Brown Ale Recipe review

Hey guys just wanted to thank all of you for all the great advice I always receive. Much appreciated! Anyway my friend has been bugging me to brew him a beer for a bit now and he is looking for something besides his typical BMC drinks. He has tried a few of my brews and liked a brown ale I did using a kit when I first started and I have been working on a brown ale recipe so things worked out perfect. Let me know what you guys think!

Grain Bill: 5.5GAL
-10lbs Maris Otter
-1lbs Crystal 60
-1lbs Flaked Barley
.3lbs Roasted barley 300L

Hops/Kettle Additions
-1oz East Kent Golding-60min
-10 Roasted Chestnuts-55min
-.5oz East Kent Golding-30min
-1oz cocoa nibs-5min

Yeast-English Ale WLP002
Anticipated attenuation~67

Statistics
OG:1.064
FG:1.021
ABV: 5.5%
SRM:25
IBU:26.396

I think that looks very good.

I would investigate adding the chestnuts in the mash or at another time during the process. Also, considering adding the nibs into the fermenter after activity has slowed. I have not used either ingredient but those are the only things that seems to stick out to me.

Thanks! I have used roasted chestnuts before in the boil and they added a nice subtle nutty flavor. Do you think the flavor would be more pronounced if I added them to the mash? and if so should I crush them? As far as the cocoa nibs go I have read that they will work well at any point whether it be the mash, boil, or secondary but are more pronounced in flavor if mashed and more influential in aroma if used in secondary. I figured I would either add them at the end of the boil or two weeks in the secondary.

That’s cool that you had a good experience with the chestnuts. If it has worked well the way you have it then you may not need to change a thing. My initial thought would be to crush them and add them to the mash but that is not really based on anything but intuition.

I think the base recipe looks great and I have been wanting to do something similar for quite some time. When I finally get around to a brown, I think it will be munich dunkel inspired mut of a beer.

Maybe a bit of chocolate malt to round it out a little?

Regarding the chestnuts, I’d add them to the mash if you are primarily looking to get fermentables from them. The way you’re using it sounds more like a flavor addition to me, so I think the boil is just fine.

Otherwise, the recipe looks good to me!

I agree. Overall I like the looks of the recipe, but I would cut the flaked barley back to 4- 8 oz, drop the roasted barley altogether and use 1/2 lb chocolate malt in its place.

Thanks for all the feed back guys! Yeah the chestnuts are more for flavor than anything. In regards to adding chocolate malt I had thought about adding a little bit I prefer using roasted barley in my brown ale. I figured adding a dash of cocoa nibs would be enough to have some question if there is a little bit of chocolate notes there. I also feel that when I use smaller amounts of flaked barley or oats I don’t get the feel I am looking for.

I recall one brown ale that notably uses roasted barley and no chocolate malt that I really like. I believe it is Moose Drool by Big Sky which is probably not widely distributed.

I too like to use higher amounts of flaked grains to get the effect I desire. I think it will help to smooth out the roasted character.

EDIT- All the moose drool clone recipes I see have chocolate malt so I must be thinking of a different beer…

I’m thinking that it will take a couple of batches to perfect the recipe so it might end up needing some chocolate malt but for now I am keeping the grain bill as is.