Jul
22
2010
Brew Day #17 — Extra Fancy Brown Ale 
I feel like the brown ale often gets forgotten in the melee of its darker cousins, the crazy bourbon, oaked-aged stouts and chocolate porters (not to mention conventional stouts and porters). Who wants a simple brown ale when they can get something exotic?
But the standard brown ale is a great choice for a variety of occasions. It’s a session beer. It’s more substantial than a lager. It can be as roasty or as chocolatey as the brewer wants it to be, or it can be nutty and coffee like (remember our “Nuts About Coffee” Nut Brown ale?)
We decided to give the noble brown a shot with an original recipe this time, and after a little research, I decided to model the beer after Dogfish Head’s Indian Brown Ale, though it’s probably not as hoppy, but more on the roasty side.
10 April, 2010
Extra Fancy Brown Ale
5 gallons8 lbs Ultralight Malt Extract (60 min)
1.0 lb Crystal 60L
8 oz Chocolate Malt
2 oz Roasted Barley1 oz Magnum Hops (60 min)
1 oz Vanguard Hops (15 min)1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)
White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)
DME (bottling)
———
Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.
Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.
Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.
Remove grains, turn off heat and add liquid malt extract. Bring to a boil. Add bittering hops.
At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.
At 15 minutes, add remaining hops.
At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to 75°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Decant yeast starter and pitch yeast. Aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 70-75°F.
Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.
Rack to bottling bucket. Boil DME with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.
Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age 1-2 weeks.
We’ll have our tasting notes up in a couple of weeks, but a cool thing to mention is that we shared a bottle of the Extra Fancy with a homebrewer we met on a camping trip to Keen Lake this past weekend. Jay runs the Final Gravity podcast, builds all sorts of cool homebrewing equipment, and found some interesting spice notes (like cinnamon) in our brown ale as he sipped it with us by the lantern-lit picnic table. It’s always a boon to have new people try our beer — it let’s us learn so much more.
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