STL Brown or The Red That Wasn't

I had a vision of a deep amber ale, red hues on an amber base; a tame appearance but surprising flavors. I copied Jamil's recipe for Evil Twin, tweaked it to my liking and modified the hop schedule to include citra, a whole lot of citra.

The miss adventures of this beer started way before brewing. When we purchased ingredients they didn't have pale chocolate malt, no problem 1/3 the chocolate malt should have done. We had to buy malt in individual bags of 1,5, or 10 pounds. They were nice enough to reseal the bags we only needed ounces of. Once all of the ingredients were measured out we set about milling our grain, only after struggling for about 10 minutes did the store clerk tell us the mill was broken, and that we were going to have to hand grind the grain with a rolling pin and some gumption. So we packaged all the malt in the provided 1 thin cheap garbage bag they had for lining the bucket. once we got to the car the inevitable bag rupture happened and so we made the most of it, put the plastic bag inside of a paper bag and rolled home.

Kyle in a well meaning effort began opening the bags of grain and adding them instead of going with the premeasured grain. After I finished measuring out the hops by sight because kyle didn't have a scale and I didn't think to bring mine, I caught his error and adjusted the recipe. This made it solidly into the brown ale category by virtue of SRM. American Brown Ale w/ west coast hops I guess.




(read more after the jump)

The Recipe (6 gallon):

11 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 83.8 %

1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) 7.6 %

12.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) 5.7 %

3.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) 1.4 %

3.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) 1.4 % 

0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min 11.1 IBUs

0.50 oz Citra [10.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min 10.1 IBUs 

1.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min 13.3 IBUs

1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min 11.3 IBUs 

1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs

1.50 oz Citra [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs

0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs 

1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [125.00 ml] 

1.00 oz Citra [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs

1.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs

1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs

Medium body, single infusion @ 152, batch sparge @ 168

Est Original Gravity: 1.061 SG

Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG

Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.1 %

Bitterness: 45.9 IBUs

Est Color: 16.4 SRM

This beer went okay other than the following foulup, whole hops absorb a lot of wort. This could have been mitigated had we sanatized a spoon to press the wort out of the hops, or a hop bag to tighten around the hops, or just by using pellets in the boil. I haven't decided which method I like most yet.