english nut brown ale
After weeks of wanting to brew something, I was finally able to do so today. I've been drinking a lot of English beers and I wanted to try and duplicate one that I really enjoy: Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale.
I dug up an old recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book for an English style ale. Since I'm not prepared to go all-grain right now, I did the partial mash method. I went to my local homebrew supply place and picked up the ingredients. Six pounds of Munton's Amber DME, two pounds of biscuit malt, one pound of medium crystal, and English Ale yeast.
The recipe calls for .75 oz of Northern Brewer hops at 90 minute boil and then .5 oz of Northdown hops at 20 minutes. Since my homebrew supply place has been out of Norther Brewer hops since...I don't know when...I decided to use the Northdown hops instead. Since Northdown hops have a fairly high AA%, I didn't want to use them again because I was afraid that the beer would be too bitter. So instead I used .5 oz of Fuggles for the 20 minute boil.
Brewing today seemed to go by very fast. I started at about 11:30am and finished cleaning up everything at 3:30pm. Now most of that time was spent cleaning and sanitizing, and of course boiling wort. But it didn't seem to take that long.
Part of what made it go by quicker today was the introduction of my homemade wort chiller. I reduced the downtime in between boiling and yeast pitching to 15 minutes. Not bad at all! I had concerns about the wort chiller but after some retesting and today's results, I no longer have those concerns.
One issue I had recently with my amber ale was fluctuating fermenting temperatures. When that beer was in its primary, the temperature outside the house was in the teens. I normally have the beer near a heat vent to keep the temp up. Well, somehow that vent was closed and the temp dropped to about 63 (possibly cooler at night) and slowed fermentation down. The end result is a sour green apple taste.
Lesson learned. My new English Nut Brown Ale is happily fermenting away wrapped up in a fleece with a heating pad belt attached to the exterior wall of the fermenter. That should keep an optimal temperature for fermentation. (Hopefully!)
I dug up an old recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book for an English style ale. Since I'm not prepared to go all-grain right now, I did the partial mash method. I went to my local homebrew supply place and picked up the ingredients. Six pounds of Munton's Amber DME, two pounds of biscuit malt, one pound of medium crystal, and English Ale yeast.
The recipe calls for .75 oz of Northern Brewer hops at 90 minute boil and then .5 oz of Northdown hops at 20 minutes. Since my homebrew supply place has been out of Norther Brewer hops since...I don't know when...I decided to use the Northdown hops instead. Since Northdown hops have a fairly high AA%, I didn't want to use them again because I was afraid that the beer would be too bitter. So instead I used .5 oz of Fuggles for the 20 minute boil.
Brewing today seemed to go by very fast. I started at about 11:30am and finished cleaning up everything at 3:30pm. Now most of that time was spent cleaning and sanitizing, and of course boiling wort. But it didn't seem to take that long.
Part of what made it go by quicker today was the introduction of my homemade wort chiller. I reduced the downtime in between boiling and yeast pitching to 15 minutes. Not bad at all! I had concerns about the wort chiller but after some retesting and today's results, I no longer have those concerns.
One issue I had recently with my amber ale was fluctuating fermenting temperatures. When that beer was in its primary, the temperature outside the house was in the teens. I normally have the beer near a heat vent to keep the temp up. Well, somehow that vent was closed and the temp dropped to about 63 (possibly cooler at night) and slowed fermentation down. The end result is a sour green apple taste.
Lesson learned. My new English Nut Brown Ale is happily fermenting away wrapped up in a fleece with a heating pad belt attached to the exterior wall of the fermenter. That should keep an optimal temperature for fermentation. (Hopefully!)
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