Southern brown ale

[sptaylor70]

I'm planning to brew a southern brown ale in the next couple of weeks, and would appreciate critique of my recipe.

Batch size - 2.7 gallons

Method BIAB

Grain
Pale 2-row malt - 3 lbs.
Victory malt - 1 lb.
Crystal 80L - 8 oz.
Crystal 120L - 4 oz.
Chocolate malt - 4 oz.
Wheat malt - 2 oz.

Hops Willamette - 0.5 oz., boiled 60 minutes

Yeast Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale in a 1 L starter.

Single infusion mash. Mash-in temperature 150 °F. Mash in a 200 °F oven, so as to ramp the temperature slowly from 150 °F to 158 °F. Drain, then remash/tea-bag-sparge in a second pot at 158 °F for 10 minutes. Combine mash and remash/sparge water in a single pot, and boil 90 minutes.

Cool, pitch, wait, bottle, wait, drink.

 

[david_42]

The recipe looks fine and (low ABV) Brown ales are good to go by the time they carbonate. Use about half as much priming sugar as you would normally and serve around 50F.

 

[sptaylor70]

Are you using BrewSmith to check my ABV? I have been using TastyBrew (because it's free), and have noticed a difference between the calculated results. TastyBrew gives me 4.4% ABV (assuming a 70% brewhouse efficiency), which is right in the middle for the style. If this works well, I might bump up the Victory in the future, which would then bump up the ABV.

 

[sptaylor70]

Brewed yesterday, BIAB, mashed-in at 154 °F. Mashed one hour, then remashed half hour. Boiled 90 minutes, then cooled. OG = 1.062, so I overshot by a fair bit (If I understand the calculation correctly, I'm getting 85+% efficiency. Had been assuming 70%.). Pitched the yeast, started bubbling within twelve hours. We'll see how it develops.

 

[sptaylor70]

Clear, dark red. Thin, tan head. Medium mouthfeel. Very biscuity flavor, bordering on sour. Dry finish. Next time, less Victory (4 oz.). Maybe make up the residual in Vienna and/or Munich.