Straightforward · 20 litres · all grain
American Brown Ale
Chocolate and nut malt with a citrus hop over the top, which sounds wrong and is not. The most underrated everyday beer in American brewing.
Original gravity
1.054
at 72% efficiency
Final gravity
1.013
75% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
5.3%
by volume
Bitterness
23 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
24.1 SRM
47 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
4.98 kg
0.25 kg per litre
Brewed to American Brown Ale, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
Keeping the roast in check. Above about 6% chocolate malt this stops being a brown ale and becomes a porter with a different label.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pale two-row malt | 3.60 kg | 2 L | 37 ppg | 72% |
| Munich malt | 0.50 kg | 10 L | 35 ppg | 10% |
| Crystal 60L | 0.35 kg | 60 L | 34 ppg | 7% |
| Victory malt The nut. This is what separates a brown ale from a weak porter. | 0.25 kg | 28 L | 34 ppg | 5% |
| Chocolate malt | 0.28 kg | 350 L | 28 ppg | 6% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Willamette | 30 g | 5% | 60 min | 16.7 IBU |
| Cascade Citrus over chocolate malt sounds wrong on paper and is the whole reason this style exists. | 25 g | 6% | 10 min | 6.1 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Mash at 67C for 60 minutes.
- 02Boil 60 minutes on the schedule.
- 03Ferment at 19C.
- 04Package at 2.3 volumes.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 67 C for 60 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 73.4 C
- Strike volume
- 14.9 L
- Boil
- 60 min
- Ferment
- 18-20 C
- Carbonate to
- 2.3 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 112 g
- Yeast
- American AleSafAle US-05
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 2.3 volumes this one needs about 112 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99