Rummy 500

malt & fermentables
% LB OZ Malt or Fermentable ppg °L
67% 6 0 Northern Brewer Gold LME 36 4 ~
14% 1 4 Brown Sugar, Light 46 8 ~
8% 0 12 Molasses 36 80 ~
3% 0 4 Chocolate Malt (UK) 34 450 ~
3% 0 4 Belgian Biscuit Malt 35 24 ~
3% 0 4 Belgian Special B 30 220 ~
3% 0 4 Briess Special Roast 34 50 ~

hops
use time oz variety form aa
boil 60 mins 1.0 Fuggles pellet 4.5
boil 15 mins 1.0 Fuggles pellet 4.5

misc
use time amount ingredient
boil 15 min 1 ea Whirlfloc Tablet

Awesome English Brown ale. I prefer this much more than Smuttynose Old Brown Dog, Sammy Smith's Nut brown, and DFH Indian brown ale (much different, I know). Perfect carbonation for the style. Dense khaki head with staying power. Barely noticeable hop bitterness balancing a sweet malty backbone with caramel, slight nutty roast, and rummy flavor. Alcohol is well hidden at 7.6% but would age much better. This second taste test was done after 3.5 weeks primary bucket fermenter, and 2 weeks bottled at 70 degrees. I used 2.5 oz. of dextrose at bottling and swirled to disperse. Slight chill haze. Not going for appearance so much as this is my very first homebrew that was ready, 3rd batch.

Just popped open a Smutty(Left) and my Rummy(Right) to compare. Stronger malt profile on the Rummy but it's still somewhat young. Still a very nice brown ale that I've not had commercially before. The head is almost non-existent on the Smutty and the head is still here about 30 mins. later on my Rummy. Dark fruits, hop bitterness, nutty caramel malt, yum. Good lacing.

When did you add the molasses and brown sugar? Beginning of boil or end?

I added the brown sugar at 30 minutes into the 60 minute boil. Molasses was added at 15 minutes but you could add it at flameout and stir it in well. I talked to some pro brewer at the LHBS and gave him a bottle to test. He said it was perfect except for the stickiness associated with extract brews. I didn't notice that aspect and was perfectly happy myself. I'm just not skilled enough to judge beers yet. . . . only to enjoy them, ha!

On the next batch I will remove 1 oz. of Fuggles since it's a tad too bitter for my palette and the style.

I think the pro brewer at the LHBS was trying to sell you on upgrading to AG! I do notice a twang in extract beers that I still have bottled compared to my AG batches, but never a "stickiness". I am going to try this here soon. Kinda too your specialty grain batch and made a brown, but had one to many brews and forgot to add the brown sugar and molasses!! Keg is about tapped and it's time for a new Brown.

Believe it or not but after a few more weeks the "twang" or slight bitterness is gone now. He probably was trying to convince me but I love that I can finish up a ten gallon batch in less then 3 hours.

I just brewed this again and split it with one getting the Wyeast 1945 and the other getting washed Wlp575. Just figured on trying a belgian yeast for the heck of it. Unfortunately the yeast had not started when I checked it this morning. It was slow to start when ran it in a starter two days ago. It was cold crashed, warmed up yesterday morn, and pitched at around 66 degrees at 530pm. I'm sure it'll pick up soon.

My gravities for both were a little under at 1.062 and 1.061 due to a little more makeup water( did partial boils because my brew pot can't handle any more than 7 gallons). I also added an extra lb. a piece of light brown sugar, kept it at 2 oz. of fuggles at 60 min., and 1/2 oz of styrian goldings at 15 min.

This is a great base recipe but I figured I'd experiment a bit more with the voiding of the 1 oz of fuggles, a little extra styrian I had leftover and adding the extra brown sugar. The smell of the steeping grains is delectable. The twang may have have come from the molasses in the first batch he has it was, well, very old. I like maltiness but hopefully I will win with a nice belgian brown if the 575 takes off. I might reyeast if problamatic. Keeping the ferm temps lower for cloves and earthiness as well.

Unfortunately I ran out of this batch already and should have brewed more in a full boil with the 1 oz. extra of fuggles. Really it did make a difference to add that extra 1 oz. of fuggles for the better balance. Grav samples from the split partial boil that were bottles just a week ago seemed to taste a tad bit watery than the primary batch. Good thing I kept good notes. The WLP575 dried it out to 1.006, 1945 to 1.010. We'll see now the difference between a ready bottle of this new batch and the first batch I did.