Boring Brown Beer

[Underground Joe]

I'm planning a beer to brew for my wife as I'm sick of her drinking my hoppy pale ales. She'll drink any beer so I don't need this one be anything special, and a beer that leans more towards the malt will be a lot cheaper than my usual 300g of hops per brew APAs. Although I'm not after an amazing beer I do want this to be drinkable and with the exception of one stout, I've never brewed anything darker than amber.

Any thoughts or suggestions without over complicating things would be much appreciated.

Boring Brown Beer

Recipe specifics:

Style: Some sort of Brown Ale
Batch size: 44.0 l
Boil volume: 55.3 l
OG: 1.040
FG: 1.010
Bitterness (IBU): 24.2
Color (SRM): 19.8
ABV: 4.0%

Grain/Sugars:

6.90 kg Pale Ale Malt, 86.2%
0.50 kg Crystal 150L, 6.2%
0.40 kg Flaked Oats, 5.0%
0.20 kg Roasted Barley, 2.5%

Hops:

10.00 g Columbus (AA 15.4%, Pellet) 60 min, 9.5 IBU
50.00 g Kent Golding (AA 6.4%, Pellet) 10 min, 7.2 IBU
40.00 g Columbus (AA 15.4%, Pellet) 5 min, 7.6 IBU

English Ale yeast

[gnutz2]

That'll be a nice beer but I would swap the Columbus for fuggles at the end of boil.

Dry hop it with fuggles too.

[masterosouffle]

I'd go with fuggles also, make it a proper classic bitter. Should be easy enough to pick up a pack locally - or ask someone else to tomorrow

[Underground Joe]

I only went for Columbus as I've 50g that needs using, and I've always thought that fuggles sounds like some sort of retarded dog that should hang around with the teletubbies.

[jimp2003]

I would love it if my wife liked to drink my beers - it would mean I would get to brew more often!

How are you going to sell this idea to your wife? - "No, No Dear the tasty stuff is only for me. Here you can have this boring brown stuff I brewed especially for you....."

[Underground Joe]

How are you going to sell this idea to your wife? - "No, No Dear the tasty stuff is only for me. Here you can have this boring brown stuff I brewed especially for you....."

You know how a dog will eat last night's kebab of the pavement? Well that is how my wife is with beer. I'm not calling my wife a dog, I'm just saying she isn't exactly a beer connoisseur, but given the choice she would opt for a darker, less hoppy beer. I'll bottle the nice hoppy stuff and she can drink from kegs.

[masterosouffle]

Can I show her this? Pleeeeeeaaaaaassssseeeee!!!

[Jocky]

Going with the 'dog eating off the pavement' theme - why don't you use this as a user upper? Look at what ends of malt you've got, or stuff that is getting a bit long in the tooth.

First addition hops you just want to use whatever cheap high alpha hops you have (or whatever you want to get rid of from the freezer). As others have mentioned, regular old UK Fuggles/Goldings/First Gold/Challenger can be used for the late hops, which should be inexpensive.

[seymour]

I'm siding with the wife on this one. I'd rather drink that delicious brown ale than a hop bomb too.

[Barley Water]

Humm...maybe it's just me but if I were going to make something I was going to call a Brown Ale I wouldn't use roast barley in the grist, I'd use chocolate malt. Perhaps however, I'm being too much the slave to BJCP style guidelines so take that comment for whatever it's worth.

[seymour]

Humm...maybe it's just me but if I were going to make something I was going to call a Brown Ale I wouldn't use roast barley in the grist, I'd use chocolate malt. Perhaps however, I'm being too much the slave to BJCP style guidelines so take that comment for whatever it's worth.

Yeah, you're right. Chocolate, brown or black malts are more historically accurate too, but in the grand scheme of things, they're all versions of highly roasted barley, and at only 2.5% I think they'd serve the same purpose. Certainly not worth buying a pound of a different malt if he's got some leftover RB, just for a quick-and-dirty dark ale, y'know?

[Barley Water]

Well perhaps not however if my goal was to feed the stuff to my wife I would want only the best, damn the cost. But then of couse I generally have less than pure motives.

[Underground Joe]

I have either an opened roasted barley or an unopened black malt, hence the roasted barley.