March 29, 2008

Brown Ale: Big Update

Category: PB Brown Ale — Josh @ 12:45 pm

Sorry for the belated update. I have been busy with clearing a spot in the yard to plant some Hops. This beer was initially brewed on 03/12/2008. This brown ale was intended to be a New Castle clone. The final beer came out a little low on the ABV side, but overall is turned out great. The recipe that I used for this Brown ale is as follows:

Mash
2.00 lb Maris Otter
1.00 lb Pale Malt, Muntons
0.50 lb Caramel Malt – 20L (Briess)
0.50 lb Caramel Malt – 40L 6-Row (Briess)
0.50 lb Carapils (Briess)
0.45 lb Special B (Dingemans)
0.30 lb Caramel Malt – 60L 6-Row (Briess)
0.25 lb Chocolate Malt (Muntons)

Begin Boil (75 min)
3.30 lb LME Pilsen Light (Briess)(72 min)
1.75 oz Goldings, East Kent (70 min)
0.50 oz Fuggles (70 min)
0.50 oz Goldings, East Kent (15 min)
1.00 lb Corn Sugar (15 min)

1 Pkgs British Ale (White Labs #WLP005) (1500 ml Starter cultured on stir plate)

Initial mash was done at 1 quart/lb of grain (1.5 quarts of water @ 174F). The mash settled in at 150F. I missed my target mash-in temp by 5 degrees I ended up adding 2 – 2 quart infusions of boiling water to keep the mash temp up to 153 over the 90 min mash period. I batch sparged with 2 – 4 quart batches of water @ 175F. I forgot to record the mash final SG. Volume of the run off was 13.5 quarts.

After boiling, sparging and topping up to the 5.5 gallon mark in the carboy, the initial gravity of the wort was 1.049 @ 72.3F (1.050 corrected). The wort was aerated by shaking the carboy for 5 mins. SG on 03/14/2008 (48 hours after pitching the yeast) was 1.025 @ 67F. FG after fermentation was 1.015 @ 72F (1.016 corrected).

This beer was allowed to ferment for 12 days, and was bottled on 03/24/2008. Fermentation on this beer was a little different, in that I had forgotten to plug in the temp controller on the freezer, and the temp inside during the first 20 hours reached 91 F. Freezer was plugged in at this point and the temp was gradually brough down to 67F in increments of 4F over about 6 hours. Priming solution at bottling was 2 quarts of boiled water and 5.5 ounces of corn sugar. Beer temp was 72F which should yield a carbonation level of 2.7 vols. I estimate final SG after priming solution was at (1.015 Corrected). and final actual ABV was reduced by .1% to 4.3% ABV. Bottling yielded 57 12 ounce bottles.

I also left behind about 1500 ml of beer in the carboy so that I could harvest some yeast to repitch in another batch which I am brewing today. I harvested 18 ounces of yeast slurry from this batch of beer (3 – 6 ounce samples). Samples were poured into cleaned and sanitized 12 ounce bottles. Care was taken to clean the mouth and outside of the bottles and carboy with 91% rubbing alcohol, then flame the mouth of th carboy and bottles with a lighter.

Overall this beer tastes very good when I sampled it during bottling, but I have not tried any since I bottled it.

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