Need suggestions for 2 recipes from 1 grain bill

I can do 10 gallon batches with my keggles, and I want to use 1 grain bill to split and boil two seperate 5 gallon recipes, with different hops, yeast, etc...

I did this a few weeks ago using the grains for a nice summer ale, then using different hops and yeasts to make 2 very different tasting summer ales (lemon ginger and a cascade orange). They both turned out great.

I want to make something a little darker. I looked through all the brown ale recipies, but cant find 2 that are similar enough to do this with, and since I have never made a brown ale before, I dont want to go tossing hops and yeasts like crazy not knowing if it will taste good in the end.

Therefore, i need some suggestions. It doesnt have to be a brown ale, but i dont really want a lighter ale, as I already have 6 kegs of lighter stuff to get me through the summer.

Let me know guys. Thanks.

This is what I would do:

A pretty good brown ale malt bill (for 12 total after the boil):
19 lbs British Pale Ale Malt
1.5lb Caramel 40L
1lb Victory malt
1lb Wheat malt
1lb Chocolate malt

Split that and make one nice and hoppy, bitter American brown with C-type hops (Cascade and Centennial are my favorite) with a clean ale yeast (wlp001, wyeast 1056, US-05). The other half hop lightly with an English hop (EKG, Fuggle, Challenger, etc.) and use a yeast that gives nice English-ale profile (Nottingham, wlp007, s-04, etc.).

Thinking about this has made me want to do this too, I will probably do this come fall.

That looks pretty good. I have some WLP001 and some WLP002 banked. I have a ton of Cascade and Centennial for the bitter american brown.

I also have a lot of Perle, Vojovadina, brewers gold, and chinook. Im not sure if any of those would work well for a brown, but I can always get more....

It sounds like what you want to do is what's known as a Partigyle. It is one of the oldest ways to brew.

There's a lot of threads on how to do them and figure out the recipes. I like my thread because it is sort of a "real time" discussion of how to calculate the recipes, and how to "cheat brewsmith" software into doing the work. I starting having little idea how to do it, and how to get my head around the calculations, to coming out with two fantastic beers.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/lets-partyyyy-gyle-pumpkin-porter-ale-one-mash-74927/

Griffsta said:

That looks pretty good. I have some WLP001 and some WLP002 banked. I have a ton of Cascade and Centennial for the bitter american brown.

I also have a lot of Perle, Vojovadina, brewers gold, and chinook. Im not sure if any of those would work well for a brown, but I can always get more....

Click to expand...

If I was doing it, I would bitter with the Brewers Gold and then get some EKG or Fuggles (like 0.5-1oz) for like a 5 minute addition.

Thanks Revvy, but that might be a little beyond my capabilities. I want to keep this very simple (Im still under 10 AG batches...). Though, I do like idea of steeping grains in the boils to change the grains profile for each of the two brews.

Do you think there is any way that I could do something similar with these two recipes?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f67/edmund-fitzgerald-clone-ag-46844/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f67/aberdeen-brown-ale-newcastle-clone-ag-36912/

THey both share the 2 row, crystal 60, and chocolate malt. Since the EF Clone is higher in gravity, I could just steep more grains in that one, including the black patent, special B. THen for the NewCastle CLone, I would steep the corn, carapills, roasted barley and other crystals. Im just not sure how I could get it to work.

Also I dont need to hit these recipes dead on, but I would like to be close. If they turn out a couple points higher, or have a little different flavor, Im not going to lose sleep at night. I just want to save time on my saturday for brewing.