American Brown Recipe

I think I'm going to do an American Ale to put in my first keg. I want it to be on the hoppy side for the style, but still be malty, with a bit of chocolate. Goal number two is to clear out some of the odd packages of hops in the fridge. Here's the recipe, tell me what you think:

7.5 lb. American 2-row
1.0 lb. American 2-row (toasted)
0.5 lb. Crystal 75
0.5 lb. Chocolate
0.5 lb. Cara-pils
0.5 lb. Flaked Barley

0.5 oz. Galena 12% 60 min
0.25 oz. Centennial 9.9% 30 min
0.25 oz. Cascade 6.0% 30 min
0.25 oz. Centennial 15 min
0.5 oz. Cascade 15 min
0.75 oz. Cascade 5 min
0.5 oz Cascade Dry
0.5 oz Cluster Dry

OG: 1.050 FG: 1.013 SRM: 21 IBU: 46 ABV: 4.9%

I'm going to toast the 1 lb of t-row myself in the oven as an experiment. With the hops I was originally going with Centennial and Cascade, but found I would need to buy more for only about half an ounce. This should use up the Galena and Cluster as well as the Centennial and Cascade in the fridge. I already have yeast saved in the fridge from another batch, so this should only cost me the grain!

Looks fun. I don't know Cluster too well, but Centennial is a great dry hop, too. If the Cluster is a good bitterer, you could swap that around and use the Centennial as a dry hop.

But what you have looks like a lot of fun to me! Cheers

Thanks, I have some Williamette hops that I might sub for the cluster. I don't know. At this point I think I might do an exeriment and do half the batch as a english style brown and put it in the keg and the other half as this hoppy recipe for bottles. SWMBO doesn't like hoppy, but wants to try some from the keg, especially so she can have only 4-6 oz at a time. I've already bought the malt. I think I'll mash it, then split it in two, then go ahead with the two seperate brews.

Ok, here's the modification. Same grain bill as above for 5.5 gallons. Mash and collect wort. Split into 2 2.75 gal. brews. One American Brown, and the other a version of a Southern English Brown.

#1 Hop Schedule as above, but split all values in half for reduced volume and substitute Willamette for Cluster dry hops.

#2 Hop schedule as follows:
0.25 oz. E.K. Goldings 5.7% 60 min
0.25 oz. E.K. Goldings 5.7% 30 min
0.125 oz. Willamette 4.0% 30 min
0.125 oz. E.K. Goldings 5.7% 5 min
0.125 oz. Willamette 4.0% 5 min

Total IBU: 24

I finally did the brew today and it started just fine. I mashed the grain and collected 6.5 gallons of wort. I managed to seperate out two pots, each with approx. 3.25 gallons in them and started the boils simultaneously. The first half hour went fine, but then came the bone-headed move to add to the list. I ran out of propane! It finally went empty with about 15 min left in the boil. The other half was on the kitchen stove. I had to finish the stove batch and get it in the fermenter so I could put the other batch on the stove. To make it worse, the propane pot doesn't fir on the stove, it's too tall with the microwave over the stove. I had to transfer the hot wort into the other pot, then finish the last 15 minutes of the brew. All ended well. The American Brown, that had the flameout, was pitched with White Labs 001 and the English Brown was pitched with White Labs 005 British Ale.