WLP Irish ale slurry Big red/brown ale, 2 lbs brown malt

Greetings sports fans,

Yesterday was another brewday, started heating strike water at 6:20 am and finished clean up around 5 pm.

I wanted to do a repeat of my standard amber (found here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/new-temp-controller-irish-amber-w-willamette-hopstand-426263/) but changed my mind because I've always wanted to try brown malt. I use about 16% here, there was no specification as to the Lovibond when I purchased it, but it looked about 60 or 70 L.

10 lbs domestic pils
2 brown malt
.5 20 L
Mashed at 153.5 30 mins, raised to 155.5 30 mins, sparged at 165,

Hops: Willamette from Niko Brew, 2011 crop, 5.5%aa, spicy/floral out of the bag.
1 oz for 90
3 at flame out, held at 170 for 5 mins, chilled to 51 in 10.

doughed in with about 3.25 gal of 171* water. I usually add calcium chloride to the whole of the strike water (5 gal), but this time added .5 tsp directly into the 3.25 gal in the tun. ph was about 5.3. Adjusted second and third runnings(7 gal total) with 1 tsp calcium chloride and .25 tsp gypsum.

Boiled for 2 hours 45 mins to about 10 quarts. Wort chiller broken, chilled with one gallon bag of ice and cold bottled water. Pitched washed yeast slurry about 3 pm, hit with O2 60 sec.

OG 1068, nice.

Next day 65.5F at 3 pm no visible action, hit with O2 again, by 7 pm it was chugging away at 66F.

Cheers

Update:

So heres what happened. Fermented at 65, then at 66.5 as it slowed and raised to room temp. After a couple weeks it was sitting at 1020, higher than i wanted for sure, the roast character is pretty intense with 2 lbs brown malt so I added about two quarts boiled water when I racked to secondary, as a bonus it took up the headspace. Gravity is now 1016.

Have a keg system from Williams brew on the way, excited for this to be my first kegged beer.

Browm malt brown ale review:

The FG before kegging was 1019, so I think what happened was when I added water it didn't mix before taking a reading, no prob this beer turned out well.

Appearance: great head hangs around a while, solid brown/red when held to light. After sitting st 32* for a month its quite clear.
Aroma: sweet/malty, some roast is coming through, no hops.
Flovor: strong roasted character, coffee like. Sweet and malty, but the brown malt still provides that dryish finish, picking out some fruityness from the yeast esters. The Willamette flavors are surprisingly coming through better than in the Irish amber, maybe due to the simple malt bill here.

This beer has great depth, if feels balanced even though its quite malty, I'm picking up on each aspect as the beer finishes. This 2.5 gal keg from Williams' is great, the other half of this batch will have almond extract added. If I were to repeat this beer I would mash at 154.