english brown?

[inthesound]

A few weeks back, I put together a recipe, not really knowing the exact style I was working with. I had an idea of how it was going to come out, but after doing some reading, sounds like I may have a made a higher gravity version of a english brown. Recipe as follows:

10# thomas fawcett maris otter
.5# munton's crystal 65
.5# briess munich 10L
.72# briess midnight wheat

Mashed@150 for 60 minutes

2oz goldings@60
1oz goldings@30
.5oz fuggles@15
1oz fuggles@flame out
1oz fuggles dry hop

pitched fermentis s-04

o.g. 1.067
f.g. 1.014
40 ibu's
6.9% abv
25 srm

My gravity ended up being a bit higher than I was aiming for, which threw my ibu's out of balance and ended up being on the sweeter side of things. It has a really big prominent crystal malt character, mostly toffee, and has a little toasty character from the midnight wheat. I think the midnight wheat aids in the beer's smoothness as well.

Does this sound like an english brown, or am I way out of line? I think the next version would be a little lighter, back off a hair on the midnight wheat, and the crystal malt. This beer has plenty of body, so I don't know that I would even keep munich in a future version. I would also try to keep the beer around 6%.

 

[JKaranka]

Sounds like a difficult job. For me the point of a brown ale is that it has plenty of crystal malt, sweetness and low attenuating yeast to bring plenty of flavour and body to a beer that otherwise could be too weak. Bringing the strength up and up either makes something quite sweet or radically changes the style. You could look at the recipe for Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild (6%abv, and meant to be 20% crystal malt), though!

 

[inthesound]

I am surprised that my beer is as sweet as it is with the small amount of crystal malt in it. However, the new version will be just a hair lighter on the midnight wheat, I'll keep the crystal the same, and cut the Munich altogether. If I shoot for a lower gravity, my yeast should attenuate a little lower than this first batch.

It is quite delicious, and dangerous at nearly 7% abv, it does not drink like such. Hooray to happy accidents!

 

[JKaranka]

Now that I think about it, you might want to add some sugar. Lots of British ales have some sugar added (all the way from milds to bitters and strong ales). Would dry it out a tad and balance the maltiness.

 

[45thparallelhopper]

If you go off your IBUs, it's a bit high for a standard English brown. The SRM is in range. What I remember from the OG is a bit high for English. It seems like your beer is edging more towards an American Brown ale. Either way sounds pretty good

 

[stz]

Congratulations you made beer. Style guidelines are just that, guidelines so I tend to use them as a starting out point when trying to understand why these stylistic conventions exist and what was the evolution this this particular beer and its ingredients. Once you know some rules, you can figure out how to stretch them.

Like the mild mentioned before at 6%. A traditional mild with historically accurate ingredients that strong is almost unthinkable, you'd struggle balancing all that sweet malt character with low hopping and tricking a yeast to not ferment it dry, but if you think of the character of mild, you can just do it with modern ingredients, various crystal malts and keep the base malt profile as dry as possible, pick a yeast with medium attenuation. Use sugar to bring the abv up without adding excess body etc.

Your hops are straight out of every british best bitter ever. Your malts are 'adding a little character'. Your mash is low and dry hence hitting 1.014 with the typically British S04, even without the addition of sugar.

I personally use sugar in lots of my beers, alcohol of course, but usually for balance with an eye to colour. I like beers strong but dry, good foundation for hop forward beers, not cloying, like to vary yeasts, don't want to always stick to the yeasts that do this anyway.

 

[JKaranka]

@stz: British milds, traditionally, have been quite strong, from og 1.050 upwards. The Sarah Hughes might be closer to those ales than to the modern counterparts!
More info here: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/short-history-of-mild.html