Brown Ale recipe help

[kidsmoke]

Hello!

I've been a lurker for a little while, but I'm brewing up my first all grain batch this weekend and need a little help. I plan on doing an English-ish brown ale based around Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown. I tried formulating the recpie around ingredients they gave me when I emailed them about what they use to make the beer. The only problem I have is figuring out the proper amount of specialty malts, e.g. biscuit, aromatic, crystal 80/120. Any help would be appreciated on this front.

Also, I had questions about how much sparge water I should use. I was planning on a 1.33 qt/lb for the mash (approx. 2 gallons), but I wasn't sure how much to use for the sparge. I used this calculator to find out my sparge amount, and it told me to do 2 gallons. The problem is I only have a 3.5 gallon kettle (4.0 gallons if you fill it to the edge...which I probably won't.). Would it be alright to batch sparge the grains in two 1 gallon pots, boil the volume down a little in the seperate pots and then combine everything?

Batch size: 3 gallons

90 minutes boil.

63% 4lbs American Two-row Pale
20% 1lbs 4oz Munich Malt - 10L
4% 4oz American Crystal 80L
4% 4oz Biscuit Malt
4% 4oz Wheat Malt
3% 3oz Aromatic Malt
2% 2oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L

total grain amount: 6 lbs 5 oz.

hopping schedule
20 mins .5 oz Styrian Goldings 5.2% AAU
20 mins .5 oz Northern Brewer 8.5% AAU
5 mins 1 oz American Goldings 4.0%
1 mins 1 oz Sonnet 3.3%

Yeast: Wyeast 1762 starter from last batch.

 

[pkeeler]

What OG are you expecting? Can't be very high, maybe 1.035?

I think you need a bigger boil pot. You should be able to get an 8 gal. canning pot at a decent price. I would really suggest a wort chiller too, since it will take too long to cool 5 gal. of wort without one.

Your 3.5 gal. pot will even be a little small for mashing.

But I think your recipe looks spot on for a very nice brown ale. Your hop schedule is all up front. I don't know if you will get enough bitterness to balance out the beer. Maybe move the Northern Brewer back to 60 min.

I just don't think you can boil 3.5 gal. down to 2 gal. over 90 min. and then dilute it to 5 gal. with good results. You will probably start scorching the sugar, and your hops will never take.

 

[pkeeler]

If you had two 4 gal. pots, you could split everything evenly between them, boil 6.5 gal. to 5 gal, with good results.

 

[kidsmoke]

I should reiterate that I'm doing a 3 gallon batch, and hoping to hit a OG of 1.053. And my calculations put me roughly at 30 ibus, so I think I should be fine.

 

[pkeeler]

Oops, sorry I missed that. If you put 2 gal. in with your 6.5 lbs of grains, you will run off only about 1-1.5 gal. or wort. The grain absorbs quite a bit. That is why the program is saying to sparge with 2 gal. to get 3.5-4 gal.

Would it be alright to batch sparge the grains in two 1 gallon pots, boil the volume down a little in the seperate pots and then combine everything?

I'm a little confused by this, I think you meant "into" instead of "in". So, you would have three pots boiling (4 gal., 1 gal., 1 gal.). You can do that. I don't think you need 6 gal. of wort to get to 3 gal. though. But I guess if you didn't top them off (which would be messy with boil overs), you could have 3.5 gal, .75 gal, and .75 gal, which would give you 5 gal. But I don't think you will collect more than 3.5 gal.

 

[torbanac]

What container are you sparging in? I don't think 6lbs of grain is going to fit in a 1 gallon pot. Because of the size of your pot you may want to consider a modified brew in a bag. Mash with as much water you can fit in your pot with your grains and then sparge with as much water as you need to get to the preboil volume. I did a brown ale with a 3 gallon preboil volume that came out at
2.5 gallons after 60 a minute boil.

 

[kidsmoke]

I think the plan at this point is to mash with approx. 2 gallons in a BIAB set up with my 3.5 kettle. Pour out the first runnings, then dump in ~2.5 gallons and sparge with that, and recombine with the first runnings.