Is This A True American Style Brown Ale?

[rodwha]

I had 1/4 lb of pale chocolate that had been sitting around for about 2 months that I figured I ought to use up and made up a quick brown ale recipe. It's very mild in flavor and goes down quite easy. Though I greatly enjoy roasty or chocolatey brown ales, I like this one too.

Here's the 4.5 gal recipe in question:
4 lbs Briess pilsen LME
1 lb Briess Bavarian wheat DME
1/2 lb crystal 60
1/2 lb crystal 120
1/4 lb pale chocolate 200*L
1/4 lb light brown sugar
3 oz molasses
1/4 lb light DME
1/2 oz Perle @ 60 mins
1 oz Ahtnum @ 20/5 mins
WLP 001/1272

18* SRM, 23.3 IBU's

As an aside I ate at a Mexican restaurant recently and had a Negra Modelo, which I thought was a lager, but is actually an ale. Is this a true brown ale? It, too, is mild on flavor with no real roasty or chocolatey notes.

 

[rodwha]

A friend of mine tried it and loved it. I intend on using grains to achieve my flavors, but he thinks I ought to leave it alone and make it a house ale.

He enjoys porters and stouts, along with IPA's mostly.

 

[rodwha]

Should I use Carafa II Special just for the color to nix the brown sugar and molasses?

 

[gelatin]

http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style10.php#1c

Your use of pils and wheat are not on style. Everything else is generally within style, though on the lighter/maltier side of american browns. I would be concerned with the sugar lightening mouthfeel unnecessarily, but either molasses or debittered black malt is fine for the color, or you could just bump up the chocolate malt. That's a lot of pure crystal. I haven't run the numbers, but your ABV may be on the high end. All in all, I would expect a sweeter, thinner, lighter beer that would be pushing the style guideline limits.

 

[chickypad]

As an aside I ate at a Mexican restaurant recently and had a Negra Modelo, which I thought was a lager, but is actually an ale.

Negra Modelo is a Vienna lager

 

[rodwha]

ABV ended up being about 5.3%
I had added wheat long ago when I was having problems with head retention. Using the pilsner extract with the Carapils in it should negate that need, but I've just continued to do it.
The sugars did thin it a little bit, but it seems to have helped make it appealing it.
I'm not sure about the crystal %, but it's certainly at the top (20%+), and may be too much.

I've been generally using 1 lb of crystal malts in my various beers, and 1 1/2 lbs in my Arrogant Bastard clone.