Big Bad Brown

I have been wanting to do a brown ale for a while and some inspiration was given to me a few weeks back when I saw that Good People were coming out with an Ancho Chile Brown Ale, which is a "dry hopped" version of their Brown Ale with Ancho Chiles. So with seeing that and possibly not ever getting to taste it I wanted to do some experimenting of my own. Out of the ~5 gallons of beer created 1/3 will be just the plain brown ale, 1/3 will go on top of some Ancho Chiles and 1/3 will go on top of some coffee i.e. Surly Coffee Bender. For the coffee I think I am going to use some Primavera Peru Norte. After its bottles and primed I will then do a taste test to see which is better and what I might can improve on.

Big Bad Brown

Malt:

8.5lbs: American Two-Row

1lb: Crystal 80L

.75lbs: Flaked Oats

.5lbs: Chocolate Malt

.25lbs: Carapils

.2oz: Black Patent

Hops:

1oz: Amarillo 8aa 60min

.5oz: Willamette 4.2aa 30min

.25oz WIllamette 4.2aa 15min

.25oz Willamette 4.2aa 10min

.25oz Willamette 4.2aa 5min

Yeast:

Safale S-04 Yeast

Target OG: 1.055

Target FG: 1.014

Target ABV: 5.5%

IBU: ~28

Strike Temp: 162 deg

Strike Water Volume: 3.66 gal

Mash Temp: 150 deg

Mash Out:

temp: 200 deg

hold: 10 minutes

mash temp: 156 deg

Sparge Volume: 3 gals

Sparge Temp: 210 deg

Wort Volume: 6 gals

Boil Time: 90 minutes

Finish Volume: 4.5 gals

Actual OG: 1.057 (took 1.052 @93 deg)

Actual FG: 1.013

Actual ABV: 5.9%

Apparent Attenuation: 76% AA

Hopville Recipe

Update 4.1.2009: Brew night, brew night went quite normal. I did a longer boil than normal by accident and ended up with about 4.7 gallons at 1.057 SG. I am using my carboy cooler for the 1st time and right now the beer is holding at a steady 66 degrees.

Update 4.7.2009: Beer has calmed down and is about done fermenting. Took a gravity of 1.016 which has me at 5.4abv and 70.4AA. I'm going to let it sit for a few more days before adding chili's and coffee.

Update 4.10.2009: Beer is now finished at 1.013 SG. I am going to cold crash it for a few days then add the chili's, coffee and then bottle. Beer tastes very good, I can't wait to get some carbonation into it. The only knock I have right now is that I can taste the Amarillo hops a bit too much. Maybe I will cut back on the bittering hops next time.

Update 4.20.2009: Added Ancho Chili's and Coffee to 1 gallon of the brown. Taste of the coffee was a bit over powering, I think I might mix in more of the brown to try and diffuse the taste, but still interesting none the less. I tasted the chili beer and was very interesting. I decided to add one more chili to the beer to round it out. I will bottle tonight (4/21) and see where everything takes me. So far so good.

Update 4.22.2009: Bottled all 3 variations of the beer. All smelled and tasted completely different. The Coffee Brown, is going to be awesome I think. I added more of the main Brown into the Coffee Brown to mellow out the coffee flavor a bit and I think I hit it on the nose with taste. Smell is of the coffee, which is what I was looking for. The Ancho Chili Brown is amazing, with a nice malty, chili aroma. Ancho's do not pack much heat (around 1,000-2,000 scovilles), but you get a kind of tingle in your mouth, just enough to say hello! The chili's flavor adds so much complexity to the beer that I dont know if I can wait two weeks to see how they turn out!

Update 5.29.2009: Score sheets from the 2009 BMO BBB CoffeeBBB