MMM... beer

In regards to yesterdays post, Question #1 passed. Oh well.

In the past few weeks I've managed to ferment and keg a sweet sweet brown ale. I'm calling it an "India Brown Porter" - it's more hoppy than your standard brown ale, supported by a large backbone of malt and alcohol. The end recipe looks like:

Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 8.5 gal
O.G.: 1.077
F.G.: 1.018
Eff.: 68-72%
IBUs: XXX (To be calculated)
Yeast: Safale US-05

15 lbs Maris Otter
10 lbs German Munich, light
4 lbs Crystal 60L

1oz Czech Saaz (60)
1oz East Kent Goldings (60)
2oz Czech Saaz (30)
2oz East Kent Goldings (20)

Mash: Because I have a stainless mash tun, I can do "proper" step mashing, so I gave it a 15 minute protein rest, followed by 45 minutes at 150 and 20 minutes at 156. No mashout. Were I to make this using only single infusion, 152 would be fine. I don't think the malts really benefitted from the protein rest, but it did let me clean out the fermenter and get all my stuff together.

This beer is a simple recipe, that comes out just brown enough to look like the local leaves. You'll notice the lack of a clarifying/protein binding addition. That was intentional. I wanted this beer to be hazy. The head retention is spot on; mouth-feel after sufficiently carbonated is incredible. Next time I'll probably dry-hop with some Czech Saaz to give that beautiful floral hop aroma. As it stands, it has a strong malty aroma with barely a hint of the hops within.

I find MO to be a great base malt, and the melanoidin content from the munich malt really complements this beer. The addition of the crystal helped to bump it into the 7%+ area, which means it's definitely not a session ale. Overall, I'm really happy with how this recipe turned out and will probably be making it in the future again. Once I start sharing it around, I know it's going to go quickly.

I'll probably do 12 gal. the next time I make it - but since my bottleneck is fermentation space, I'll have to choose when this beer is made. I'd also like to try about 10lbs less grain overall and see if the less syrupy mouth-feel makes a better difference.

Stay tuned for pics of the brew process and the resulting glass.