British brown ale

[Geoffrey006]

Hi guys,

What do you think of this BBA recipe ?

Thank you

 

[corax]

It's going to be very roasty tasting with 15% brown malt - closer to a Porter really, if that matters to you.

I'd suggest using less (~5%) of a British crystal instead of CaraMunich.

Also, if style is important, I might drop the finishing hops, and just stick with the 60 minute hops addition.

 

[Geoffrey006]

Hello !
Thank you for your comment, unfortunately I don't have any british crystal available for this recipe.
What do you think about reducing brown malt and increasing maris otter like this then:
- Maris otter: 80%
- Brown malt: 7.5%
- Biscuit malt: 5%
- Caramunich malt: 5%
- Chocolate malt: 2.5%

I will also remove the 15mn and 5mn hop addition and do 22g of EKG during 60mn instead.

 

[corax]

It really depends on what flavor you are aiming for. Brown malt adds a dry, roasted flavor, but not much else. For my tastes, that flavor is most appropriate in a Porter or Stout, and I would leave it out of a Brown Ale entirely.

 

[Geoffrey006]

I'm a bit confused, are we talking about American brown ale or British brown ale ?

My goal is to make a british brown ale, and from what I saw the brown malt is a common grain to add (here it's the 6th most used grain: https://www.brewersfriend.com/styles/british-brown-ale/)

 

[Queequeg]

Brown malt adds a coffee and sough dough quality. It fine in a brown ale. The most simplest recipes will use some medium crystal and chocolate malt.

I did a quick google and BYO mag has a northen english brown

https://byo.com/article/northern-english-brown-ale-style-profile/

it uses special roast which is briess' attempts at making English brown malt. It would be a straight sub. Victory is not english but i really like it in a brown. The alternative if you want to keep it english would be amber, but you would need to use less and it might take a while to mature to drinking. Biscuit would work well. I would go for either biscuit or victory and sub the special roast for english brown.

 

[corax]

I'm a bit confused, are we talking about American brown ale or British brown ale ?

I wouldn't use Brown Malt in either, but if anything I'd say it is less appropriate in British Brown Ale than American Brown Ale, as you sometimes find strong roasted flavor in examples of the latter.

My goal is to make a british brown ale, and from what I saw the brown malt is a common grain to add (here it's the 6th most used grain: https://www.brewersfriend.com/styles/british-brown-ale/)

I'm not sure I'd count on a compilation of brewersfriend user recipes for the final say in British beer styles, tasty though they may be. I'd try to find a Brit -- maybe one will chime in here. Failing that, I'd check the BJCP guidelines. The first sentence for the style says,

"A malty, brown caramel-centric British ale without the roasted flavors of a Porter."

Since Brown Malt imparts the roasted flavors of a Porter, to me that says "Don't use Brown Malt."

At one time I got obsessed with perfecting a Brown Ale recipe (aimed at my own tastes, not questionable style guidelines). I really wanted to include Brown Malt, but even at small proportions it made it too dry and roasty. I made the same mistake with Pale Chocolate Malt: when I added enough to get the color I wanted, it was way too dry and roasty. In the end, the only roast malt I used was about 2.5% Dark Chocolate Malt, which at that modest level gives plenty of dark color but only a hint of roastiness.

All that said, if you want your Brown Ale to taste roasty like a Porter, then by all means add Brown Malt, regardless of what style guidelines or internet hacks like me say!

I did a quick google and BYO mag has a northen english brown

https://byo.com/article/northern-english-brown-ale-style-profile/

it uses special roast which is briess' attempts at making English brown malt. It would be a straight sub. Victory is not english but i really like it in a brown.

Special Roast is nothing at all like Brown Malt. Special Roast is a kilned malt, similar to Biscuit Malt or Victory Malt, or Honey Malt (all of which are great additions to Brown Ale). Special Roast imparts a biscuity maltiness and a bit of sweetness, not the dry roasted flavor of Brown Malt.

 

[Queequeg]

My bad, I'm sure I read somewhere on this forum that special roast was breiss' equivalent and that you could sub.

In a porter you would use a large quantity, depending on how many other roast malts there are that can easily be 50%, its only the fact that it won't convert you can't use more. A recent imperial stout I made had 11% brown malt along with 5% of other roast grains and it was very mild in the roast character.You can a lot of biscuit/ bready character from it, not so much roast ime.

So I don't see why you can't use a small % in a brown ale.

May I ask what maltster you are using for your brown malt. The fact that you say when adding chocolate malt for color it came out too roasty is suprising to me. Either you using a maltster with signficantly more assertive roasting than I am used too or your very sensitive to roasted character.

 

[corax]

My bad, I'm sure I read somewhere on this forum that special roast was breiss' equivalent and that you could sub.

Well, Briess' own website calls it "roasted malt", though in their description they make it clear it's more of a biscuit-type malt:
http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Roasted.htm

May I ask what maltster you are using for your brown malt. The fact that you say when adding chocolate malt for color it came out too roasty is suprising to me. Either you using a maltster with signficantly more assertive roasting than I am used too or your very sensitive to roasted character.

It was some time ago and I didn't specify in my notes, but it was certainly an English maltster -- probably Crisp or Bairds.

I love roasted malt flavor, and would never shy away from using Brown Malt (or any type of Chocolate Malt or Black Patent Malt) in a Porter or Stout. It just wasn't the flavor I wanted in my Brown Ale.

 

[thehaze]

I've used Crisp Brown malt in a Brown ale and will use again soon. Even at 6%, I never experienced any roasty notes, and this was coupled with 6% Chateau Light Coffee malt, Maris Otter and some medium and dark Crystal malts. It was smooth, sublt coffee notes, light chocolatey, biscuitty, not overly sweet: 40 IBUs, 6.7% and very easy drinking.

I guess it's a matter of trying out and finding out what you like in a specific style of beer. I am sure Brown malt will not ruin the beer, but it might lend flavours you do not appreciate entirely in a Brown or better said, the " kind of Brown ale you imagine and hope to brew ".

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm a bit confused, are we talking about American brown ale or British brown ale ?

My goal is to make a british brown ale, and from what I saw the brown malt is a common grain to add (here it's the 6th most used grain: https://www.brewersfriend.com/styles/british-brown-ale/)

Brewersfriend is wrong - brown malt has no part in British brown ales. You have to remember that they're fundamentally a relative of the bitter/pale mild family, rather than the porter/stout family - indeed historically most British brown ales were just a bottled version of a brewer's bitter/mild with some caramel in it.

Also you have to work out what kind of brown ale you're trying to make - and that doesn't include "northern brown ale" which is something Michael Jackson invented and which BJCP have sensibly ignored since 2015. But arguably you could say that there are three types, London brown ale, single brown ale and double brown ale. Mann's is the obvious example of the former, it used to be advertised as the sweetest beer on the market and is very much a competitor for milk stout. The 1958 Younger's is an example of the second - 60:30:10 pale:flaked maize:sugar to 1.031 and 83% attenuation, presumably with some caramel for colour. Many had a bit less flaked maize, or subbed some/all for flaked barley, and 3-7% crystal was pretty common. Then Whitbread Double Brown was pale malt with 16% invert #3 and 1% chocolate at 1.053 and 72% attenuation.

Then you have Newcastle Brown which is one of those benchmark beers that is something of an outlier for its style ,and is made completely differently being a blend of old and new beer.

Anyway - it depends what style you're going for. But keep it simple, these are cheap, uncomplicated beers - and don't use brown malt.

 

[corax]

All I've ever seen in the US is Newcastle (bottled and kegged) and Sam Smith's (bottled). The closest I've gotten on my few trips to England has been a watery mild or two.

My CAMRA-member friends all scoff at Brown Ale, having only encountered adjunct-laden bottled versions. What I (and probably many Americans) think of as "Brown Ale" would probably get called "Strong Mild" in the UK.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

All I've ever seen in the US is Newcastle (bottled and kegged) and Sam Smith's (bottled). The closest I've gotten on my few trips to England has been a watery mild or two.

My CAMRA-member friends all scoff at Brown Ale, having only encountered adjunct-laden bottled versions. What I (and probably many Americans) think of as "Brown Ale" would probably get called "Strong Mild" in the UK.

Well to be honest, those two and Mann's are pretty much the only ones that get any kind of distribution even in the UK (to be honest even Sam's can be pretty hard to find), there's a couple of local ones like Maxim but not many. So yes, for the average Brit brown ale is what their grandfathers drank in bottles at a time when draught mild was full of recycled slops. Almost all that beer was 1.030-1.036-ish, only Mann's is left at that kind of level.

So you could argue that we've seen a US re-interpretation of a name that's almost more radical than what's happened to IPA. Personally I'd probably split off Newky Brown into a category for blended beers, it's got more in common with the likes of Old Crafty Hen than traditional brown ales.

Mind you, even strong mild is rare enough here, although it's a style I'm fond of.

 

[Geoffrey006]

Brewersfriend is wrong - brown malt has no part in British brown ales. You have to remember that they're fundamentally a relative of the bitter/pale mild family, rather than the porter/stout family - indeed historically most British brown ales were just a bottled version of a brewer's bitter/mild with some caramel in it.

Also you have to work out what kind of brown ale you're trying to make - and that doesn't include "northern brown ale" which is something Michael Jackson invented and which BJCP have sensibly ignored since 2015. But arguably you could say that there are three types, London brown ale, single brown ale and double brown ale. Mann's is the obvious example of the former, it used to be advertised as the sweetest beer on the market and is very much a competitor for milk stout. The 1958 Younger's is an example of the second - 60:30:10 pale:flaked maize:sugar to 1.031 and 83% attenuation, presumably with some caramel for colour. Many had a bit less flaked maize, or subbed some/all for flaked barley, and 3-7% crystal was pretty common. Then Whitbread Double Brown was pale malt with 16% invert #3 and 1% chocolate at 1.053 and 72% attenuation.

Then you have Newcastle Brown which is one of those benchmark beers that is something of an outlier for its style ,and is made completely differently being a blend of old and new beer.

Anyway - it depends what style you're going for. But keep it simple, these are cheap, uncomplicated beers - and don't use brown malt.

So if I understand correctly my recipe is not a British brown ale, even if I remove the brown malt ?

What would you think of this grain bill ?:
Maris-otter: 70%
Biscuit: 17.5%
Caramunich type 2: 10%
Chocolate: 2.5%

I'm looking for an easy to drink, low alcohol, low bitterness kind of brown beer, and tought that the Brit brown ale would be a good option for this kind of need.

I also have to say that I'm a beginner brewer, this will be my second beer ever (first one was a hefeweizen that had some success), and I never used all the malts that I plan to use here, so not sure what the result would be.

Thank you !

 

[corax]

17% biscuit malt is way too much (and I am a big fan of biscuit malt). Honestly, with Maris Otter as base you probably don't need any biscuit malt, but I think around 5% would be a nice addition.

10% CaraMunich is on the high side, but should be OK (I'd probably go with 5% there, too).

2.5% Chocolate Malt is good.

 

[Geoffrey006]

The problem is that with 83.5% maris otter, 9% Caramunich, 5% Biscuit and 2.5% Chocolate, my color is at the low low range of the EBC for a Brit brown ale. I reach only 24 EBC, and ideally I would have like 30.

 

[corax]

The problem is that with 83.5% maris otter, 9% Caramunich, 5% Biscuit and 2.5% Chocolate, my color is at the low low range of the EBC for a Brit brown ale. I reach only 24 EBC, and ideally I would have like 30.

Do you have access to Carafa malts from Weyermann? If so, replace (or augment) the Chocolate Malt with enough Carafa III (de-husked if possible) to hit your color target. The Carafa adds a lot of color with only very mild additional roast flavor.

You could bump up the Biscuit Malt, but don't go above 10%.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The problem is that with 83.5% maris otter, 9% Caramunich, 5% Biscuit and 2.5% Chocolate, my color is at the low low range of the EBC for a Brit brown ale. I reach only 24 EBC, and ideally I would have like 30.

It's a common mistake to try to hit colour targets on British beers by loading up on highly-coloured, highly-flavoured ingredients, but that's not how they work - much of the colour was achieved by colouring with simple caramel. Remember, most brown ales were just bottled versions of a brewer's bitter, with colouring added - it's actually quite rare to find separate recipes for a brown ale. So if you're bothered about it, just use caramel. Or a pinch of black malt if that's not convenient.

I'd agree about keeping the biscuit low/zero - as with British cooking, British brewing tends to use pretty simple recipes to allow the quality of the raw materials to come through. Otter on its own is great - a lot of my beers are just 100% Otter.

 

[Queequeg]

I have some castle cafe light malt which I might use in a brown ale soon. Its much smoother than brown malt, a bit more like a crystal malt. It taste basically like a latte. I thought this might be an interesting flavor for a brown. I ma contemplating making it an imperial brown. Styles guidelines and history be damned!

 

[thehaze]

I have used Crisp Brown malt and Castle Cafe Light ( about 95L I think ) together in a Brown with a combination of Crystal malt. Base was all Maris Otter. 40 IBUs, 6.7% ABV... It was definitely not as roasted, or biscuitty as I would have thought. There is a slight coffee presence, with good caramel and maltimess in the background. The best thing about it was that despite being nearly 7%, it never felt as much. And it was also a hit with the ladies.