Tag Archives: Brown ale

11 Oct 2014
Leave a comment
Home brew reviews

American Brown Ale 1 – Review

This review has been a long time coming. The American Brown Ale 1 was brewed back on 22 June and it’s now October.

American Brown Ale 1

American Brown Ale 1 ready for drinking

First up is the aroma. This has a really nice toast and dark malt smell. There’s even hints of chocolate in there. Not a lot of hops, which is a bit of a surprise given the crystal hops in there. At the end there’s a yeast aroma, which is to be expected from beer brewed with kit yeast.

Taste up front is of light burnt malt. Light because the body is light as well. Not a lot of substance behind this. That is expected given it only has dry malt extract. While the body is light, the flavour is not. The dark malt characteristics comes out more bit by bit. Starting as a nice brown malt, moving into a burnt taste, then darker and more range. There’s a bit of a bite in there too. And that’s one of the few hop characteristics in this. Very slight fruit spice flavours on the edge.

After a while you start to notice the yeast flavours. A bit tart. Strange sort of yeast. Not the best. I’m not too concerned about that as it’s towards the back of the beer and not prominent. The malt seams to drive most of this beer. There is a strange dryness at the end which is slightly off putting. That might be due to the yeast as well.

Matching this beer isn’t too hard. Anything robust would work well. Anything with red meat would work. Even some chips and dip would go fine. Plus at 4.6% you can have a couple without worrying too much.

Happy with this brew. But it’s not really an American Brown. More of an English Brown. Next time I would add more hops, and use a better yeast.

-Mikey

Tagged , , , , ,
23 Jun 2014
1 Comment
Experiments, Recipes

Something easy for winter, brown ale

A few days ago I made a mistake with bottling the Super Stout. There’s a chance that it won’t taste good. I want to have something darkish to enjoy over the rest of winter. So it was time to do a back up brew, something a bit basic and small. Enter the idea of doing a brown ale.

I spent a while playing around with a recipe ideas. In the end I decided to go with a really quick 30 minute boil and only two hop additions. Plus to keep the length of time down I wanted to do just four litres. Another factor keeping it simple and quick is to only use malt extract, in this case it was dry malt extract (DME).

American Brown Ale

American Brown Ale in the carboy

With the ingredients I had at home I couldn’t do an English style brown ale. Therefore I went with creating an American Brown Ale. Ingredients listed below.

  • 600 grams of Dark DME
  • 3 grams Warrior hops (30 mins in boil)
  • 2 grams Crystal hops (flame out)
  • 1 teaspoon of kit yeast
  • 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

Some people really don’t like using kit yeast. For me it was easy because (1) I had some at home and (2) it’s a very basic darker beer. The darkness of the malt will help hide some of the less desirable flavours of the yeast, I hope.

This was a three litre boil. First in went 400 grams of the DME. After the hot break went in the Warrior hops. Twenty minutes later the rest of the DME went in. Ten minutes after that flame out. Crystal hops went in. The pot was moved to sink to chill in cold water. About three trays of ice dropped directly into the wort. Only had to replace the water once for chilling. I was happy that it got down to about 22 degrees Celsius quite quickly. Then poured the wort through a sieve into the glass carboy which was then topped up to four litres.

While all that was happening the yeast and nutrient was re-hydrated in some water on the side. Before pitching in the yeast took a hydrometer reading which came in at 1.054. This should come in around 5.8% after bottling. That’s going to be stronger than the Super Stout!

This was a very quick brew and only took about two hours to do. Was done by myself and I like that it was so quick. The wort tasted basic as expected. There’s not a lot of hops in there and plan was to keep bitterness down. Fingers crossed that this one turns out well. Will know in about a month.

Keep an eye out as I’m going to be doing a lager style ale in the next few days.

-Mikey

Tagged , , , , ,
3 Aug 2013
1 Comment
Home brew reviews

Newcastle Brown Ale – Review

Mikey and I made the Newcastle Brown Ale a few weeks ago and it’s finally ready for tasting.

This was a 23 litre kit that we bought.  It was a little bit more than a standard can of wort and a kilo of malt, but pretty similar.  Nice easy kit to make and it made a pretty decent beer as well.

Pouring it, the beer looked good.  Head retention was good, as was carbonation.brown ale

The nose was very crisp.  Floral and fruit smells were there, most likely from the Fuggles hops.  These were mostly melon and citrus smells.  This was mixed in with more earthy smell.  Generally though, the smell was mostly just bitter and crisp smells with a hint of sourness.

Drinking the beer, it’s notable how “standard” this beer is.  This isn’t a bad thing: it’s a good tasting British style brown ale.  It’s not trying to be anything it’s not, just an enjoyable beer.  Of course this makes for very easy drinking.  It would be easy to knock back a few of these.

Everything is very balanced.  There’s nothing terribly interesting about the hops; bitter and sour flavours throughout.  The earthy feel continues at the end.  In the middle, there is a hint of sweetness and malt which is where the body comes out.  Other flavours included burnt chocolate and citrus peel.

i would have liked a little more body, it just seems a little thin for me.  Checking back over the recipe, it seemed like there was a good amount of malt added: a can of liquid malt, some dry malt, and whatever was in the wort can.  Oh well…

I’d like this beer with some pizza I think.  Any food that is about medium in density – not heavy, not light.  Avoid a seafood pizza though.

-Chas

Tagged , , , , , , ,