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The Throwback Brown Ale

stoutmaker1 Comment

This week’s brew was more of a plan ahead kind of thing. I will be brewing a barley wine in the next two weeks, so I need yeast. So, how bout a 3 gallon batch to steal the yeast cake from….

Since I will be using Nottingham yeast, why not an good old Brit Brown? Haven’t had a good British Brown ale in a long time. All the ones you find now days are too Americanized.

So I went back into the vault and found o e of my long lost extract brown ales. (Needs a new name)

Basement Brown 3 gallon extract

  • 1 can light LME
  • 12oz crystal 80
  • 8oz carapils
  • 8oz biscuit
  • 3/4oz EKG
  • 1/4oz EKG
  • Nottingham yeast

Well for some reason, I could not get Beersmith to work they way I wanted. I don’t know if I was using wrong profile or what, but it wanted me to be using 8+ gallons of water for a 3 gallon batch.
But figuring out an extract batches needs is like nothing.

3.125 gallons into fermenter
1.75 lbs grain x .12 water absorb
1.5 gallons boil off
.125 gallons kettle gunk loss
= 5 gallons water

I took 1/2 gallons of that water and mashed/steeped the grains in the mini masher while I was bringing the rest of the water to boil. Once I got boil I dumped it I to the kettle and got under way.

I did do a full boil with all of the extract. I wanted to get a little darker color since I used the golden light Lme.

Mmm the smell of a British Brown is awesome. Caramel, EKG.. Oh yea.

Sure looks like a good color going in. As the way with my first rounds of extract beers, I’ll just chuck it in the basement and let it go at what ever temp it is down there.  And right now it’s still 58.  Perfect for Notty.

Honey, and strange hops

stoutmaker1 Comment

Well it’s National Homebrew Day, so let’s brew!

Nephew wanted to see how the brew process works so he dropped in to check it out. 

 I needed to make a beer for Memorial Day and a something with honey. So a very quick 3.5% honey bitter. Plus I got these free hops from Tenatious Badger. (More on these later.

Honey Burst – 5 gallons

  • 4.5 lb 2 row
  • .5 victory
  • 1 lb honey
  • 1oz Michigan Copper @10
  • 3/4 magnum @10
  • Nottingham 
  • Mashed at 155

This was the first brew in quite a while that I made outside. In fact this beer should be completely brewed, fermented, kegged and drank entirely in the garage.

Now these Michigan Copper hops. They are described as “fragrant floral and tropical fruit”  

If fragrant and floral means vomit and parmesan cheese, then I concur. I really had to force my self to put them in my beer. If would have had another 10% hop laying around, these would have been dumped. 

But once they got into the boil they smelled exactly like fresh cut lemon peel.

Both before and after smells aren’t really something I’m excited about having in my beer.. but we will see.

Oat

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First a quick update on the Golden ale made for the Wine Walk. The beer was a big hit.  We were billing it as a cream ale, but I would have called it a blonde ale. Light,  slightly malty with just the faintest of hops. As good of reception that this received, there is no doubt it will be brewed again. 

Moving on to this weekends brew. For our February club meeting we are brewing with oats. Oat malt,  flaked oats, oatmeal… Stuff like that. I figure there will be a few oatmeal stouts,  so I went the other way. A Pale Oatmeal mild. 

I was looking to get something light colored, but decent body,  and very low hopped to showcase the oatmeal. I came up with.. 

  • 4lbs maris otter
  • 1.5lbs oatmeal
  • 1/4 lbs 40L crystal
  • . 75oz Fuggles @60
  • Nottingham yeast
  • Mashed at 156

This beer hands down is the best smelling beer of the year. Even the kids came downstairs to see what I was making. But cloudy.. Wow.  Pretty sure this will never drop out by February. 

I took several pics but none of them captured how hazy this really is. I can’t wait to see how this one comes out.  

Next I have to try to replicate the heavily caramelized Ipa for an upcoming contest.