Experimental Beer Dark Cream Ale

[Golddiggie]

Recipe Type

All Grain

Yeast

Wyeast 1318

Yeast Starter

2L

Batch Size (Gallons)

6.5

Original Gravity

1.063

Final Gravity

1.022

Boiling Time (Minutes)

60

IBU

17.9

Color

20.0

Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)

28

Tasting Notes

Slight hint of the chocolate malt, smooth mouth feel. Tasty brew.

12# Pale Malt, Maris Otter
1# 2oz Honey Malt
1# British Crystal Malt II (65L)
6oz Chocolate Malt
1oz East Kent Goldings (5.00% AA) 15 min.
1oz East Kent Goldings (5.00% AA) 10 min.
1oz East Kent Goldings (5.00% AA) 5 min.
1oz East Kent Goldings (5.00% AA) 0 min.

Mash with 20qt water (my keggle mash tun has 3qt dead space, so I used 23qt) at 152F for 60 minutes.
Sparge as normal for your system (I use a Blichmann Auto Sparge).

Ferment at 64-66F for 2-4 weeks then bottle/keg as normal. I keg, and I let it go a full month in fermenter/primary before I transfer to serving kegs. I also use the 2-3 week 'set and forget' carbonation method to force carbonate.
Carbonate to ~2.6 CO2 volumes.

At ~5.4% ABV, this is an easy drinking brew. While I carbonate it more in the cream ale range, the more malty nature places it more into the English brown ale segment. Especially with using an English yeast strain.

Best if the keg is kept around 40F for this one.

 

[DilsmackDude]

This is only my third all grain attempt, I tried to follow this recipe and I just bottled it the other night. I was wondering how you got such a normal ABV. mine came out to about 7 or 7.2%. Which is way too high for my liking. With that much grain how do you have such a low gravity and alcohol content? I had an OG of 1.070 and FG of 1.014.