Brown ale recipe advice

Ok, I'm doing a little research and development. I am making a brown ale and this is my first recipe.

7 lbs marris otter
1 lb Briess Caramel 40L
.5 lb simpsons chocolate

1 oz kent goldings 60 minutes
1 oz fuggles 10 minutes

Safale S-04 (Whitbread)

The first batch is in the primary and looks ok but a little dark. Im' thinking of reducing the chocolate to .25 lbs to lighten it up and maybe going with fuggles for bittering as well as aroma. I used a kit from northern brewer before and it had a kilo of brown sugar, I really want to try to avoid added sugar if I can. Does anyone have any additional input on this? Thanks in advance for the help!

Definitely no brown sugar. Very few Brown recipes use it and I feel the sweetness needs to come from crystal.

Using Fuggles for both adds works, but I like the combination. You might consider adding half an ounce of each at 60 & 10.

I've seen Brown recipes with as little as 2 oz. of chocolate and some that use none. I use 8 oz. in my Church of Chocolate Brown.

By the way, AHB's Old Dog Brown is nice.

After fermentation is complete (or slowing) your beer start to clear and will look significantly darker in the carboy or bucket than it will in the glass. So don't judge the color of your beer by how it looks in the fermentor, wait until you see it in the glass.

Thanks guys, What do you think about going with .25 lbs chocolate and increasing to 1.5 lbs caramel? I definatly cut hops to .5 oz each

I don't think I would increase the crystal. Consider .5 lb. additions of any Victory, Biscuit or Special roast malts for a nut brown.