Brown Ale has a bad reputation. It’s old man fuddy duddy beer, but for many of us that warm embrace of suppable malt was amongst our first forays into good beer. Denny and Drew walk you through what makes a brown ale and how to make them!
Will definitely check this out. Compliments to Drew for a nice article on Brown Ale in the recent CB&B mag.
Willdef check this out! Just started to experiment with brown ales and I’m certain this will help improve my skills. Actually sipping my first attempt which is a riff on Randy Mosher’s Old Nutcase Brown Ale recipe.
Here’s a link to mine that I talk about. First beer I ever got a 1st place for and still one of my faves. Have a keg on tap now. American Homebrewers Association
I must be one of those those old guys. I like Brown Ale and have one on tap now.
Edit: I enjoyed the slideshow along with the talk. Good Show. (Thanks for clarifying that 2-row is a type of malt, Pale is malt house kilning level)
I must be old in spirit. Brown ale is great.
The first batch I attempted was a brown ale extract kit. I forgot to warm up the extract and it sunk straight to bottom of the kettle and scorched. The whole batch tasted a bit like burnt rubber.
Thanks Denny! Will do!
Another brown ale fan. I also have a batch that I’m drinking now.
Brown ale was one of my early forays into good beer. I prefer English brown ale to American brown ale, for which, Pete’s Wicked Ale has pretty much become the prototype. A lot of people do not know that Newcastle used corn grits and sugar in their brown ale. It do not know if they continued to do so after the beer was moved to John Smith’s in Tadcaster.
By the way, your recipe highlights the value of layering hops using multiple charges in the hopping schedule during the boil. I had gotten away from that practice for many years, preferring a 60 minute kettle charge and a 5 minute finishing charge. The beers made using the simpler hopping schedule were good, but not as good as my earlier batches that had 60, 45, 30, 15, and often knockout charges or 90,60,30, and 15 minute charges. I prefer to clean as I brew, so the simpler schedule gave me longer periods to clean and sanitize in between hop charges, but I believe that the beer suffered.
Thay recipe evolved form the Eugene Brown recipe in Noonan’s 7 Barrels Brewery book. It’s very old and put of print, but it’s a great source of base recipes to build on. That recipe starterd put to also have a 90 min. addition. I dropped that and have experimented extensively with eliminating the 45 and 30 additions. If I was writing a recipe from scratch I’d never include them, but on this beer there’s something missing if I leave them out.
Listened to this episode in the middle of an 8 hour car trip Friday. Took all of my willpower not to stop and find a couple brown ales for the journey. Had to settle for a home brewed Porter when I finally got home that night
I perked up and backed up a little to hear the Noti Brown using MI Chinook. Nice!
Yeah, it’s a great combo! Got a couple batches of IPA with them going right now.