Please critique my english brown ale recipe

[kkaarr]

Hello there,

This week I am brewing an English Brown Ale and here is the recipe.

54% pale malt 2 row
22% marris otter
6% Amber malt
3% biscuit malt
3% vienna malt
2% Carafa 3 special roast
2% melanoidin
8 % honey (not malt) to achieve OG: 1,047
The yeast will be London ESB

Hop addition:
East kent Goldings at 60 min for 25 IBU
East kent Goldings at 5 min for 0,5 IBU

Please advice.

Thanks

 

[Miraculix]

3% Vienna does not do anything. I wouldn't add melanoidin, that's something when you would want to mimic decoction mashing, which isn't a normal practice for British ales. Why split the base malt? I would use only mo, not the other pale ale malt.

 

[kkaarr]

Percentage of MO is the maximum amount in hand right now.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Amber is a English biscuit-style malt, probably don't need both. If you go all MO for the base malt, you won't miss either the Vienna or the melanoidin.

Honey is pretty expensive sugar to use here. The flavor likely won't survive the boil and fermentation. Better might be easily homemade invert #2 or 3.

 

[kkaarr]

If I move the honey to primary after high krausen?

I am using vienna and biscuit because I dont have enough MO in hand.

 

[Barbarossa]

Replace 2 row by MO. Throw the 2 row away.

 

[Garage12brewing]

I would use 100% marris otter but I understand that its all you got so its all good. I would also skip meladoin and Vienna.

I like the idea of the honey addition in the fermenter. I drinked a very very good Honey brown ale from a local smal brewery and its the best Brown Ale I ever got... so go for it and let me know !

 

[DBhomebrew]

Honey brown ale

Did they use actual honey or honey malt?

 

[Garage12brewing]

Did they use actual honey or honey malt?

You got me on that one... let me ask them... I never tought that it could be the honey malt in there...

 

[kkaarr]

The intention of using honey is to promote the dry crispy finish while using other malts to promote sweetness.

 

[Miraculix]

The intention of using honey is to promote the dry crispy finish while using other malts to promote sweetness.

You have to replace malt with honey, otherwise it won't make anything crisp. It would only add more abv.

Anyway it should work here, but don't expect flavour from it and if adding it to the fermenter, make sure to boil it first, otherwise native yeasts will contaminate your beer.

 

[kkaarr]

Boil or pasteurize?

 

[Miraculix]

Boil or pasteurize?

As you like.

 

[RufusBrewer]

Is the London ESB yeast the stuff below? I used that once and was not happy with the results. I do not know exactly what casused things to go wrong. Perhaps an aggrate of errors. The fermtation was not smooth. I have seen reviews also have unfavorable things to say about the yeast. I will never use it again.

As with anything and everything homebrew, Your Results May Vary. (cue: somebody will chime in how they use this yeast without any problems)

https://www.morebeer.com/products/london-esb-yeast-lallemand-11.html

 

[kkaarr]

Yes that's it. I have used this yeast one more time. With temperature raise and with little corn sugar after high krausen I achieved 72% attenuation with this yeast. The result for a mild were pretty average though.

 

[kevin58]

I would remove the amber, biscuit, Vienna, Carafa III, melanoidin and honey and replace it with some crystal 40 or 60 and some invert #2 or #3 sugar. British brewers would have added some brewers caramel (not caramel malt) to get the color they wanted but you could also do that with just a pinch of chocolate malt.

 

[RufusBrewer]

I would remove the amber, biscuit, Vienna, Carafa III, melanoidin and honey and replace it with some crystal 40 or 60 and some invert #2 or #3 sugar. British brewers would have added some brewers caramel (not caramel malt) to get the color they wanted but you could also do that with just a pinch of chocolate malt.

+1

I do not know what the little bits of grain will do for your beer. If you have those grains on hand and want to throw them into the mashtun with an "Oh Well. What The Heck." attitude, you can. I would not order that grain bill and have that many line items in your Grain BOM.

 

[BigEd]

If I move the honey to primary after high krausen?

I am using vienna and biscuit because I dont have enough MO in hand.

Honestly, brew something else until you have enough UK pale malt to do the job. The grist bill is way over complicated. These are simple beers and should have the big malt flavor provided by solid base of good UK pale malt. You've got a patchwork quilt of a beer there. It may wind up being perfectly drinkable but it isn't going to hit the target of an English brown ale.

 

[tennesseean_87]

Amber malt in a brown is great. 3% Vienna is silly unless you're trying to use it up. some caramel malt wouldn't be amiss.

You have to replace malt with honey, otherwise it won't make anything crisp. It would only add more abv.

Anyway it should work here, but don't expect flavour from it and if adding it to the fermenter, make sure to boil it first, otherwise native yeasts will contaminate your beer.

I was under the impression that honey is pretty good to go as-is. I thought that's why you have to add so much yeast nutrient to it to make it ferment in a mead, so the need to pasteurize surprises me.

 

[Miraculix]

Amber malt in a brown is great. 3% Vienna is silly unless you're trying to use it up. some caramel malt wouldn't be amiss.



I was under the impression that honey is pretty good to go as-is. I thought that's why you have to add so much yeast nutrient to it to make it ferment in a mead, so the need to pasteurize surprises me.

No. Honey is full of wild yeasts, if not pasteurised. The low water and high sugar content inhibits these yeasts from further growth and forces them to go dormant. But as soon as water is added, they all wake up.

You can make wild mead without any commercial yeast by just adding water to the honey.

The reason we usually add nutrients is that honey lacks almost everything, except sugar and our yeasts are spoiled little things, especially the beer yeasts. They are used to an abundance of nutrients, otherwise they won't do their job properly.

 

[bwible]

+1

I do not know what the little bits of grain will do for your beer. If you have those grains on hand and want to throw them into the mashtun with an "Oh Well. What The Heck." attitude, you can. I would not order that grain bill and have that many line items in your Grain BOM.

I’ve done this in the past. The “clean up the odds and ends” brown ale where you take all the little bags of this and that with an ounce here, 2 ounces there, 1/4 lb here and throw them all together into a brown ale recipe to use them all up. I made them into an American brown ale though. One was a really great beer. Problem is you usually can’t re-create it.

 

[bwible]

I know the last 2 times I set out to brew an Irish Red I wound up with a beer that compared favorably to New Castle in color and flavor in a side by side comparison. I entered the last one as an English brown in a local competition and got third place. I used a small percentage of roasted barley, which I’m convinced is essential to that New Castle flavor profile.