Historical English Brown Ale

I'll be brewing an English Brown Ale to fill one of my empty kegs. I decided to use another historical recipe from the Shut Up about Barclay Perkins Blog: 1928 Barclay Perkins Doctor Brown.  It has been a while since I made a Brown Ale and this is my first attempt at an English Brown Ale.  These historical recipes always seem to turn out nicely so I'm excited to give it a try.  A brown ale is, of course, a malty beer with some toasty and caramel like flavors rather than the roast flavors you get from a Stout.

This, like most of the Historical English Beers, has some interesting ingredient choices.  It uses a pretty small amount of Pale Malt, good amount of Caramel 60L (1 lb) and then adds in over a pound of Corn.  It then uses Brown sugar and Invert #3 to account for quite a bit of the OG.  Finally, it uses a small amount of Brewers Caramel for Color.  As with previous beers I'm making my own invert and brewers caramel for this batch which is easy and saves quite a bit of money.

Brewers Caramel

I am fermenting the beer with the Whitbread Strain (Wyeast 1099) which the recipe calls for.  I really like the ester from this compared with S04 which is supposed to be the same strain.

Finally, the recipe has this as a fairly lightly hopped beer and called for small amounts of Cluster, Fuggle, and Golding English hops all in the boil.  Rather than purchase these in small amounts I decided to use Willamette and home grown Cascades which have a somewhat English Character (similar to Goldings).

I am going to give this beer  couple weeks in the fermentor and then a couple more weeks in the Keg to carbonate before drinking.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct
• 5.5 lb 2 Row
• 1 lb CaraMunich III (Crystal 60 L)
• 1.25 lb Flaked Maze
• 1 lb Brown Sugar
• 0.75 Invert #3
• 2.4 oz Caramel
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Willamette (Leaf, 5.7% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Cascade (Leaf Unknown AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 15 gal Spring Water
• 2 tsp CaCl (one in mash and one in boil)
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 153 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 80 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 Week in Keg

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.046)
• Efficiency:
• 71% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.014)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 73% (Target 69%)
• ABV:
• 4.5% (Target 4.2%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/17/22 - Built a yeast starter using 100 g DME and 1 L of water.  Set this up on a stir plate to propagate.  The starter showed good activity by the evening
• 9/18/22 - Brewday - from 1:30 PM to 6:00 PM- Including setup and cleanup
• Prepared the brewers caramel/dry caramel
• Started cooking the Invert #3 syrup (0.75 lbs of Sugar in the Raw and Light Brown sugar, 1/4 tsp of citric acid and 1 cup of spring water.  Let this simmer on low.
• Heated 7 gal of spring water up to 185 F
• Milled my grain.  Added the CaCl and Gypsum to the milled grain so I wouldn't forget
• Added 5 gal of spring water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS to get down to 163 F
• Halted the cycle through the RIMS and added the grain and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this sit for 10 min for everything to settle.
• Cycled the RIMS for 50 more min at 153 F

• Heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Fly sparged until 8.5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collected 4 gal.  Had it to a boil shortly after the end of the sparge
• Added the bittering hops when the wort was just about at a boil

• Added the brewers caramel - did this by adding boiling wort to the pan to dissolve it.  Went through many cycles of this to dissolve it all 
• Added the 30 min hops
• The invert is cooked to approximately #3 level so I took it off the heat and added some boiling water to keep it in a liquid and pourable state
• Added Irish moss with 15 min left in the boil
• Added the Invert#3 and Sugar to the kettle with 15 min left

• Added an extra helping of CaCl to the kettle for this beer
• Found that volume wasn't down to target so I extended the boil by 20 min
• Added the wort chiller with 5 min left to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to about 85  F which was as far as the ground water would take me
• Drained the wort into the fermentor - let it fall a couple feet to aerate

• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046 - right on target.
• Chilled the beer down to 64 F in my chest freezer
• Pitched the yeast once cooled to target
• 9/19/22 - Fermentation was well underway by this afternoon
• 10/1/22 - Kegged the beer today.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.  It hasn't dropped clear yet a couple weeks in the keg should probably do the job

• 11/29/22 - Tasting Notes - This beer provides some bold flavors and is pretty complex.  I like the ester character but would have preferred it to be a little more restrained - I think its balance it a little further towards ester than I think an English Beer ought to.