Recipe Help Brown Ale?

[porter1974]

I have .5 lb of chocolate and .75 lb of black patent malt laying around. I was thinking of buying 9lbs of Maris Otter and throwing in the chocolate and .25 lbs of the black patent. I plugged the grains into Brewer’s Friend and with safale 04 and some fuggles it came up as an American Brown Ale. Anybody have some suggestions? I can grab a some more speciality grains if I need. I just did a robust porter so am looking for something a bit different.

Thanks in advance.

 

[catdaddy66]

I like less caramel sweetness in my brown ales so if you use any keep the amount low, like 8oz or less. If you can you may like a bit of victory malt as well.

 

[porter1974]

Maybe a 1/2 lb of victory? I probably won’t use any crystal.

 

[corax]

If I'm reading it right, you're suggesting 0.5 pound chocolate malt and 0.25 pound black patent?

I think that's still going to be awfully roasty; not as much as a robust porter, but very roasty for a brown ale. This is not necessarily a problem, but something to consider. For my tastes, I'd use all the chocolate and hold the black patent.

Victory is a good choice, biscuit would be too. For a little more malty sweetness, consider some aromatic malt or honey malt. Or even melanoidin malt.

 

[TasunkaWitko]

Brown Malt? A bit of Wheat?

 

[TasunkaWitko]

Just a suggestion:

76-ish% Maris Otter
9.5-ish% Brown Malt
9.5-ish% Crystal 40L (maybe Carastan 30/37 or Crystal 45L)
2.5-ish% Chocolate
2.5-ish% Wheat Malt

All UK malts, of course ~

 

[eric19312]

I use the Tumbler clone from HBT: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/sierra-nevada-tumbler-clone.253301

My version is
92% US 2-row
3.5% US Chocoloate
2.5% C40
2.5% Smoked malt - for this I used Belgian Kiln Amber and smoked it at home for 3 hours in weber smokey mountain at 200F with mix of hickory, apple and cherry
1.054 OG mashed at 154F

Bittered with 30ibu warrior or challanger at 60min and flavor addition of 5 ibu Golding and/or Willamette in last 10 minutes.

Made it with both US-05 and 1056 fermented at 68F, equally good. FG around 1.012. I like the sound of S04 in this beer but would reduce the mash temperature a bit if I used that yeast to try hold attenuation at this level.

I think it is one of the best beers I make.

 

[Lefou]

If a brown ale doesn't strike your fancy there's always the British mild and bitter styles to consider, too.