Homebrew Recipe: James Brown Ale

Two admirers of your homebrew want a batch to split for themselves? This was a problem I was practically born to solve! There was some debate over what style of beer they wanted, but once a brown ale was settled on I was off to the races. This is a style I’ve brewed several times and I was eager to put my newly discovered all grain skills to work. Seeking to make an easy drinking but satisfying brown ale would prove to be a good test indeed.

Recipe

Grain Bill

9lbs 2 Row

1 lb Victory

1/2 lb Crystal 60

1/3 lb chocolate malt

Hop Schedule

(60) 1/2 oz Nugget

(20) 1 oz Fuggles

Yeast

1 Packet SafeAle US-05

Boil Volume – 6.5 gallons

Fermentor Volume – 5.25 gallons

Mash Temp - 152

OG, FG, ABV – Lost these numbers or possibly broke my hydrometer and forgot to take them.

Procedure: Mashed  for 1 hour with 3 gallons water to hit 152F mash temp.  Batch Sparged with 5 gallons water at about 165. The goal was to sparge at 169 but failed in this attempt. I would have to assume I got lower efficiency as a result of this endeavor. Added hops per schedule and cooled using a wort chiller below 90.  Transferred to primary and pitched yeast.

Fermentation/ Packaging – 2 weeks in primary at about 72 degrees and then straight to the bottle. Used 5/8 cup of table sugar mixed in 2 cups water as priming solution.

Tasting Notes – A very nominal brown ale with a medium mouthfeel and some decent roasty and malty flavors. Cracked the first one after only a week being the bottle and they were still a little undercarbed and the flavors had not quite meshed together. After 2 weeks this beer displayed more rounded flavor and the end recipients were thoroughly pleased. I would call this a brown ale for the masses.

Improvement/Tweak Ideas – Up the base 2-Row grain by a pound to get the alcohol up a little. This is only because of my low efficiency that I would change this. Change the crystal malt from 60 up to 120 in order to darken the color a bit and give a little more complexity and sweetness to the overall beer. Possibly decrease the amount of crystal to ¼ lb if increasing the lovibond.