Cold brewed

i'm making a brooklyn brown clone today. its freezing. i'm going to tell my friends it was cold brewed. i don't know how you people in the upper midwest do this in the winter. its 29 out and with the wind chill 16.

edit: i missed mhy mash temp 148...ok for a brown i would imagine.

Your beer...you can tell them whatever you want!.

I pretend the turkey fryer is a camp fire and huddle up real close while I brew. Sometimes I put my head right in the steam plume for minutes on end to unthaw my face.

Ha, I've been sweating my ass off these past few weeks brewing! It is chilly here, all the way down to 50! and our wind makes it chilly too.

I feel for you guys up north, but I have trouble keeping my beers cold enough! It's always greener on the other side I guess

davekippen said:

I pretend the turkey fryer is a camp fire and huddle up real close while I brew. Sometimes I put my head right in the steam plume for minutes on end to unthaw my face.

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+1

Brewed a ipa the other week in the bitter cold.. was starting to run low on homebrews. I couldn't take seeing my primary empty any longer.

edecambra said:

Ha, I've been sweating my ass off these past few weeks brewing! It is chilly here, all the way down to 50! and our wind makes it chilly too.

I feel for you guys up north, but I have trouble keeping my beers cold enough! It's always greener on the other side I guess

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50s is perfect brewing weather imo. its been a great winter for brewing in the northeast overall. 1 or 2 freezing brew days isnt too bad.

Good luck with your clone. The coldest I've brewed in is 11F and that was pushing it... At least cooling happened quickly as my ground water gets to about 40 in winter.

148 will make yours a bit dryer than Brooklyn Brown. They get relatively low attenuation with their house yeast (derivative of Fuller's strain).

I used S05 on my BB inspired brown ale, mashed at 156 and so far is pretty good (bottled yesterday, so only tried the hydro sample).

What was your grain bill?

5.5 gallons

11#2oz 2 row pale
1# crystal 60L
11 oz chocolate
6 oz white wheat
4 oz biscuit

i'm thinking its a little heavy on the crystal

i am using wyeast 1968

frozen hose, and my pot is too big for the sink...

akimbo78 said:

5.5 gallons

11#2oz 2 row pale
1# crystal 60L
11 oz chocolate
6 oz white wheat
4 oz biscuit

i'm thinking its a little heavy on the crystal

i am using wyeast 1968

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I'd say heavy on the chocolate? Looks more like a brown porter recipe to me, but there's definitely some style overlap there

Howie said:

I'd say heavy on the chocolate? Looks more like a brown porter recipe to me, but there's definitely some style overlap there

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its darker than i thought. i used brewsmith and when i entered the original recipe it was too light with what brooklyns website said for srm. so i used the slider and let beersmith bring the color up. then i read somewhere that these programs do a terrible job estimating color. next time i will use less chocolate and less crystal. i'm still gonna have a beer, and maybe i will like it better.

I brewed this Saturday morning. It was -1 F when I started heating mt strike water.

Man, it can get cold in Minnesota!


Good thing I use electric! A nice balmy 68 F in my laundry room/ brewery!

Akimbo,
I want to brew a brooklyn brown ale soon. I went to the brooklyn lager webpage and found the ingredients for their brown ale, but being new to homebrewing I am not sure the amounts to use.
This is their spec sheet:
http://brooklynbrewery.com/brooklyn-beers/perennial-brews/brooklyn-brown-ale

Here is what I am intending on using:
Pale Malt (2 Row) UK
Roasted Barley
Aromatic Malt
Fuggles
Cascade
Willamette
Irish Moss
American Ale Yeast
Ferment at whatever temperature the yeast do best at for 30 days or until the SP is steady for 2-3 days in a row.

I tried using beersmith but can't get the numbers to match up, If the numbers do match up I am using 13lbs of Pale malt for 5 gal???!!!...

Any suggestions, comments?

any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your help and assistance in advance.

I am assuming you are all-grain, which is good as aromatic malt requires mashing and there is no real substitute for it.

A little roast barley will go a long way, so be careful with using too much.

As for using 13# 2-row, at 1.062OG, this is not unheard of, depending on your efficiency.

Also, from that link the description says:

"A blend of six malts, some of them roasted, give this beer its deep russet-brown color and complex malt flavor, fruity, smooth and rich, with a caramel, chocolate and coffee background."

So you are likely missing some grains. I have a brown that I just bottled that was inspired by BB, though I wasn't going for a clone. I went with:

9# US 2-Row
12oz. Aromatic
12oz. Crystal 60
8oz. Chocolate
4oz. Roast Barley

1oz. Fuggles (4.2%) @ 60 minutes
1oz. Willamette (4.0%) @ 15 minutes
1oz. Cascase (6.4%) @ 15 minutes
.5oz. Wilammette (4.0%) @ 5 minutes

I got a hair above 80% efficiency, mashed @ 156F, came in with OG of 1.060. This fermented in the low 60s for 4 weeks and finished at 1.016, using S-05 yeast. My hydro sample was very good - I'm really looking forward for this one to carb and mature.

If you are going for a clone, I would use WLP002 (or equivalent) and mash high, to get it down from 1.062 to 1.019.

CKH1 said:

Akimbo,
I want to brew a brooklyn brown ale soon. I went to the brooklyn lager webpage and found the ingredients for their brown ale, but being new to homebrewing I am not sure the amounts to use.
This is their spec sheet:
http://brooklynbrewery.com/brooklyn-beers/perennial-brews/brooklyn-brown-ale

Here is what I am intending on using:
Pale Malt (2 Row) UK
Roasted Barley
Aromatic Malt
Fuggles
Cascade
Willamette
Irish Moss
American Ale Yeast
Ferment at whatever temperature the yeast do best at for 30 days or until the SP is steady for 2-3 days in a row.

I tried using beersmith but can't get the numbers to match up, If the numbers do match up I am using 13lbs of Pale malt for 5 gal???!!!...

Any suggestions, comments?

any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your help and assistance in advance.

Click to expand...

mcberry,
Yeah I figured I was missing a few, but not sure which ones, Thanks for the suggestions!
I will take your suggestions into consideration, definitely and see what happens in beersmith.
So I wasn't completely crazy when I came up with 13#'s. The added ingredients will bring it down. Like you have shown.

The BL states a OG of 15.5 Plato (~1.062) so 1.060 is really good!


I'd like to keep it as close to the BL recipe as possible.

I will definitely give your suggestions a try.

Thanks a lot.
I appreciate your help and knowledge on this.

i was just building on a recipe i saw somewhere else vs what the website says. They have their own house yeast so we can only get close. i emailed them a few months ago because i was making my own version of their Local 2, which is a strong dark belgian. they were more than happy to adjust my recipe to be closer to what they were doing. The recipe i used for the brown was in a book so i didn't contact them for this one. Most breweries will help you clone their beers.

Did someone say cold?

davekippen said:

I pretend the turkey fryer is a camp fire and huddle up real close while I brew. Sometimes I put my head right in the steam plume for minutes on end to unthaw my face.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I do!

Thank god for my sun porch (more of a covered deck, really). Even with all the windows open and both doors, it gets a nice toasty warm 45-50 degrees in there during the boil!

I am in south florida, with a current (chilly) temperature today of around 66F. I am trying to turn my wine cooler into a fermentor(high and low temps) by playing with the thermostat. Currently seeing how cold I can make it go, so far 54F.
My room temperature here in the house is 75-77F.

Anyway... looking forward to trying this American brown Ale (BL clone).

Thanks all.