Beer Week: Tasty Thursday #100 - Nut Brown Ale Recipe

*Disclaimer: This post is intended for people of legal drinking age, 21 and older. Drink responsibly.*

As promised the nut brown! Well, it’s actually more of a traditional English Brown Ale, since I didn’t add any nuts to it, but it has a bit of a nutty flavor. The next batch I do will have roasted almonds. 

Alright, let’s get to it, here’s what you will need:

• ¼ lb of English Chocolate Malt
• ¼ lb of English Black Malt
• ¼ lb of English Dark Crystal Malt
• ¼ lb of Belgian Special B Malt
• 3lbs Muttons Dry Malt Extract (DME)
• 3lbs Briess DME Light
• 1oz U.S. Fuggle Hops
• ½ oz Wiliamette Hops
• Wyeast 1335 British Ale II (yeast)
• Grain Bag for the specialty grains
• Thermometer

The first four ingredients are specialty grains. They will lend more color and flavor to the beer than they will yield in fermentables. Getting used to using these specialty grains is a good way to get into advanced brewing (or all grain), where you will not use any extracts, just malted grains.

Prepare and sanitize all your equipment as usual. Get about 2-2.5 gallons of water into your brewpot and use some alligator clips to hold your grain bag in place.  The grains come in 1lb bags, so measure out ¼ of each into the brewpot and crank that heat on. You will want to bring the water to about 165-170 degrees and hold it there for 25 minutes.

When your 25 minutes are up, remove the grain bag. You can either discard the grains or I have heard tell that they will make great bread. Now, bring that water to a boil. Once the water boils, move the brewpot to an unlit burner and throw in your light DME, amber DME, and your 1oz of Fuggle hops. Return the brewpot to the heat source and boil for another 30 minutes, and then add .5oz Williamette hops. They will come in a 1oz package, so just add half. Give it about another 5 minutes of boil time and cut her off. From here get it into the fermenting bucket and bring it up to 5.5 gallons. Follow the same cooling procedures and when it is below 80 degrees, pitch the yeast.  This beer will be ready a little more quickly. You will not need to do a secondary ferment. After 2 weeks in the primary fermenter, it will be ready to bottle. Follow the same bottling procedures outlined yesterday. It will only need 2 weeks in the bottles.

After 4 weeks, you will end up with a nice dark brown ale! If you are feeling adventurous, add about 2.5 pounds of honey into the primary fermenter. If you do this, be sure to rack it into a secondary after a week, give it 2 weeks in there, and then 3 weeks in bottles.  You will end up with something sweeter, dangerously drinkable, and enough alcohol to warm your belly. 

Here’s a picture of the finished product (no honey used in this batch) to give you a gauge of what to expect.

Tomorrow, I will be giving the helm back to Household 6. She will be bringing in a recipe for an apple cheddar beer bread made with the honey wheat beer recipe shared on day 2. On Saturday, I will attempt to answer any questions raised and give some advice. Happy Brewing!!

Day 1: Equipment & Ingredients  

Day 2: Honey Wheat Ale 

Day 3: Racking & Bottling

For those stopping by for Tasty Thursday...don't worry, even though my husband has taken over my blog, you can still link up :)