First brew next week. Brown Ale

[Brewer #343457]

I will be making my first beer starting next week. Planned brew day is 12/29. I bought a Brown Ale Kit from our local supply store. It's a very basic recipe (for a reason I'm sure!) - and considering adding 1 lb of dark brown sugar to the malt boil. The guy at the brew supply store said that will work, however it will increase the alcohol content (4.2 per the starter kit). In my mind - it seems that the dark brown sugar will make a big difference. Thoughts? Also - any feedback on water would be appreciated. House water, filtered, bottled, distilled? thanks!

 

[Sunfire96]

I will be making my first beer starting next week. Planned brew day is 12/29. I bought a Brown Ale Kit from our local supply store. It's a very basic recipe (for a reason I'm sure!) - and considering adding 1 lb of dark brown sugar to the malt boil. The guy at the brew supply store said that will work, however it will increase the alcohol content (4.2 per the starter kit). In my mind - it seems that the dark brown sugar will make a big difference. Thoughts? Also - any feedback on water would be appreciated. House water, filtered, bottled, distilled? thanks!

I'd say stick to the recipe for your first brew. Maybe even the first couple of brews. Small things can make big changes in flavor down the pipeline. Good luck, cheers!

 

[Ward Chillington]

Sunny offers good advice. Keep it simple as you will have the best idea what to expect when it comes to your Original Gravity and all your other numbers there after....in other words...the recipe tells you what it is supposed to when you follow the directions! Adding the sugar is going to change that then you will have to figure that out! This is all part of developing a baseline and figuring out your brewing methods. Granted these are fairly basic when it comes to kits as the supplier is looking to make it as basic as possible so you have success. A brown ale is an excellent choice as a first effort. Follow the directions, good cleaning and sanitation is very important and you are lucky to have landed on this site as there are a lot of folks willing to help you make good beer...just ask!

As for the water question.... The old brewing adage of if you have good water, you can make good beer but what's good water? If you are on a well and there are not any treatments like a softener or some other means of chemical alteration use that unless it's got a ton of iron in it then you can simply filter that off the tank with something like an RV water filter that you can buy at Walmart. If you are on city water with chlorine you need to take that into account as chorine treated water will make lousy beer.....consult your local internet for how to deal with that. If you can get some filtered bottled water in volume ( think water cooler 5 gallon bottles) that may be the best option if you are in a hurry to get brewing.

Water is some 95% -ish of your beer so again, good water = good beer and that is why you will find giga-tons of material to read and study on brewing water out there.

Welcome to the site!

 

[Donoroto]

Welcome to Brewer's Friend! We have ALL been exactly where you are now, and we're happy to answer any questions...and there will be many.

Brown sugar will not sweeten your beer, nor will it make it appreciably darker, it just gets converted to alcohol by the yeast. There are better ways to increase ABV, such as dry malt extract, but give yourself a fighting chance here.

As with any recipe: Follow the recipe closely at first, but then feel free to experiment (with careful notes!) to see if this or that change makes things better or worse. Try to keep it to one change at a time so you can honestly judge the effects. While not impossible, it takes some decent effort to produce bad beer.

As for water, with the exception of a lot of iron, decent-tasting tap water will be just fine. If your tap water is awful, go buy some gallons of inexpensive 'spring' type water. Distilled doesn't have any minerals, and some are desireable for taste (the male extract has minerals in it already) but it is just not necessary at this stage. A lot of chlorine is undesirable, but letting the water sit for a day or two (like in a lightly-covered bucket) lets most of the chlorine out. They sell Campden tablets to make this happen in a short time, but keep it simple at first.

 

[Zambi]

Good luck with your first brew!
And you are getting some good advice here

 

[SabreSteve]

Water chemistry is like the advanced class of brewing, I'm not there myself yet being a fairly newer brewer. As long as the water your using makes good tasting beer I wouldn't worry about it. If you really want a blank slate as far as a balanced water profile go with distilled water. I use filtered tap water and it seems to work. Brewing seems to be a lot of trial and error when it comes to figuring out what works for you and your setup. I honestly never used a kit but the point of them is to allow you to make good tasting beer while you figure out the basics. Stick to the recipe and I think you'll like the results. If you any more questions along the way or when you're ready to graduate from kits and start fine tuning your own recipes there's a lot of good advice here.
Also as far as keeping it basic, since graduating from extract to BIAB (brew in a bag) I've done 3 brews that way. They've all basically been the same SMaSH (single malt, single hop) recipe and I try to really only change like one thing each time. Point is simple is harder to screw up and the simpler the recipe the easier it is to see a difference from individual changes in your procedure or by swapping a single ingredient. It's tough for me too cause I'm ambitious and want to play mad scientist but I'm glad I listened to some of the advice on this site cause I don't think I'd learn as much that way.

 

[Brewer #335694]

I tried getting clever early on in my brewing life (trying to build off of kits). Some worked out well and added another layer of complexity to the beer. And other times, well I should’ve stuck to the basic recipe! I’ll give you as 50/50! Ha!

 

[Craigerrr]

Brewing beer is essentially cooking.
I highly recommend that you follow the recipe for your first brew.
In fact, I would recommend that you brew the same recipe a number of times.
Is the kit an extract, or an all grain kit?
Spend some time on youtube watching brew day videos.
I remember constantly referring back to the instruction sheet on my first extract kit, even after watching the video that came with it numerous times.
A couple of rules I follow that I learned from @Nosybear are:

Know why you are making a change to a recipe
-if your beef stew needs more salt, adjust the recipe for next time, and make notes
-if your beef stew was the best ever, don't change a thing!

Make one change at a time to your recipe, or process
- this is how you will learn about, malts, hops, yeast, water, etc...

Let us know how brew day goes, and how the beer turns out!
Don't be shy about asking for help.
Good luck!

 

[Ward Chillington]

Water chemistry is like the advanced class of brewing, I'm not there myself yet being a fairly newer brewer. As long as the water your using makes good tasting beer I wouldn't worry about it. If you really want a blank slate as far as a balanced water profile go with distilled water. I use filtered tap water and it seems to work. Brewing seems to be a lot of trial and error when it comes to figuring out what works for you and your setup.

Oh yea....like brewing 402....water....the final frontier! I took physics instead of chemistry in high school and I honestly have been considering finding a high school chemistry text book so I get a better understanding of elements so that I can have a better understanding of 95% of my beer!

 

[Craigerrr]

Water chemistry is actually very simple once you get a feel for it.
I think of learning about water chemistry the same way as learning how to brew, or learning what different malts, or hops bring to a recipe.
I didn't take physics or chemistry in high school, wish I had now, I like sciencing!

 

[Hawkbox]

I wouldn't say it's easy, but once you get a handle on what it is doing it's relatively simple to work with.
I still struggle with ratios and balancing the various minerals because it's never perfect and that bugs me.

 

[Nosybear]

I wouldn't say it's easy, but once you get a handle on what it is doing it's relatively simple to work with.
I still struggle with ratios and balancing the various minerals because it's never perfect and that bugs me.

You may be making the false assumption that water is the same every time. Close is good enough, as long as the mash pH is in the proper range (5.2 - 5.6).

 

[Hawkbox]

Oh I know close will do, but I do have a bit of OCD when it comes to making all the little numbers green in the water calculator. Trying to get it right drives me slowly mad.

 

[Blackmuse]

I will be making my first beer starting next week. Planned brew day is 12/29. I bought a Brown Ale Kit from our local supply store. It's a very basic recipe (for a reason I'm sure!) - and considering adding 1 lb of dark brown sugar to the malt boil. The guy at the brew supply store said that will work, however it will increase the alcohol content (4.2 per the starter kit). In my mind - it seems that the dark brown sugar will make a big difference. Thoughts? Also - any feedback on water would be appreciated. House water, filtered, bottled, distilled? thanks!

I can't agree more with the advice to stick to the recipe! Brew this recipe a few times and get consistent with it - THEN you may feel free to add the brown sugar to see what it imparts.

Seriously - take everyone's advice on that! - You won't know what it does to the beer until you know HOW the original recipe was supposed to taste!

 

[Ward Chillington]

You may be making the false assumption that water is the same every time. Close is good enough, as long as the mash pH is in the proper range (5.2 - 5.6).

Oh yeah that's for sure! Different every time on my well! I would have thought the pH would have been pretty constant given the chemical make up of the soil doesn't change but on the surface but when I take into account the pH of the rainwater is going to be impacted by the air quality at the time of the storm, how much salt from the road is in the snow run off, what the farmers are putting on the crops in the area, etc., all that stuff have to have an impact on water quality. Granted, I am just filtering to get out big particulate like iron and clay through the RV filter I use! Unless you are buying RO or some controlled commercial bottled water can you been begin to think your water is gonna be the same.

Hell, think about it...those guys are after the same thing we are after in our brewing....consistency!

 

[Nosybear]

Oh yeah that's for sure! Different every time on my well! I would have thought the pH would have been pretty constant given the chemical make up of the soil doesn't change but on the surface but when I take into account the pH of the rainwater is going to be impacted by the air quality at the time of the storm, how much salt from the road is in the snow run off, what the farmers are putting on the crops in the area, etc., all that stuff have to have an impact on water quality. Granted, I am just filtering to get out big particulate like iron and clay through the RV filter I use! Unless you are buying RO or some controlled commercial bottled water can you been begin to think your water is gonna be the same.

Hell, think about it...those guys are after the same thing we are after in our brewing....consistency!

But most of them don't have the luxury of buying RO filtration or water. On a commercial scale, RO is expensive! So they brew with what they have, likely run through an activated charcoal filter to eliminate any chlorine/chloramine, then treat with salts (if they even bother) and acids to get the proper mash pH. I can afford to install RO filtration for my eleven gallons required for a batch, they can't. Even my RO isn't perfectly consistent: I get 12-13 ppm TDS from it in the Summer, 6-8 ppm in Winter. May explain some of the "seasonals" at the breweries....

 

[Ward Chillington]

But most of them don't have the luxury of buying RO filtration or water. On a commercial scale, RO is expensive!

Even my RO isn't perfectly consistent: I get 12-13 ppm TDS from it in the Summer, 6-8 ppm in Winter. May explain some of the "seasonals" at the breweries....

Completely agree and as a self proclaimed and proud cheap bastard; nor do I buy RO and if my water stunk, I wouldn't be writing anything on this forum! I'm a firm believer of making use of the resources you have to the point of absurdity!

Thanks for the TDS lesson! That jump from 6-8 to 12 is a big one huh?

 

[Donoroto]

Completely agree and as a self proclaimed and proud cheap bastard

I am with you here. Water out of the hose is good enough; so far the beer has been perfectly fine, with some bordering on exceptional. I do add some salts for certain batches, but we have fairly soft water here.

 

[Craigerrr]

Always a lively discussion when it comes to water! Awesome!

The OP has no idea what he/she started! Hasn't been on the forum for over a week.

 

[Ward Chillington]

LOL...and their first post!