Classic English Brown Ale

[Gravity]

Brewing up a classic English Brown ale

Did not have a couple things:

Didn't have 60 L Caramel malt subbed Carahell ( light caramel)
Didn't have Caramel Vienna subbed Biscuit 50 ebc
Victory subbed subbed more Biscuit Ebc
Didn't have chocolate malt subbed Carafa
and last addition hops were meant to be willamette, i'm using EKG

2 liter yeast starter made from S-04

Thoughts?



Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 19.77 gal
Post Boil Volume: 19.27 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 18.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 17.53 gal
Estimated OG: 1.053 SG
Estimated Color: 16.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 29.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 74.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
2.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 1 -
30 lbs CHÂTEAU PALE ALE (4.3 SRM) Grain 2 83.0 %
3 lbs CHÂTEAU BISCUIT® (25.4 SRM) Grain 3 8.3 %
2 lbs Carahell (Weyermann) (13.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.4 %
1 lbs 3.2 oz Carafa I (337.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.3 %

2.94 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 25.7 IBUs
2.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 7 -
2.94 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 8 3.3 IBUs
2.94 oz (EKG) [5.00 %] - Boil Hop 9 0.7 IBUs

2.0 pkg 2 L starter - SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast 10 -

 

[Gravity]

The yeast starter is smashing through it

 

[SanPancho]

Kinda hard to make a traditional brown without brown malt. Once this brew is done, do a quick test beer with 25% brown malt. Youll see the difference.

 

[Gravity]

Kinda hard to make a traditional brown without brown malt. Once this brew is done, do a quick test beer with 25% brown malt. Youll see the difference.

I hear you and agree

I've done both before, prefer the proper grain bill, however had to make due with what I had

Samples I tried were pretty spot on considering the circumstances

We shall see soon enough

 

[65C]

I drop all the Cara grains in whatever I brew - I don't like any sweetness - I might put something else in dark to sub

Tbh I'm not trying to build replicas - recipes are guidance - it's pretty hard to make a bad beer

 

[Gravity]

I drop all the Cara grains in whatever I brew - I don't like any sweetness - I might put something else in dark to sub

Tbh I'm not trying to build replicas - recipes are guidance - it's pretty hard to make a bad beer

Exactly, one goes with what they like

 

[SanPancho]

just to be clear- my point isnt that there is only one "right" way to make beers. i am by no means a slave to tradition. hell- our brown is a lager. with oats.

my point is that "brown" has been bastardized as a term. it meant the malt used- i.e. the flavor, not the color. you could make a pilsner with some carafa and it would turn brown. but it would taste nothing like brown malt and therefore nothing like a uk brown ale. unfortunately the color of the beer and malt became the name of the style and american brewers didnt pay attention to the details.

its a semantic point, i know. but the flavor of brown malt is so damn delicious that i feel its name and honor must be defended.

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

I drop all the Cara grains in whatever I brew - I don't like any sweetness - I might put something else in dark to sub

Tbh I'm not trying to build replicas - recipes are guidance - it's pretty hard to make a bad beer

English Brown Ales are full of caramel malts. He's asking for a classic English brown ale.

 

[ba-brewer]

I know of northern and southern styles of English brown ale, which one is this recipe based? I am guessing northern.

As the southern English brown ale has moved to the historical section of the BJCP and is called London brown ale it seems like that would be the classic version.

 

[jaroporter]

don't get too hung up on the "styles", they seem to have been developed from just two commercial beers over here. we don't particularly have a specific brown ale style - it's just what individual breweries wanted to market a certain beer as. in contrast to above, it's seemed to be a lot to do with the colour (often standard grists augmented with brewers caramel) and not neccessarily the ingredients. brown malt seems to have been a lot more standard in "porter" than "brown ale" as such, though i don't know if that was the original name for porter? not the same brown malt we have these days though, by all accounts.
many breweries would not even have used caramel malts in a brown ale, but getting a slightly sweeter finish with water and yeast.
brew what you like to drink, and call it what the hell you like. 'cause that's what "classic" english breweries did..

 

[Gravity]

brew what you like to drink, and call it what the hell you like. 'cause that's what "classic" english breweries did..

For sure, to me homebrewing isn't about replicating, rather about experimenting and pushing the boundaries not just of styles,
, but of beer. That's how we get all the great beer we get now.

I tried a sample yesterday while checking the gravity and its as good or better than any recent English brown ale I've had. It needs a little more mouth feel and I'm happy with the sweet chocolate-esque finish .

I may rack over the weekend

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Yep, I wouldn't get too romantic about the idea of brown ale, it was definitely the bottom of the food chain - by 1959 Watneys were making theirs with about a quarter dregs and returned beer.

+1 on the myth of "northern" vs "southern" which was invented by Michael Jackson on the basis that there were only a couple left, and Mann's and Newcastle Brown were sweet and dry respectively. Historically there may have been a slight bias to dry in the north, but there were sweet ones in Yorkshire and dry ones in Hampshire. It was fairly rare for them to be brewed, mostly they were just bottled dark milds, or pale milds with some caramel in - certainly after WWII but eg see this recipe from Shepherd Neame in 1956. In general they tended to use pale malt with sugar and caramel, they used little if any specialist malts.

For me the more interesting style is Double Brown, supposedly invented by Whitbread in 1927 and now pretty much forgotten, although it was probably harking back to the very earliest "modern" brown ales of Edwardian times, before WWI ruined them.Here's their 1954 version - Fuller's Extra Brown, Old Harry from 1955 is not dissimilar.

my point is that "brown" has been bastardized as a term. it meant the malt used- i.e. the flavor, not the color. you could make a pilsner with some carafa and it would turn brown. but it would taste nothing like brown malt and therefore nothing like a uk brown ale. unfortunately the color of the beer and malt became the name of the style and american brewers didnt pay attention to the details.

its a semantic point, i know. but the flavor of brown malt is so damn delicious that i feel its name and honor must be defended.

Nope, pretty much ever since the "modern" incarnation of brown ale in the 1890s, it's only the weaker ones(1030-ish) that have been made with mild malt - presumably because they were partigyled with porter? British brewers made the stronger brown ales from pale malt, sugar and caramel pretty much throughout the 20th century.

The BJCP guidelines are a complete mess in this area.

 

[SanPancho]

Nope, pretty much ever since the "modern" incarnation of brown ale in the 1890s, it's only the weaker ones(1030-ish) that have been made with mild malt -

im pretty sure i clearly referred to brown malt. which is NOT mild malt. not even close. not here, not there.

 

[ba-brewer]

Brewing up a classic English Brown ale

Does your recipe does "classic" mean typical or vintage? Just curious. From jaroporter and northern_brewer's comment sounds like it could mean both.

Also what temp did you use for mashing and what was the final gravity?

@northern_brewer
Thanks for the insight into English brown ales.

I only recently found that blog you linked, there is a lot of interesting recipes and information there. The watneys brown ale sounds scary. Never heard of old returned beer being pasteurized and added back to a fresh beer. Makes me happy that most of the beer I drink now is homebrew.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The watneys brown ale sounds scary. Never heard of old returned beer being pasteurized and added back to a fresh beer. Makes me happy that most of the beer I drink now is homebrew.

For context - US craft brewers worship and adore AB Inbev, in comparison to how British beer fans used to hate Watneys. Their Red Barrel arguably single-handedly created CAMRA and much of modern British beer culture. At least Bud is technically a good beer even if it's tasteless - Watneys couldn't even do that. You also have to remember the time - in the 1950s the UK was still recovering from war and rationing, in fact some of the rationing got worse after the war thanks to bad harvests and weather wrecking the cereal and potato harvests. So with that in mind it's maybe no surprise that brewers got in the habit of "stretching" their product with anything they could get their hands on.

I'm not saying nothing like that ever happens these days, but there's certainly far less of it - not least because of the move towards golden ales which don't hide slops as well as a muddy brown ale!

 

[Gravity]

Does your recipe does "classic" mean typical or vintage? Just curious. From jaroporter and northern_brewer's comment sounds like it could mean both.

Also what temp did you use for mashing and what was the final gravity?

I meant more typical as in maltier and sweeter on the palate, with a fuller body, notes of coffee/toffee and chocolate, sessionable dark ale

I just kegged it - final gravity was 1.012

I mashed at 150 for 75 min

This beer is brilliant, couple of days of mild carbing will sort it out further

 

[MSK_Chess]

I meant more typical as in maltier and sweeter on the palate, with a fuller body, notes of coffee/toffee and chocolate, sessionable dark ale

I just kegged it - final gravity was 1.012

I mashed at 150 for 75 min

This beer is brilliant, couple of days of mild carbing will sort it out further

I have a British Porter like that ready for Kegging too, 4.2% ABV, coffee, toffee and chocolate, started about 1052 finished just above 1012, medium bodied and slightly dry. Like the above contributor mentioned British beer, especially the Porter has been subject to all kinds of sway that essentially changed its grist and thus its character. Even regional variation was huge with the London Porter being twice as highly hopped as a Manchester one, way back in the 1800's.

 

[JordanKnudson]

For context - US craft brewers worship and adore AB Inbev, in comparison to how British beer fans used to hate Watneys. Their Red Barrel arguably single-handedly created CAMRA and much of modern British beer culture. At least Bud is technically a good beer even if it's tasteless - Watneys couldn't even do that. You also have to remember the time - in the 1950s the UK was still recovering from war and rationing, in fact some of the rationing got worse after the war thanks to bad harvests and weather wrecking the cereal and potato harvests. So with that in mind it's maybe no surprise that brewers got in the habit of "stretching" their product with anything they could get their hands on.

I'm not saying nothing like that ever happens these days, but there's certainly far less of it - not least because of the move towards golden ales which don't hide slops as well as a muddy brown ale!

Well now, there's an interesting little statement that you don't hear every day... seriously, as much as I have found the things you have to say interesting and informative, this one was either a typo or a wild misread of the American beer scene.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

For context - US craft brewers worship and adore AB Inbev, in comparison to how British beer fans used to hate Watneys.

Well now, there's an interesting little statement that you don't hear every day... seriously, as much as I have found the things you have to say interesting and informative, this one was either a typo or a wild misread of the American beer scene.

No, it was exactly what I wanted to say, you're just misreading it. I'm well aware of how much ABI is hated, but it's a comparison - I'm saying that however much ABI is hated now, Watneys was super-ultra-uber-mega hated.

 

[madscientist451]

A somewhat convoluted way to may your point, now I understand it.....
I'm somewhat puzzled why the brand or the company would be so hated, they sold lots of beer that was presumably consumed by lots of people?
PS: I don't hate ABInBev any more than I hate Walmart, Exxon, or Microsoft. They are all just big companies providing goods and services that people want. I save my hate for certain politicians, but we're not allowed to get into that here......

 

[Northern_Brewer]

A somewhat convoluted way to may your point, now I understand it.....
I'm somewhat puzzled why the brand or the company would be so hated, they sold lots of beer that was presumably consumed by lots of people?
PS: I don't hate ABInBev any more than I hate Walmart, Exxon, or Microsoft. They are all just big companies providing goods and services that people want. I save my hate for certain politicians, but we're not allowed to get into that here......

"clause..in comparison to...clause" is perfectly normal English - unlike "super-ultra-uber-mega hated"!

Watneys and the origin of CAMRA is a story that's been extensively documented elsewhere, it's a complex mix of factors that came together at the same time. A key part of it was the British economy cratering between the late 60s and early 80s - in terms of unemployment it was far far worse than the last 10 years. A lot of it was self-inflicted - union strikes and really poor quality manufacturing - but we were one of the first countries to experience deindustrialisation and then you had wider factors like the oil shock. So there was pressure for beer to be cheaper, regardless of quality - people just wanted their alcohol fix. And those customers were far less sophisticated gastronomically than now - things like pasta were a novelty and prawn cocktail was the height of sophistication. Then you had the generational thing where children reject their parents' drink - the baby boomers wanted lager and so the ale brewers responded by putting blander ales in keg at higher carbonation. You had brewers who had seen their business survive despite the effects of war and rationing on beer quality. And the killer was the control of distribution - most people tend to go to a pub because they can walk to it, or it has sport on, or it has a car park, or it's central for four friends, or it's next to the theatre, and they drink whatever is served there. So if a brewery ties the pub into their beer, the quality of the beer is a pretty low priority. For most people. And that's how you get a pint that is a quarter dregs and slops.

Until people call you out on it. The British kickback in the 1970s against keg ale, of which Watneys was the archetype, had a lot in common with the craft movement 30 years later, part of it was about the control over the industry of a handful of breweries and the way they cater to the lowest common denominator. However, Bud may be bland but at least it is superb from a technical point of view - consistency and freedom from off-flavours. Watneys was just plain bad beer.

One difference between ABI and Exxon is that you don't need much money to set up in business in competition with ABI. A redundancy cheque is enough, and there were plenty of those in the 80s, but a recovering economy meant that consumers had a bit of extra cash for affordable luxuries. Sounds familiar?

You also had a growing customer awareness of good food and drink - CAMRA was in the vanguard of the movement that gave you TV chefs,Martha Stewart, farmers' markets and all that.

 

[ba-brewer]

I have a British Porter like that ready for Kegging too, 4.2% ABV, coffee, toffee and chocolate, started about 1052 finished just above 1012, medium bodied and slightly dry.

What formula do you use for ABV? I have been using SG-FG*.131 for ABV, so 52-12*.131 would be 5.2%ABV.

The flavors of your porter sound good.

 

[JordanKnudson]

No, it was exactly what I wanted to say, you're just misreading it. I'm well aware of how much ABI is hated, but it's a comparison - I'm saying that however much ABI is hated now, Watneys was super-ultra-uber-mega hated.

Ah, yep, I see it now. Didn't so much misread it as I misunderstood the wording (which yes, before you launch into a defense, is technically correct--the best kind of correct!).

Interesting how a company can be so ostensibly unpopular, yet, presumably through aggressive marketing and distribution, continue to thrive and even dominate the marketplace. We certainly see it here today with ABI products. Despite all of the shade cast their way by craft beer drinkers, a large portion of the population doesn't care much and just continues to drink the cheapest, most widely available, and most familiar beers on the market, which are of course the macro lagers like Budweiser. So I imagine the landscape must have looked somewhat similar in the case of Watneys.(?) Hated by some but passively consumed by many.

 

[MSK_Chess]

What formula do you use for ABV? I have been using SG-FG*.131 for ABV, so 52-12*.131 would be 5.2%ABV.

The flavors of your porter sound good.

Hi my apologises ba-brewer I just quoted my softwares prediction of ABV as I remembered it. It was actually meant to have an original gravity of 1049 and finish at around 1017 (My software calculates that WLP002 English Ale does not attenuate out as much as other strains. So do Whitelabs! In praxis I have found that not to be the case) So i was slightly over my original gravity at 1052 and way under my predicted final gravity at I would say 1013. Yes I love the recipe and have brewed it many times. 5.2% you say - an added bonus! Cheers

 

[applescrap]

Not sure if this is off topic, sorry, but I love brown malt. Someone told me once that historically there were beers made with 100% brown malt. Not sure if that is true. This beer made me fall in love with Homebrew. Maybe I should get a bag of brown malt in bulk I love it that much.

View attachment 1503787506769.jpg

 

[SanPancho]

I hear you and agree

I've done both before, prefer the proper grain bill, however had to make due with what I had

Samples I tried were pretty spot on considering the circumstances

We shall see soon enough

by the way- meant to ask if you've ever used carabrown in place of brown. i assumed it was crystal and would be sweet, so i didnt bother checking it out. was recently told its actually not actually a cara/crystal, no glassy character at all, just seems to be a light roast like regular brown. descriptions say less of the bitter edge than regular brown, which sounds great to me.

any experience?

 

[MSK_Chess]

Not sure if this is off topic, sorry, but I love brown malt. Someone told me once that historically there were beers made with 100% brown malt. Not sure if that is true. This beer made me fall in love with Homebrew. Maybe I should get a bag of brown malt in bulk I love it that much.

yes its true, it used to be the cheapest malt, not only that but Brown malt was originally a smoked malt, smoked over Hornbeam! It was probably not as brown as today's brown malts though.

 

[Gravity]

by the way- meant to ask if you've ever used carabrown in place of brown. i assumed it was crystal and would be sweet, so i didnt bother checking it out. was recently told its actually not actually a cara/crystal, no glassy character at all, just seems to be a light roast like regular brown. descriptions say less of the bitter edge than regular brown, which sounds great to me.

any experience?

I have used it before in a porter and I wouldn't consider it sweet, i would say more biscuity and chocolatey, almost bread-sh quality to it. I'd use again it if I didn't want the overly roasted coffee/bitter brown variety. Its alot more subtle and smooth, with all the undertones you would expect of a subtle brown malt.

I would agree, it has less of an edge than regular brown and i would compare it along the same lines as maybe victory or biscuit malt

 

[yowzers]

Make sure you give us feedback when it's done. Some of my experimental brews were the best.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Interesting how a company can be so ostensibly unpopular, yet, presumably through aggressive marketing and distribution, continue to thrive and even dominate the marketplace. We certainly see it here today with ABI products. Despite all of the shade cast their way by craft beer drinkers, a large portion of the population doesn't care much and just continues to drink the cheapest, most widely available, and most familiar beers on the market, which are of course the macro lagers like Budweiser. So I imagine the landscape must have looked somewhat similar in the case of Watneys.(?) Hated by some but passively consumed by many.

There's lots of common features (and Watney's Mortlake brewery eventually ended up being Budweiser's main production site in Europe!) - Red Barrel, the fiirst mainstream keg ale was originally marketed as a premium product, the higher price reflecting the greater reliability over cask.

But look at the maths of ABI with 30% of the world beer market. Imagine 15% of beer drinkers believe the marketing and actively choose Bud every time, 60% of the world will "make do" with Bud 25% of the time, and 30% of the world refuse to touch the stuff. ABI get rich just from the 15% of "lovers", the 60% of "mehers" make them very rich - and they really don't care about the haters, no matter how much noise they make and even though they have twice the numbers of the lovers.

It's funny how Watney get picked out for the hate. Watney were never as big as ABI, but they were the biggest brewer in London for much of the 21st century, and being the face of London is not always a good thing in the rest of the UK. It's not quite like the Tea Party view of DC/East Coast liberalism, but there's an element of that kind of thing.

Part of it was that CAMRA was founded by people from northern England worried about the big national brands squashing local diversity. But the organisation soon settled near London, just off the newly-opened motorway to Burton and Yorkshire. So it would have felt that the local scene was dominated by London brewers, but they still had access to a promised land of diverse northern beers.

But it's probably no coincidence that CAMRA was created in the year that Watney Red Barrel was killed and replaced by Red, full of adjuncts and which I think marked the move to continuous fermentation. Red is generally regarded as the all-time low point of British beer, calling it brown Bud would be far too kind.