though, I've been trying a whole lot of beers and have realized that I'd probably like something a little more complex. I very much enjoy Boxing Rock's Crafty Jack, so I thought I'd take the base recipe linked above and try to add a little more body and complexity.

The below is what I came up with playing with the recipe calculator at brewersfriend.com; it fits the style guideline of a Northern English Brown or an American Brown. I wouldn't say no to bumping the hops up closer to 30 IBUs, but I'm not really sure which variety to do that with and I'm trying to stick with just a couple hop additions. As it is, the Cluster is a replacement for the Galenas that I don't see at either NG or Everwood.

• Grain Bill:
  • 9lbs 2-row
  • 1.5lbs Carastan
  • 4oz Pale Chocolate
  • 4oz Victory
  • 2oz Black Patent
  Hop Bill:
  • .25oz Centennial (Pellet) @60min
  • .25oz Cluster (Pellet) @60min
  • .25oz Centennial (Pellet) @10min
  • .25oz Cluster (Pellet) @10min
  Yeast:
  • Wyeast 1968 London ESB (second choice White Labs WLP002 English Ale)

I was planning to follow the original recipe with 20 minutes at 145 and then an hour at 158, although I haven't done the math on appropriate water amounts yet. Assuming a 65% efficiency for my first brew, the OG should be around 1.051 and FG in the vicinity of 1.016. I will be bottling this batch.

Any thoughts or comments from folks would be very much appreciated.

[mr x]

What is your target IBU? Half an oz @60 min seems pretty low...

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[mumblecrunch]

According to the recipe calculator, using AAs of 10.9% for the Centennial pellets and 8.0% for the Cluster pellets (from the Everwood site), that should give me 26.88 IBUs.

Like I said I'd be open to upping that into the 30-35 range (if that takes it from "highly-hopped Northern English Brown Ale" and into "lightly-hopped American Brown Ale") I'm alright with that. Upping any of the additions to a .5oz has a pretty dramatic effect though (soaring into the high 30s). I suspect a different hop might be the way to go, but I don't know anything about hops either

[mr x]

I guess you're getting a fair bit of your total ibus from late additions, which tend to be sketchy calculations AFAIAC.

[GAM]

Crystal for body and I'd add more chocolate, but that's me. Hopping is a personal thing. I'd add more (likely too much more), but again that's me.

Sandy

[sleepyjamie]

I don't calculate ibus after 10 min into my recipes anymore


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[GuingesRock]

Aaron, I don’t know anything about making brown ale, but it takes me back to my yachting/racing days in England. I knew a consultant dermatologist in England who had a yacht, he was a friend and a mentor to me, and new me from a very young age. We used to drink cans of Newcastle Brown ale onboard (in those days it was accepted practice to throw the empty cans over the stern), and eat pork pies, and then back to the yacht club after the race for a few jolly old pints of ale, and a waffle about the race in hoity toity accents. Never quite got the hang of the hoity toity accent, but my dermatologist friend was ace at it. To cut a long story short …I think if I was going to make a brown, I’d try and make it like Newcastle Brown Ale.

Here’s some Newky Brown TV ads
http://www.brewnosers.org/forums/viewto ... ale#p72343" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[dean2k]

I'd drink it! But then again my last batch included toasted oats but no biscuit malts.

[Keith]

i'd throw .5 oz of wilamette in at 30min on the boil.

[mumblecrunch]

Thanks everyone who gave some advice. Between the feedback here and some mad reading, I've come up with the following revision:

• Grain Bill:
  • 8.5lbs 2-row
  • 1.5lbs Carastan
  • 0.75lbs Pale Chocolate
  • 0.75lbs Victory
  • 0.125lbs Black Patent
  Hop Bill:
  • 0.75oz Cluster @60min
  • 0.5oz Willamette @30min
  • 0.5oz Willamette @5min
  Yeast:
  • Wyeast 1968 London ESB (second choice White Labs WLP002 English Ale)

I also set it up for 5.5 gallons to the fermenter rather than 5. Carastan is essentially "UK Crystal in the 30-37L range" so I didn't feel the need to add any crystal. I did raise the Pale Chocolate and Victory while dropping the 2-row a little.

Hops-wise I decided to forego the Centennial which I think made more sense from a Big Rock Traditional clone perspective, kept the Cluster for bittering, took the advice to add 1/2oz of Willamette at 30min, and decided the late addition would also be 1/2oz of Willamette for the last 5 minutes of the boil. Negating the late addition for IBU calculations gives me an expected IBU value of just about 30.

Thanks again, folks.

[Keggermeister]

[mumblecrunch]

WHEEEEEEEEE!!!

Thank-you kindly. Now it's got a name. And a label

[Keith]

Mark,
I have a Newcastle Brown clone recipe if you want it. (AG or Extract)

[GuingesRock]

Keith, maybe post it here in case anyone is interested, and when I get my yacht (like that's ever going to happen), I'll make some, and we'll load the yacht up with Brewnosers and head out to sea. It could be an annual event like Hoptoberfest and Moooovember.

[Keith]

All Grain Newcastle Brown Ale Clone Recipe from Clone Brewz 2nd edition.
Mash 9.25lb British 2-row pale malt with specialty malts (2oz British crystal, 2oz British chocolate malt, 1oz British black malt) @ 152F for 90 mins.
Bring to boil, add .6oz Target @8% AA for 90 minutes of boil.
add 1/2 oz East Kent Holdings and 1tsp Irish moss in the last 15 minutes of boil.

Yeast options. Wyeast's 1098 British Ale Yeast or Wyeast's 1028 London Ale yeast.

[jtmwhyte]

East Kent Holdings sounds like an investment banking firm...

[LiverDance]

East Kent Holdings sounds like an investment banking firm...

[CartoonCod]

If you are going for a more complex malt character, instead of using all carastan for your crystal malt, you could use less carastan and put in some other lovibond crystal (maybe crystal 60).

[gm-]

If you are going for a more complex malt character, instead of using all carastan for your crystal malt, you could use less carastan and put in some other lovibond crystal (maybe crystal 60).

+1
I like to mix carastan and british crystal 15L

[mumblecrunch]

For the record, the final recipe I ended up with 1lb Carastan and 8oz Crystal 15L. I was a little hesitant to add yet another malt but at this point I'm pretty much all in on total rashness so what the hell. I picked the 15L over the 60L for the sake of a lighter color.

I also went with White Labs WLP002 (a) because that's what Dave@EverwoodAve carries and (b) all kinds of anecdotal evidence suggest that it and Wyeast 1968 are the same strain.

If it ends up being terrible I'll just hack the board, remove this thread, buy an all-grain kit and pretend this all never happened...

[chalmers]

Awesome, I'm sure it's going to be great! I expect lots of pics of your brewday

[mumblecrunch]

Brewday went a-okay with many thanks to Mr. Wedge and a colleague of ours who came over to see what it's all about (and whom I expect will be brewing himself in the not-too-distant future).

Was a bit high on temperature when we mashed in, so we had to adjust down with some additional cool water. Lost under 2 degrees in the first rest (30min). Nailed our temp for second rest, but miscalculated going to get lunch and ended up going long on it (1.5 hours instead of 1). Nothing worth getting uptight about to be sure. And we still only lost about 4 degrees.

Hit the expected OG pretty much dead on at 1.049/1.050, but I think it's a touch light on volume; I'd be surprised if more than 5g went into the primary instead of 5.5 (but I don't have any of my carboys marked so I don't know for sure). No signs of fermentation Sunday night and when I woke up the next morning even less (dead flat). My wife sent me a picture around noon that showed signs of life though, and another photo from 2pm or so showed a krausen had formed. By the time I got home from work on Monday sanitizer was bubbling aggressively out of my blowoff growler.

Just checked gravity tonight and it's at 1.020 with a fair amount of activity still evident; target FG is 1.016 so I'll probably be racking to secondary Friday night.

A few pictures are below. I've got a full set of photos up here (please to be ignoring the security warning about a self-signed certificate). All in all, I was really happy with the way everything went. Here's hoping I'm enjoying a tasty (if unreasonable) brown ale next month.

05 mashed in.jpg

12 boil.jpg

20 good night.jpg

23 oh hell yes.jpg

[benwedge]

Was a bit high on temperature when we mashed in, so we had to adjust down with some additional cool water. Lost under 2 degrees in the first rest (30min). Nailed our temp for second rest, but miscalculated going to get lunch and ended up going long on it (1.5 hours instead of 1). Nothing worth getting uptight about to be sure. And we still only lost about 4 degrees.

I'm really impressed with how that held up given the cold weather. Of course, the old sleeping bag helped. Glad to see my old mash tun being put to use.

[Keith]

awesome! keep us posted on how it turns out!

[mumblecrunch]

Sooooooo....this beer.

I racked it last Saturday to secondary, the gravity is dead stable at 1.019 (target was 1.016), no bubbling to see for the last 3 days and the yeast has all flocc'd out, but the beer is still "murky" and showing no signs of getting less murky. By murky I mean you can't see through it at all without very strong light. You can hardly see the hydrometer in the test jar. I put a half test jar in the fridge Thursday night and by Friday night there was no detectable change nor was there any sediment at the bottom. It looks somehow different than, say, a white wine before finings; you can't see little things floating, it's just...murky.

When I racked last weekend I tried to wash the yeast cake (turns out WLP002 is not a yeast for washing your first time) so I've got a sample of somewhat diluted wort sitting above a bunch of trub in a milk bottle. A week in the fridge later it's still as murky as the stuff in the carboy, so I'm guessing a cold crash isn't going to help. Further, I stirred up that bottle last night to try to see whether rousing the yeast might cause it to drag whatever is making it cloudy down. No joy; the yeast/trub has settled back down (finally seeing a layer of yeast on top, but it's probably too old to try to reuse now) but the liquid is still the same.

The good news is, it tastes fine, to me, anyway. There's no yeasty flavor and it tastes "clearer" than it looks.

So at this point, where I have little confidence that any amount of time is going to make it very much better, should I just go ahead and bottle it and move on? This beer is for drinking, so I'm not really interested in any kind of drastic action to make it clearer (e.g., isinglass or gelatin). The other option is, obviously, time. It's only been a week in the secondary. It's possible that whatever it is will eventually clear up/drop out if I just wait long enough.

But not knowing what it is that's caused the opacity, I have no idea how long it's worth waiting. Was it an ingredient or combination of ingredients or amount of an ingredient? Was it insufficient vorlauf? Is it a protein haze I caused somehow? I did check with Ben Wedge and he's confident we had a hot break during the boil.

Pictures below. Advice and suggestions would be appreciated.

IMG_1449.jpg

IMG_1446.jpg

IMG_1450.jpg