🍺 Top-down Brew: British Brown Ale

Enter the desired original gravity as specific gravity (1.0XX) or degrees plato (°P).

Specification: 1.040 to 1.052; 10 to 12.9 °P

Enter the desired volume at the end of the boil. The volume units can be either liters, gallons, or US barrels.

Select the preferred unit of measurement for the inputs and outputs. Metric uses liters, grams, and kilograms. US uses gallons, ounces, and pounds. US Barrels (31 gallons = 1 barrel) is in barrels, pounds, and ounces.

Enter the anticipated mash efficiency percentage. If this is not known, try the following values based on the sparge method: Steeping (50%), No-sparge or brew-in-a-bag (65 to 75%), Batch sparge (80%), or Continuous (fly) sparge (85 to 90%).

The most common malts from Brew-Analytics are chocolate (median: 2.7%), British base malts like Maris Otter (median = 77%) or pale ale malt (75%), medium crystal 60L (7.2%), biscuit malt (5%), or dark crystal malts (120L, 4%). Adjuncts like torrified wheat and maize are possibilities.

Zainasheff recommends using no more than 10% crystal malts for a northern English brown ale. Biscuit or Victory malt can be used with American malts to simulate British pale ale malts or to bump up nutty flavors. Sugars or adjunct grains are possibilities, but Zainasheff recommends against these.

Daniels' analysis suggested 10 to 15% crystal malt and 2 to 3% chocolate malt (Table 20.9 and p. 228).

• Beer-analytics.com British brown ale analysis
• Brew United's grain database
• BYO magazine grain and adjunct resource

Dark invert sugars are a possibility.

• BYO magazine sugar resource

Enter the desired bitterness in international bittering units (IBUs).

Style specification: 20 to 30 IBUs. The beer-analytics.com averages suggest a BU/GU of .49.

The typical hops are British strains like Golding varieties, Fuggle, Target, and Challenger. US hop possibilties might be Willamette or Cascade. Many recipes are 100% bittering. Small late hop additions are possible. Daniels reports that late boil additions (last 10 minutes) are "fairly common" and about .5 oz for 5 gallon batches (.74 g/l).

• Beer-analytics.com British brown ale analysis
• Brew United hop database
• BYO magazine's hop resources

Spices are not typically used.

Dry hopping may be used, but this is not common.

• 0.5 to 0.9 g/l: Light
• 1.0 to 2.0 g/l: Moderate
• > 2.0 g/l: High

Select the yeast type, ale or lager.

British ale yeasts that attenuate well are recommended. The most common yeasts are Fermentis S-04, Fermentis US-05, Nottingham, Windsor, and White Labs English ale (WLP 0002).