Tuesday Session

Tuesday night I spent a portion of the evening brewing up a lovely brown ale. Man, how I love the brown. If given the choice of only drinking one style of beer to drink for the rest of my life, this just might be the one.

There are several types of brown ales that developed from the original English Mild. The term brown beer originated during the late 1600s, while the commercial term “brown ale” didn't come into play until the beginning of the 20th century.

Browns can be stylized as mild, sweet, nutty, and hoppy. I prefer the nutty & hoppy variety myself. The original sweet style developed as an English southern brown. They are crafted with bunches of crystal malt and a low hop bitterness and aroma. The northern English brown adds a bit of roasted malt to the southern's grain bill which adds a more complex roasted nutty taste. American brewers took the northern brown style and jacked up the hop character. The hop character should be bigger but we're not looking for a brown IPA. A good American brown should be malt-dominated with the hops riding the barrel of the taste wave.
Two words... Simply scrumptious.

Some commercial browns I really like

Barley Island Dirty Helen Brown Ale
Rogue Hazenut Brown Nectar
Samuel Smith's Nut Brown
Avery Ellie's Brown

The ale I'm brewing is closer to an American brown, but using quite a bit of imported grains. I like a real toasty nut flavor with a definite hop backbone. This is the first time I've used Maris Otter as the principal grain in the beer.
It's going to be a bit over 4.5 % alcohol by volume with a dark brown color and a balanced hop bitterness.

The tentative name is Bronzeback Brown (nickname for the smallmouth bass) and hopefully it can tie in with an upcoming camp-out on a Kentucky smallmouth stream with some pretty good local fly fishing guides. We might even have a small music jam session and a one-fly fishing tournament. The details are to be ironed out in the next few weeks. Sounds great to me – fish the morning, eat great food during the day, fish the afternoon, wash it all down with good tunes and some great beer.


Although I brew on a screened in porch it only makes sense that my brewing song of the day is...
In the Garage by Weezer




An introduction is in order...
Yep, that's the fifth member of our band - Bud visiting with some of his cloned siblings.
They are in the second yeast buildup for an English Barleywine I'll be brewing in an upcoming session.