Brown Ale recipe

[Dogs.N.Beer]

Hey you all, pretty new to home brewing. But I'm trying to create my own recipe for a brown ale and need some feed back on what I threw together. Any criticism, changes and suggestions are greatly appreciated and wanted. Here's what I put together:

5gal Batch

.25lbs chocolate malt
.25lbs Belgian Special B
.25lbs Belgian Biscuit
.25lbs Briess Special Roast

6lbs Muntons Plain Dark DME

1oz Centennial Leaf Hops for bittering
2oz Willamette Leaf Hops for Aroma

Wyeast 1332 NW

I was also entertaining the idea of dry hopping but not sure what hops or if I should just not do it. Again, this is my first attempt at creating my own recipe. Just want to know if it's totally wack or if I'm heading in the right direction. I'll take any and all advice!

 

[BrewMan13]

In general for extract brewing, it's usually better to use light DME as a base regardless of style, and build the color/flavor from the specialty malts. Gives more controllable and predictable results. Also, if you switched to light DME, you could up some of the specialty malts (chocolate and biscuit), though I'd keep the special roast and special B where they are. I assume you know Special B is actually a pretty dark crystal malt known for raisin-y flavors (I think I would use 40L or 60L crystal in a brown ale personally), but at that amount you should be ok.

 

[DonGavlar]

yeah I'd use a pale LME or light DME as the base and build the colour and flavour profile from there.

I brewed a really nice brown recently. My recipe is all grain but here's it converted to extract:

9 lb Pale liquid malt extract.
0.53 lbs Crystal 60.
0.35 lbs crystal 120.
2.8 oz Biscuit.
2.8 oz Chocolate.
20g EKG (60 mins)
20g EKG (15 mins)
20g cascade (5 mins)
20g cascade (0 mins)
WLP005 1.5L starter

I've used cascade in my last few browns, find it goes really well.

 

[Dogs.N.Beer]

In general for extract brewing, it's usually better to use light DME as a base regardless of style, and build the color/flavor from the specialty malts. Gives more controllable and predictable results. Also, if you switched to light DME, you could up some of the specialty malts (chocolate and biscuit), though I'd keep the special roast and special B where they are. I assume you know Special B is actually a pretty dark crystal malt known for raisin-y flavors (I think I would use 40L or 60L crystal in a brown ale personally), but at that amount you should be ok.

Thanks for the input! Yeah I just wanted to experiment with the Special B. As for the chocolate and biscuit what do you recommend? Bump it up to 1/2 lbs each or more?

 

[Hoppy_Sanchez]

I don’t brew extract but for your specialty grains it’s a good baseline. I’d step up the chocolate malt up to .5lb. See what’s in your dark dme. It may have what you are already adding to it. MAybe start with a light dme, throw in the .5 chocolate, .25 biscuit, I’d throw in some carafa 2, maybe some crystal 60-80. Taste the grains if you have a home
Brew shop near by.

Hops look good. Not sure if your going for a standard brown but keep it 25-40 ibus. 60/30/10 minute additions. I’d throw that willamette at 30 and 10. Maybe even throw some centennial at flame out.

Dry hop it! Throw in centennial and chinook. 1 oz each toward the end of fermentation.


Your yeast is a great choice. Definitely expresses the malt character. I use it for my stout and it’s a monster. Blow off for sure. Gets messy. You’ll smell it. Use a 6.5 gal+ fermenter.

 

[BrewMan13]

Thanks for the input! Yeah I just wanted to experiment with the Special B. As for the chocolate and biscuit what do you recommend? Bump it up to 1/2 lbs each or more?

Depending on what you want you can go up to a lb of either. The version I'm planning this year has a pound of victory (similar to biscuit) and pale chocolate, which just brings the color to mid-range for the style.