Brown ale is an old style, from when kilning was not an exact thing, and no one split hairs over exactly how burnt their malt got. So some brown ales were browner than others. People don’t like to be surprised, so at some point brown ales died out.

But, now they’re back, and maybe their not exactly the same. Maybe American brown ales have more hops than the traditional styles. That’s one inspiration; good hoppy American brown ales.

Inspiration number two comes from one of the most iconic brown ales: Newcastle Brown Ale. In their brewing process, the final brown ale is made by blending a strong and weak ale that has fermented separately. That seems like a good trick to get consistent results, so we’re going to do that too.

The American recipe we were mostly building from was that of the mad fermentationist, but we’ve deviated quite a bit.

Grain Bill

• 3.3kg pale malt
• 400g Crystal malt
• 300g golden oats
• 550g brown malt

Mash

We heated 11.4l of water to 76.2°C and mashed for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Careful, at this point, because this is where we separate the wort.

Sparge

We Sparged up to 20l of water at 76°C after separating the first 4l into another container.

After sparging we checked the gravity in the small (4l) container and found it was 1.093, while the larger (20l) was 1.034. From now on, going to refer to the small as the strong part and the larger as the weak part.

At this point we took 1l from the strong and put it into the weak, then took 1l from the weak, after letting it mix, and put it into the strong. After doing this, the strong was at 1.076 and the weak was at 1.035.

Boil

We boiled for one hour, for both the strong and weak. We used the following hop schedule:

• Weak:
  • 20g Centennial at 60 minutes
  • 20g Centennial at 10 minutes
  • 20g Centennial at 0 minutes
• Strong:
  • 13g Centennial at 60 minutes
  • 13g Centennial at 10 minutes
  • 13g Centennial at 0 minutes

Pitching the Yeast

AFter the boil cooled to 25°C we checked the gravity again:

• Weak OG: 1.038
• Strong OG: 1.090

Into the strong we pitched a WLP001 California Ale Yeast, and into the weak we pitched a dried american ale yeast sachet.

However, the dried yeast didn’t really get going, so after a couple of days took a sample from the strong (which was fermenting well) and made a starter with some spray malt in a 2l container. After a day that was fermenting well so pitched it into the weak bucket. Then, the weak began fermenting properly.

Dry Hopping

Twelve days after starting, we racked both into new fermenters and Chinook to both for dry hopping:

• Weak: 20g Chinook
• Strong: 13g Chinook

Blending

We took samples of the beer after 9 days and made mixtures in varying proportions of weak to strong, from 0% to 40% strong in 10% graduations. Then, we blindfolded James and got him to grade each, being supplied in a random order (and giving him some twice).

Then, we just tasted them and discussed. Finally, decided that it would be best to go for a mixture of 20% strong to 80% weak. Given that the final gravity for the weak was 1.016 and the strong finished at 1.041 this means that the final estimate for ABV is approximately 3.6%. After blending the weak and strong together we bottled it with 60g of priming sugar.

Bermuda - Atlantic Brown Ale by Edinburgh Brewing Cooperative is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.