Brew The Book 2: Northern English Brown Brew Day

Author: April 30, 2020

Beer, Brewing, Recipes

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For my second brew of the Brew The Book challenge, I brewed a Northern English Brown Ale. I wanted something that was interesting, and I’ve never brewed a brown ale before, so I thought it was a nice start. After reading the descriptions in the book and on the old BJCP guidelines, I decided on the Northern English Brown.

This is a fermenter sample. It’s pretty clear, different than prior brews.

Sidebar: Brown Ales and BJCP Guidelines.

When I started brewing and learned about the BJCP guidelines, the guidelines in use were from 2008 and listed the Northern English Brown and Southern English Brown as separate sub-styles of the English Brown Ale category (along with Mild). American Brown Ale was, of course, separate.

At the time, Southern (11B) is listed as malty-sweet with very low to no hop aroma with low hop bitterness and a ‘low to non-existent’ hop flavor. Northern (11C) has a ‘light but appealing fresh hop aroma’ that may be present, and the flavor has a medium to medium low hop bitterness and an even malt-hop balance.

Fast-forward to the BJCP 2015 Style Guidelines. Dark mild, British Brown Ale, and English Porter are moved around. The British Brown Ale sub-category seems to mostly mimic the old Northern English Brown, and it seems that a Southern English Brown would have to either go into the British Mild or Historical – London Brown Ale.

Recipe Development

Starting with the book’s guidelines, I used the following grain

9 lb Maris Otter
0.5 lb Special Roast
0.5 lb Victory
0.5 lb Caramel 40
0.25 lb Chocolate Malt

Hops were simple, 1.5 East Kent Goldings at 60 minutes and 0.5 EKG at 5 minutes. I used 1/4 tsp of Irish moss at 15, and used Imperial Pub yeast.

Brew Day

Brew day began early since I was also smoking a pork shoulder.

I did have a problem with my mash temp – my initial strike (with 173F strike water) was coming out low and my initial temp was in the 130s. I heated up more water and brought it up to around 149F and started a timer. From then on, there was nothing (fortunately) notable. I didn’t use a hop screen/filter in the boil this time (for the first time in a very long time).

Note pad

OG: 1.051 (goal 1.052), FG: 1.009 (expected 1.014??? WTF BeerSmith???), 5.5% ABV.

Fermenter sample with the Brewing America logo at the back to show clarity. Color is right where I want it, as is the clarity.

This fermented for a few days, I gave it two weeks and racked it to a keg. It’s a little sweet toasty with caramel and toffee notes. It’s pretty clear (particularly when using no gelatin in the keg). It goes well with my wife’s pork and beans (she uses canned beans but adds onions, mustard, and brown sugar… all by taste).

Cheers!