I brewed today!

Welp, the plan was to brew a hoppy Brown Ale, or India Brown Ale, but I think I ended up with a Porter. Unless there's such a thing as a Dark Brown Ale? I wouldn't call it a Black IPA because there weren't any aroma hop additions, and I didn't use "west coast" hops. The recipe calculator predicted the color around 20 SRM, so I might need to revisit my recipe and figure out what happened. But it will be beer! And if I'm lucky it'll taste like good beer even :D
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Welp, the plan was to brew a hoppy Brown Ale, or India Brown Ale, but I think I ended up with a Porter. Unless there's such a thing as a Dark Brown Ale? I wouldn't call it a Black IPA because there weren't any aroma hop additions, and I didn't use "west coast" hops. The recipe calculator predicted the color around 20 SRM, so I might need to revisit my recipe and figure out what happened. But it will be beer! And if I'm lucky it'll taste like good beer even :D
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Well, you wanted a brown ale and what you have there looks brown. So I call that success! :p

You get ingredients for multiple brews at the same time, don't you? Could you have grabbed a wrong bag of malt out of the box?
 
Well, you wanted a brown ale and what you have there looks brown. So I call that success! :p

You get ingredients for multiple brews at the same time, don't you? Could you have grabbed a wrong bag of malt out of the box?
It was definitely Midnight Wheat. Hard to mix up those cute tiny grains for barley :) I'm thinking #1 likely culprit is user error in weighing, #2 is scale error, and #3 is recipe calculator error

Here's my recipe: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1140913/india-brown-ale
 
Midnight Wheat is more likely the culprit. I did the same thing last year when rustling up a brown. I kep saying during the mash "It's not brown enough" So I kept adding the midnight wheat. If anyone asks, "what kind of beer this is?" you say, "one that you didn't have to pay for."
 
Yeah, it's most likely too much Midnight Wheat. That's one of the problems with small batch brewing; You have to be super precise in measurements, especially with the heavily roasted malts.
 
Black IPA in the fermenter. Ground water is warming up, took an extra bucket to chill. Going to have to get a pre-chiller set up for next brew day!
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Oy...what a brew day! Wtf was going on with that starter? But it came through despite my numbers being under.. I made a small batch with a second running and some spare hops and yeast that was starting to get long in the tooth. Long day..Lotta exercise
 
Scott's Thor's Thunder is in the fermenter!
Finally got things together with newer system. This is the biggest nastiest wonderful RIS i have ever had the chance to brew. It has been compared to motor oil:eek: by light weights! It was brewed in Spokane WA back when and I got the original recipe from the original brewer. Different systems brew different beers and as my system changed i kept playing with it. The one time i brewed it before it was ok, but it fell together properly this time;). 2hr boil was the nail that pulled it together.
20#s 2 row
2#s chocolate malt
1# black malt
1# C-120
8 oz chinook full boil
5 gal. batch
yes a 200+ ibu
I am figuring on finishing in a keg with spunding valve as a sort of secondary to avoid O2 and to partially carbonate.
 
Scott's Thor's Thunder is in the fermenter!
Finally got things together with newer system. This is the biggest nastiest wonderful RIS i have ever had the chance to brew. It has been compared to motor oil:eek: by light weights! It was brewed in Spokane WA back when and I got the original recipe from the original brewer. Different systems brew different beers and as my system changed i kept playing with it. The one time i brewed it before it was ok, but it fell together properly this time;). 2hr boil was the nail that pulled it together.
20#s 2 row
2#s chocolate malt
1# black malt
1# C-120
8 oz chinook full boil
5 gal. batch
yes a 200+ ibu
I am figuring on finishing in a keg with spunding valve as a sort of secondary to avoid O2 and to partially carbonate.
Sounds like a LOT of Trial and error.
Hope your motor oil tastes great this time around head first :).
 
Sounds like a LOT of Trial and error.
Hope your motor oil tastes great this time around head first :).
Actually only 4th time brewing it. First recipe was designed by a comercial brewer to copy the original recipe by Scott (brewed twice). I made contact with him and got his original recipe and now have brewed his recipe once with old RIMS and had to fit it in the 65l digiboil this time. Could have boiled another 30 min. but should be thick enough to match his original.
 
Scott's Thor's Thunder is in the fermenter!
Finally got things together with newer system. This is the biggest nastiest wonderful RIS i have ever had the chance to brew. It has been compared to motor oil:eek: by light weights! It was brewed in Spokane WA back when and I got the original recipe from the original brewer. Different systems brew different beers and as my system changed i kept playing with it. The one time i brewed it before it was ok, but it fell together properly this time;). 2hr boil was the nail that pulled it together.
20#s 2 row
2#s chocolate malt
1# black malt
1# C-120
8 oz chinook full boil
5 gal. batch
yes a 200+ ibu
I am figuring on finishing in a keg with spunding valve as a sort of secondary to avoid O2 and to partially carbonate.
This sounds really interesting, I am keen to hear how it turns out. There is plenty of malt backbone to support all that bitterness.
 
20#s 2 row
2#s chocolate malt
1# black malt
1# C-120
8 oz chinook full boil
5 gal. batch
24 pounds in a 5 gallon batch! Holy cow! I can barely fit half that in my 30 l brewzilla.

Sounds delicious though.
 

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