Sunday, Brown Ale Sunday

Well it was really Saturday, but who's keeping track?

So today we brewed a 10 gallon batch of American Brown Ale. I am leaning towards doo doo brown ale, but we will see if that will end up as the name. We started this morning at 7am and pitched at 12:30 making it a 6 hour brew day (with cleanup). Not too bad.

This was the first time I have had a fellow brewer so I was pretty fired up. With a 10 gallon batch it's a must. There was no way I would have been able to lift the kettle on my own. For the second time we hit all the vitals for this recipe (1.041 pre-boil OG, 1.051 pitching OG) and got through all the heat infusions without a problem.

One thing that caused a problem was that the sparge arm I just made had some "technical" and engineering issues. First off, because of the way that the sparge sat under the water reservoir, the hose kinked causing a pretty light flow. The engineering issue was caused by the fact that I used a chunk of garden hose that could leave funky flavors in my brew. Not the end of the world, just some tweaking.

Now for this brew we used American Ale yeast from Nick's last IPA batch that he just bottled last night. To increase the volume that we were working with, Nick boiled up some corn sugar and made a little starter. We split the starter this morning into our buckets are we are hoping that it works out.



This is the largest batch that I have done with this larger brew kettle and we had a boil over early on in the brewing. This was something I never would have imagined, because the kettle is so big, but it did. No big deal though a little time to rest and some cleaning of the propane burner and we were as good as new.

This was an American Brown Ale recipe I made up:

Recipe Specifications
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Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.12 gal
Estimated OG: 1.051 SG
Estimated Color: 25.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 37.8 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 59.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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20.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 80.4 %
4.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 15.7 %
0.75 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.9 %
0.25 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 1.0 %
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops 30.3 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (30 min) Hops 7.5 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (15 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops -
American Ale Wyeast


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 25.50 lb
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Mash In Add 7.97 gal of water at 170.5 F154.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 3.19 gal of water at 196.6 F168.0 F 10 min
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Overall I was quite pleased with the brew day. We hit all of our times and temps as well as gravity readings. Other than the boil over it was a pretty flawless brew session.

This was Nick's first shot at all-grain brewing. He is kind of new to brewing in general, but as a science teacher, he should take to it quickly.

Good stuff. Cheers!

Granddad Brown Ale

Malt Extract: 5lbs John Bull Light
Spec. Grain: 8oz 40-L Crystal Malt, 2oz Black Patent Malt
Bitter Hops: 1oz Saaz, 1/2 oz Hallertaver (45min)
Finishing Hops: 1/2 oz Hallertaver (5min)
Yeast: Whitebread Ale (liquid)
Primary: 7 days 55-61 degrees
Secondary: 10 Days 63 degrees
OG/FG: 1.040-1.050/1.008-1.014
Misc: Brown sugar boiled in with 1pt of water, introduced before secondary fermentation. Molasses is also something that can be added, preferable in the wart with the boil.

Notes: Late fermentation, it took about 32 hours to start fermenting, and I had to bring the brew to about 63F to get it moving. Temp increased to 66F and the fermentation picked up.

I think that the problems spawned from a bad pitch, I had not given the yeast enough time to wake up from the cold.

I introduced the brown sugar before the secondary fermentation (I forgot to add it during the primary), I would not recommend this as a normal practice because all of the additional activity will keep the brew from clearing up the way that you want.