Dark Earth - India Brown Ale Recipe and Documentation

Dark Earth India Brown Ale

Category: Beers
Subcategory: Top Fermented - Dark
Monday April 19, 2010
(Recipe for 5 gallons)

Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal):         5.00    Wort Size (Gal):   5.00
Total Grain (Lbs):       11.00
Anticipated SRM:          21.7
Anticipated IBU:          49.7
Wort Boil Time:             75    Minutes
Actual OG:  1.077   Plato: 18.65
Actual FG:  1.012   Plato:  3.07
Alc by Weight:  6.74      by Volume:  8.62  From Measured Gravities.
ADF:            83.6      RDF         69.6  Apparent & Real Degree of Fermentation.

Grain/Extract/Sugar
%     Amount            Name                       Origin        Potential        SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 81.8     9.00 lbs. Coopers LME – Light        Australia      1.038          3
   9.1     1.00 lbs. Crystal 40L                     America        1.034        40
   4.5     0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt               America        1.029         350
   4.5     0.50 lbs. White Wheat                  Belgium        1.040      3

Hops

Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha               IBU     Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 oz.    Cascade                      Pellet    5.75                     20.3    75 min.
0.50 oz.    Galena                                 Pellet    13.00          22.9    75 min.
2.00 oz.    Willamette                  Pellet      5.00         6.5     5 min.
2.00 oz.    Cascade                                Pellet      5.75         0.0     0 min.

Yeast
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White Labs WLP002 English Ale

Process:

Made starter for yeast on Sunday, bubbles were forming on Monday morning. Used 2 cups of boiled water and ½ cup malt extract and yeast nutrients.

Brewday, Tuesday 4/21

Heated 2 gallons of water to 165° and added grains. Temperature dropped to 158°. Steeped grains at 158° for 45 minutes.  Sparged with 1 gallon at 180° for 30 min.  Added 2 gallons of wort and 5 gallons of water to brew kettle. Began boiling, added 1 oz cascade and .5 oz of galena hops at 75 minutes left to boil. Added 2 oz of willamette at 5 minutes, and 2 oz of cascade at flame out. Total wort at flameout was just over 5 gallons.

Bottled on 5/25/10

Log Notes:

This beer was an experiment to me. I tried Sublimely self-righteous ale by stone brewing, which is a very hopped black ale, somewhere between a porter and a stout in color, but not in consistency. That got me wondering about darker, hoppy beers. I went searching for recipes. This recipe is based on Eric’s Bodacious Brown ale from B3. Here is his recipe as pulled from the Brewing Network Forums

11 lb 2-Row
1 lb Crystal 40L
.5 lb Pale Chocolate
.5 lb White Wheat
Mash at 154

1.5 oz Cascade ● Mash Hops
.5 oz Galena ● Bittering Hops are boiled for 75 minutes
2 oz Cascade ● Flavoring Hops boiled the last 10 minutes
2 oz Willamette ● Aroma Hops added at flameout
Cal Ale Yeast - ferment at 68 f

I substituted English ale yeast for the California ale yeast to add more of an English style to the beer. The results are very pleasing and what I was looking for. However, I believe the wheat in the recipe added a cloudiness in the beer that I would omit if I were to make this again.

This was also my first beer I was able to brew with my converted keg brew kettle. I underestimated my need to have a better plan for cooling beer the wort quickly. In the past, I was only able to boil 2-3 gallons at a time, and that left me with extra volume to fill with cool water, enabling me to get my wort down to pitching temp relatively quickly. However with this beer I was able to have a full 5 gallons of hot wort to chill. I solved the problem by freezing 3 two liter soda bottles of water, sanitizing them in iodine solution for 5 minutes and placing them in the fermenter. I opened the spigot on the brew kettle and let the hot wort flow over the icy two liter bottles. This enabled me to get the beer cool relatively quickly. I have since invested in a wort chiller.

Bottom line, my goal was to create a rather hoppy brown ale that had a balance between maltiness and hoppiness. The balance I’m looking for is not quite 50/50, but about 1/3 malt flavor, and 2/3 hops.

Historical notes.

This is not a period beer. This is a historical redaction, a what if, if you will. The legendary story of how the india pale ale is already well known. George Hodgson of Bow Brewing was producing pale ales in the 1750’s and they had become quite popular as exports. In 1790 Hodgson began to ship his export pale ale to the recent British colonies in India. In order for them to survive the journey, they increased the amount of hops in the mix to take advantage of the preservative qualities of hops. The rest, as they say is history!

However, I wondered if there might be someone in the Indian colonies that didn’t want a pale ale. What if they wanted one of the brown ales that were also popular in Britain at the time? The result was a highly hopped brown ale. There are no historical references to indicate that this beer was created and was shipped in this time frame.

Bibliography

More Beer forums

Brewing Network Forums

Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels, Brewers publications

A History of Beer and Brewing, Ian S. Hornsey, The Royal Society of Chemistry