AG#75 – Mr Brown Hawk

Posted by: pdtnc on: March 10, 2012

• In: Brewing
• 2 Comments

Mr Brown Hawk– A Columbus Hopped American Brown Ale (Brown IPA!) My first American brown, all Columbus hopping with a substantial Dry Hop in the FV with a bit of vague reference from the ‘Brewing Classic Styles’ book, the recipes in there use a heck of a lot of Crystal so I’ve sort of gone for the middle-ground as i don’t think a 6.3% beer needs all that. I’m using liquor treatment for ‘Sweet Pale Ale’ which will hopefully bring out the maltiness.

I started and realised I didn’t have enough Pale malt so some of it is sub’d with Vienna & Lager malts, I’ll give it at least a 90min mash to try compensate for a: crap Bairds Pale & Lager, b: the less convertibility of Vienna malt.

Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 36.2%
Vienna Malt – 17.2%
Wheat Malt – 17%
Lager Malt – 16.6%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Caramalt – 3%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 3%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 1%
Chocolate Malt – 1%

Hops:
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 60 mins – 25g (FWH)
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 10 mins – 29g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 41g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – Dry Hop 84g

Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.017
Alcohol Content: 6.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 30.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 % (actually got 75.8%)
Bitterness: 66 EBU (BeerEngine Hop Utilisation set to 25%)
Colour: 76 EBC
Mash: 90mins @66c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05 (2 packs)

The usual malts shot:

Checking for starch to see if fully converted, other than bits in the husks it was good after 2 hours:

First Wort Hops:

Flame-out hops steeped for about 20mins:

1057-ish, should have been 1065:

It was a total pain, running off to the FV it clogged up really quickly and I had to resort to a jug and a sieve, these Columbus hops have some fine particles! Pitched 2 packs of us-05 even though I didn’t hit my gravity 1058 vs 1065, the quicker the yeast gets going the better after all that sieve and jug malarkey!  It looks as though I got about the right volume in the fermenter even if some of it looks rather murky from break material and some hop debris. Another reminder that I should make a big mesh hop-stopper!
So… presuming I’ve not infected it with a shed load of extracurricular home brewing activity, I’ll be giving this a nice big dry hop once its got to FG.

*17th Mar ’12 – after reaching FG 1012 and being chilled in 2 stages (17c for 24hours then 11c for 24 hours) I had a 50mm thick layer of hop debris, trub and yeast at the bottom of the FV, I’ve racked the clear beer off the top into a 15L bucket and dry hopped with 84g Columbus, I gave the bucket a blast of co2 prior to racking onto the hops. This has been put back in the FV Fridge and I’m cooling to 5c, I’ll give the hops a stir in later on.

*Bottled 24th Mar ’12 with 30g sugar to 15 Litres of beer, this should be around 2 volumes of co2 @ 5°c tastes very Dry-Hopped, quite possibly too much flavour and Lovely colour.

*29th Mar ’12 – Very Early taster bottle 😉
A little under carbonated, its a Juicy fruit bomb maybe too too fruity as I’d actually like to taste some of the Choc malts underneath the hop flavour. Tiny bit of sweet alcohol on the nose, I’m surprised the dry-hop character seems to have mellowed out quite soon though this is my first time with a singled hopped Columbus beer. I’m thinking I should have reserved myself more than half a kilo from the 5kgs I had, I think I could have given it a bit more bitterness which would off-set the fruitiness a little.

*5th Apr ’12 – Just having a glass of this…  even though its carb’d pretty low, if i splash it into the glass it gives a lovely head that  clings down the glass and the carbonation actually fits pretty well with the beer.
Fruitiness is settling back, bitterness is starting to come through, tasty beer…. I’m happy with this 🙂

Tags: American Brown Ale, beer, Brewing, brown ale, caramalt, Carapils, Chocolate Malt, Columbus, extra dark crystal malt, home brewing, homebrew, hops, lager malt, pale chocolate malt, pale malt, safale us-05, Tomahawk, US, vienna malt, wheat malt, yeast