Chocolate Brown Ale

Beer lovers and other marginally interested parties-

This past Saturday, I decided to flex some creative muscles and set about formulating my own beer recipe.  As with cooking, most homebrewers follow recipes for an extended period of time until they gather enough practical and academic knowledge to experiment with various combinations of ingredients.  Well.....some brewers (and chefs for that matter) start experimenting earlier and cross their fingers hoping for the best.  I've tried to follow the knowledge and experience route for the most part because I know how much it sucks to dump a 5 gallon batch of beer that you've worked on for 6 weeks!

I've brewed an English Brown Ale before, and it was one of the best beers I've made.  Brown in color (obviously), low hoppiness/bitterness, rich caramel flavor, and full body.  I wanted to include many of these qualities in my brown ale recipe, but I definitely wanted to up the hop additions, up the alcohol content, and add a combination of pale and chocolate malt in an attempt to make the malt background even tastier.  Here's what I came up with:

Grain Bill
9 lbs British Mild Malt
4 lbs British Amber Malt
2 lbs. Marris Otter Pale
2lbs. Corn Sugar *
0.5 lbs Medium Crystal Malt**
6oz Chocolate Malt

*Corn sugar (dextrose) is the sugar that is added during bottling to carbonate beers.  It is used in recipes because it is a directly fermentable compound and does not leave a flavor profile.  In layman's terms, that just means it's added to make beers more alcoholic.
** Crystal Malt is typically added to beers to add "body."  "Body" refers to the thickness/fullness of the beer that is perceived when you drink it.  Mass produced commercial beers have little to no body.

Hopping Schedule 
1 oz Northern Brewer                   90min
1 oz Northdown                            30min

Grains in the mashing ton.  The grains need to be soaked in water between 145-155 to activate enzymes that break down the complex carbohydrates into fermentable compounds.

Fermenting beer!

The brewing process went really smoothly, but there were a couple problems with our recipe that could be attributed to a number of factors.  The corn sugar addition was meant to boost the alcohol content to 8-9% in the finished project, but after taking a specific gravity reading* we found that the potential was only around 7%.  The beer also turned out way darker than we were expecting.  The chocolate malt (even though it was a very small addition), heavily influenced the color of the beer.  Depending on the finished product, we might replace more of the British Mild Malt (a darker malt) with the Pale Malt next time we brew this beer in an attempt to lighten the color.

Later this week I'll be posting about the BREAD that we made from the grains of this beer.  Very exciting development.

Todd