Two Naughty Brown Ales for the Price of One (and 50¢)

I entered this in a Homebrew competition. The entry needed to be an English Brown Ale: sweet and malty, low alcohol, with some hop character, but not much bitterness. If you've had a Newcastle, your tongue knows what the target should have tasted like.

I used this batch as an experiment to compare liquid (wyeast) and dry (packet Nottingham) yeasts. I boiled for a 10 gallon batch and planned to split it into two 5-gallon batches, keeping as much control as I could. I wanted the only difference to be the yeast.

Imagine my surprise when the Ales took both First and Second in the competition. I just got lucky, or the yeast did some syncronized swimming or somethin', because there were a whole lot of better-experienced brewers entered: guys who had been instructing me in the finer points of le malt only weeks before. God smiles on the stupid. Here's how it happened.

* 1 lb. Quaker Oats (steeped)
* 12oz. 50/60 (steeped)
* 4oz. Caramel (steeped)
* approx. 1.5 lb. clover honey
* 6 lb. British Pale DME
* 1.2 oz. Fuggle Hops aa:4.2% (Boil) -- 40 mins.
* .3 oz. Fuggle Hops (Finishing-5 mins)
* Nottingham dry yeast (1 packet), Wyeast 3056 (bavarian)

Added the oats and grain, in grain bag, to 10 gallons cool water in brew keg. Kept the heat on for one hour until it got up to about 150° then yanked the grains. I hoped that this would improve head retention and mouth feel. Added all other ingredients and left it for 70 mins. It finally really boiled then.
After 20 mins at a bubbling boil, I added the boil hops and left it for 40 mins. Then I put in the aroma hops, waited 5 mins, and and killed the heat. Where I screwed up: Because I was also puttering around the house and running errands (yes, shoot me here and now), I put the boil keg into a sink full of ice and hoped that it would chill. An hour and a half later, it was still 120°, and what's worse, the hops had been steeping in there the whole time.

I taste-tested when I took my hydrometer reading, and it was sweet, but then the aftertaste hit with a bitter, sharp coffee-like tang. I had steeped all of the tannins outta the hops over three hours. FYI: Don't screw up like this. Separate your wort from the hops ASAP after the boil. Use two hop bags, one for boiling, one for finishing.
Began rehydrating a packet Nottingham yeast for 25 mins; the Wyeast liquid yeast had pillowed up nicely over two days. Racked into two corneys about 3/4 full (had lost about 3 gallons during the boil), added the yeast to each, and took a reading: 1035 at 85°. Put it in the fridge set at 65° -68°.

Four days later, I turned the temp down to 40° -- when the co2 releasing had lost its oomph. Perfect timing: I carbonated at 32 lbs.for 3 and a half days, then tested it as I racked the yeast offa the bottom. The Nottingham corney came in at about 1010, and the Wyeast at 1020. Only one (guess which?) had that coffee bitter aftertaste from the hops. Not bad.

I let it condition for three weeks. By then, the bitter coffee aftertaste was gone from both, maybe because of the honey.
Any fallout from the hops oversteeping? None to speak of. The honey, I think, smoothed everything over at the three week mark. Just the right amount of bitterness for a brown. I started with a low HBU with only 2 oz of the Fuggles at 4.2%, so it's all the same.
Results of the yeast competition: when asked, taste-testers seemed undecided (about 50/50) between the two. The Nottingham seemed drier; those who know beer liked the Wyeast. The Wyeast took longer to flocculate out. All in all, go figure. The two took 1st (Wyeast) and 2nd (Nottingham) places.

Maybe the bottom line is this: the Nottingham is 50¢ a pack with no smack-time; compared to $4.00 for the Wyeast. Although the Nottingham runs through the beer faster and leaves a dry, highly alcoholic emptiness in its wake, if you don't let it overferment, or ferment too quickly, it's a hearty, no-frills no-spills yeast.