Honey Oatmeal Brown

Steep:
.25 lbs Simpson’s Chocolate
.25 lbs Dingemans Special B
.25 lbs Dingemans Biscuit
.25 lbs Briess Special Roast
3 cups Quaker Oats

Smelled great, got really dark - at least a 35L.

6 lbs Gold malt syrup
1 oz Cluster @ 7.5%, all at beginning of boil.

1 lb nondescript Honey late addition after 60 mins
... skimmed off the impurities, then cooled.

Not much to report, except that I hope I didn't make any other mistakes than to neglect getting an OG reading when pitching the yeast (Safale dry). We were draining the Deuce Juice corney, and the combination of a CF workout and that 8.5% imperial on an empty stomach made me a bit stoopid. I used a turkey baster and pulled it the next morning: .1052.


Day 5.5: Stopped fermentation at .1022. 4% alcohol, nice and easy. In 6 weeks, we'll have a party day and drink this alongside the second 5 gals of Deuce Juice. Maybe try a 50/50 Brown and Brown mix of the two and see what happens.

Day 13: Racked, a bit roughly. Been meaning to for the last 4 days, but finally made time. FG: 1016. 

Three months: Carbonated for a day at 30#. Word has it from the taste-testers that it's good, with lots of coffee overtones. Me, I just took a swig post-carbonation and only noticed the metallic carbon bite.

Five months: Did we brew an IPA? A little more time in the tank, and this became a heavily hops-forward brown IPA. Not bad, but sharp. Any carbon bite isn't there now though.

Backyard Honey Brown Bowden Ale

Okay, never before have I wondered as I began fermentation, This could really be an awful, or awesome, beer.

Usually, it's all high hope and high fives.

We started with a Northern Brewer Nut Brown kit: which would have an OG of .1040 and only fuggles as a basis. Thinking I could go one better on a proven winner, I added a pound of 40l caramel, a couple doses of Casade leaf hops, and 3 cups of honey.

Please Lord, help me to stop fermentation before everything gets out of hand. OG: 1062.

Steep:
.25 lbs English Chocolate Malt
.25 lbs Belgian Special 8
.25 lbs Belgian Bisquit
.25 lbs Briess Special Roast
1 lb Briess Caramel 40l

Boil:
6 lbs Maris Otter malt syrup
1 oz American Fuggles pellets - alpha 4.2 (60 mins)
60 oz quality Kirkland honey (15 mins)
1 oz Cascade leaf - alpha 8.9 (30 and 10 mins)

Dry Nottingham yeast

Gravity after steep: 1020! Gravity after extract: 1030. Gravity after Monte added too much honey: 1062. heh.

Day 5: Transferred to the fridge. Was super worried that the fermentation was stuck - just no sound or action coming from the corney vent - but took a hydrometer reading and got .1020 ... pretty relieved by that. That seemed high, but a tastetest said that the bitter and sugar are pretty well balanced there. Let it all come together. Will rack in a few days.

Week 4: After 3 weeks of conditioning, there's pretty heavy alcohol and the hops and honey haven't met in the middle ... yet. Fingers crossed.

Week 7: Still a little green. A lot closer than last taste. Good, but not great. Yet! 3 more weeks will tell.

Tres Bros Honey Brown

Dew and I at Dave P's place. First time I've packed up all the gear to do a remote brewing! Simply used the Northern Brewer Honey Brown kit, but swapped out the Wyeast 1056 for dry Nottingham.

SPECIALTY GRAINS - 25 mins up to 170 degrees
.25 lbs Simpson’s Chocolate
.25 lbs Dingemans Special B
.25 lbs Dingemans Biscuit
.25 lbs Briess Special Roast

FERMENTABLES
6 lbs Gold malt syrup
1 lb Honey late addition (45 min)

HOPS
1 oz Cluster @ 7.5% (4/5ths at 30 min, 1/5th aroma at 45 min)

Kinda knocking the Naughty Brown formula, but substituting Cluster for Cascade, and real grains (!) for the Quaker oats. This should be good!
Everything went like clockwork. Nice slow steeping on the grains, got up to a good boil after a 10 minute-ish in-between after adding in the extract - so, really a 50 minute rolling boil. Dew brought the magic in the form of a full Lengthwise pig of seasonal Brown and a good tri tip.

What to report? Hops went in and smelled yummy. Dave got the yeast wet in a cup and we dabbed in a spot of honey. Honey went into the boil and we skimmed off the foam impurities. Ran the hose chiller, put the yeast in first, and kegged in a leaker corney.
Shooting for an OG of 1050, hit it right on the mark. Grains and extract, before the honey, was 1030, FYI.

Day 2, the Nottingham is going great, pushing gas out of the top cap.

Day 3: Someone did me a favor and added some plastic atop the corney to keep it from making a mess. And, in the process, depressed the release valve, closing it. The perfect little slow-leak we had goin' was no more, the tank built up pressure all night, and the brew waited like a pandora's box for me to release it this morning. Which I did ... all over the floor, walls and my clothes.
The fermentation is vigorous, we'll say. Now to continue to pull the pin on that release valve everytime I think of it for the next few days – which I was hoping to be freed from thinking about. Ah well.

Day 6: Finished the ferment at 1008. Thrown into the fridge and we'll rack out of the bottom in a day or two.

9 Weeks Later:
There's still a bit of a funk to what's going on in that corney. Hit it really hard with the Co2 and will pull off anything that's still floating around in there. We drank up 5 gallons of this one's twin that was a week younger while brewing a chocolate Phat Tyre today, but when that ran out, we opted for real New Belgium/Rogue Muddy Tires instead of drinking this. Hope it can turn around.

21/15/9 As We Brew - Honey Brown - Oct 18

Trying to blam out a quick metcon with what's on hand as we let the hops boil in our Honey Brown Ale for the second 30 minutes of an hour-long protein break.

23.23 for me to grind out 21-15-9 ring dips/pull ups/OH squats 50#/KB swings 53#. We're dubbing this one the "Honey Brown."

First push on the new rings (repping in the 8's/9's), first WoD on the new bar and KB. A nice day to break 'em all in with Walker and White. Really felt funky afterward, but hey, I guess that's what a few beers before the WoD can do to ya.

PS, this one rocked Walker for a couple of days, so my honey brown haze for a few hours was no big deal. Still, basic and four-squared workouts can rowk the howse.

9 hours/32 hours. PE: 7. 215/14.

Honey Brown Ale

What would happen if you augmented the slightly dry, caramelly and roasty character of a smooth, mellow English brown ale with the sweet floral flavor of clover honey? What if you added the honey at the very last possible minute to maximize its presence in the finished beer? What if it was delicious? Something with a little backbone, but still smooth.

So, the stuff came from Northern Brewer, who calls this "A light, clean fermenting ale modeled after the "cream lagers" of the northeast United States. Low in gravity, long on flavor, this beer is a pale thirst-quencher, great for brewing and enjoying in the summertime. Dingemans Biscuit Malt gives our Cream Ale a warm, toasty flavor that complements the light hopping." Bring it. We've got some Cream Stout that needs some pairing for Black n' Tannage.

Steeping: .5 lb. Simpson's Chocolate, .5 lb. Dingemans Special B, .5 lb. Dingemans Biscuit, .5 lb. Briess Special Roast
Extract: 12 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
Honey: 2 lbs. Clover
Bitters: 1 oz. Cluster pellets (7.5%) at 30 minutes into boil; .75 oz Cluster at 50 minutes in, then .25 oz pellets and 1 oz Cascade leaf (8.7%)
Yeast: Safbrew S-33's, started on honey water 12 hours prior

Steeped the grains for 30 mins from 80 degrees up to 125, drinking up the last pitcherful of the Cream Ale. Hey look! We've got a corney of the Cream Stout in the fridge hiding behind that Ale. And it's good!
Took 30 minutes to get the 10 gallons up to a rolling boil, the first hops going in then. The biggest long chain bread crumbs floating around in their after the protein break that I'd ever seen.

Added the second Cluster, and let the boil go, thinking we'd get in a quick WoD during the half hour before the next batch of hops to go in, but it all took longer than we thought. Boiled 7 minutes longer than the 30 planned, put in the final Cascade and shut off the heat.

Oh, yeah, that honey stuff.

Fired up the gas again, started stirring, poured it in, then just shut it all back down. No honey boil. This ain't mead. heh.

Chilled and really took a long time to get back under 100 degrees. Two full corneys (not much head space) but a lot of yeast in there workin'. Corneys in the garage, should be at an optimum temperature of 59–75° F. It'll run a little warm, but let's git 'er done.

No real mishaps, everything tasting, looking and smelling good. Thinking that the normal OG would be in the low 1040ies, but we're at 1050. Rock the house.

Day 4: Fermentation stopping at 1011 for both corneys. Into the chiller wid' ye.

Three weeks later, we had a sweetish light brown liquid with an alcoholic sledgehammer hidden within every glass. Dry. 11.5% octane.

Six weeks later. It's smooth, smooth. The hammer's still within, but softened with a layer of brown velvet. It's a win, but don't drink it on an empty stomach.