Brew Five - American Brown Ale

Once again, I used the Brewing Classic Styles book as a guide for this beer choosing the Janet's Brown Ale recipe to work from.

 Recipe:

3.8kg Blackrock  Light LME

0.5kg Wheat DME

0.56kg Carapils Dextrin Malt

0.56kg Pale Crystal

0.225kg Chocolate Malt

50g Northern Brewer (@ 60 minutes)

35g Northern Brewer (@ 15 minutes)

30g Cascade (@ 10 minutes)

55g Cascade (@ 0 minutes/flame out)

30g Centennial (Dry Hop at Day 7)

US05 Yeast.

Boil volume - 10 litres.

Photo above - OG - 1056 (adjusted)

Photo below - lovely dark brown beer with yeast added.

Comments:

1. I opted for the DME as opposed to having to buy 1.5kg of the Wheat and storing it.  It seemed to work fine and I used it to get the BG to 1040 so we didn't have any problems with it clumping up.

2.  The Northern Brewer had a higher AA rating (9.8) to that in the recipe (6.5) so according to the Kit and Extract sheet it would have come out a lot higher IBU.  We decided to trim back the bittering addition at 60 minutes from 57g to 50g but in hindsight could have reduced it further - only time will tell as to if this has an impact on the final product.

3.  I still haven't got a large sieve and I think I need two further plastic stirring spoons for the brewing process.  Different coloured spoons for different activities would be a good idea.

4.  We decided to stir the first two cans of LME into the pot with around 5 minutes to go - this was a mistake for two reasons: 1.  the temperature of the wort dropped and the boil stopped and 2. the pot was now full to the brim making it very difficult to pour into the fermenter.

5.  It took approximately 25 minutes for the wort to reduce below 40 degrees.  When I added the wort to the cold water in the fermenter the digital thermometer was showing 24 degrees so once again there was no further delay on pitching the yeast. 

6.  The main cost in this brewing is the LME - it costs $14.95 per can.  I can either take a tub along to get filled which may save me a few dollars per litre or look to moving onto BIAB (Boil in a Bag) options.  I think I'll wait and see how the IPA and this beer turn out before deciding whether to progress to BIAB.  I haven't tallied the cost up but excluding bottles I would guess we are looking at $60-$70 for the brew which is still pretty cheap.

7.  Bottling during the brewing process went off without a hitch - obviously having two sets of hands helped out greatly.