This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the series can be found here.

Author: C. McKenzie

Brew Day

With a day off work and the wife and kids off at a playdate, I began what was one of the most relaxing brew days I’d had in a long time. Over the last few years, I’ve had to adjust my brewing schedule to fit around my family, which often means running between my boil and reading books with my kids or helping get lunches ready while I’m waiting for a hop addition-timer to go off. I have become somewhat of an outspoken proponent of this type of integration of family time and brew time, since there is, after all, so much down time on a brew day. My family comes first, so I fit my brewing around it, and I genuinely don’t mind doing that. But man, oh man, this brew day was a reminder of brew days past. Instead of running back and forth between brewing and my family, I sat. And it was glorious. I sat in the garage with my coffee, enjoying the beginnings of cooler weather, and savored the smell of hops and barley wafting through the air during the boil. Frankly, I’d forgotten that I used to brew to relax. Don’t get me wrong—I still have fun on my brew days, but the added ability to relax and do things on my time was something I hadn’t had on a brew day in years.

Everything went smoothly on this brew day. I preheated my mash tun while my strike water was coming to temp. I mashed in and hit my target mash temperature fairly spot on.

After a 60-minute rest, I batch sparged the mash twice and gathered my desired preboil volume of wort.

Once I got the boil going, I added hops at the times noted in the recipe and then chilled my wort down as much as possible. Though the weather was cooler on this morning than it had been, my groundwater was still sitting around 80°F, so my immersion chiller could only do so much. Once I got the wort down to around 90°F, I left it to settle for a bit and then transferred the wort to my carboy.

I then placed the carboy in my fermentation chamber to continue cooling down to my desired fermentation temperature. Several hours later, I pitched my yeast. The next morning, I was surprised at how intensely the yeast seemed to be working based on the visible currents within the carboy. The krausen began to drop an astonishingly quick two days later, and I raised the temperature in my fermentation chamber to let the yeast finish out strong.

Once I was sure fermentation was complete, I cold crashed for a couple days and then kegged the beer. I burst carbonated it and pulled my first pint two days later.

Recipe

Iteration 3 was certainly tasty and I was fairly happy with how it turned out, but there was a slight, somewhat harsh taste to it. Although I was only using a small amount of roasted malt in the recipe, I began to feel pretty confident that was the source of the flavor I was perceiving. What was strange to me about it, though, was how little I was using and how this flavor was markedly absent in other beers that I’ve had that use a much larger percentage of roasted malt in their grist.

As I thought more about it, the more the flavor reminded me of the flavor I noticed in the Collaborative Stouts series. Originally, those stouts were using US-05, but somewhere down the line, the yeast switched, and I realized that in comparison, the beers made with US-05 had a certain harshness to them. The thing is, I didn’t notice this in those beers until I compared it directly, and since that was the only difference between those beers, I knew the yeast was the cause of it. And once I’d noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it.

Going into this brown ale series, I used a much lower percentage of roasted grains in this recipe compared to the stout recipe. I had no reason to think that I would get the same quality of harshness from 5% chocolate malt as I did from ~12% chocolate and roasted barley. Yet, there I was. I couldn’t help but wonder if US-05 reacted in some way with roasted malts that was simply not pleasant to my palate. While certainly a solid choice for many styles, perhaps US-05 wasn’t ideal for styles using roasted malts. Perhaps some other things were at play besides just the yeast—maybe water chemistry or fermentation temperature was impacting how the yeast interacted with the roasted malts. Whether or not I could fix this issue by changing other variables and still using US-05, I knew that a change of yeast would most likely be the easiest fix for this harsh flavor.

I had also noted previously that I thought some esters would complement this beer, which helped direct my choice of yeast change. I wanted something of English origin, so partially because I like the ease of dry yeast and because I have enjoyed beers made with this yeast before, I opted to use S-04.

These considerations resulted in the following recipe:

Mashed at 151°F 77% 2-row [8.25 lbs.] 9% Crystal 60 [1 lb.] 9% Victory [1 lb.] 5% Chocolate [0.5 lb.]

Boiled for 1 hr. 23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA] 16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA] 3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) [1 oz. at 5.1% AA]

Pitched S-04 Fermented at 68°F Raised to 70°F on Day 3

OG: 1.060

FG: 1.016

ABV: 5.8%

Tasting

This beer was a medium-dark brown hue and crystal clear (though it’s hard to tell from the picture). It had a moderate off-white head with decent retention.

The aroma had notes of toasted bread and bread crust. There was also a hint of coffee, though it is in the background. Some fruity esters mingled nicely with the other aromas.

The flavor was one of bread crust, toast, and a hint of caramel. A slight chocolate taste came through in the finish. Mild herbal and spicy notes were also present, though this hop character was definitely secondary to the malt flavors.

Goals for the Next Brew

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this beer. The change to S-04 achieved what I wanted it to (addition of esters and removal of the harshness). The yeast change really upped this beer’s game, and I would happily drink a pint of this any day.

That said, I think there’s still a little room for improvement. Now that the change in yeast has shifted this beer more into the realm of an English brown ale, I think that even the modest amount of 5% chocolate in the recipe might be a little too much. As it stands right now, the beer drinks a little heavier than I’d like for it to now that the yeast profile is different. Dialing back the level of roast just a touch might bring this beer more into balance. This would also have the added benefit of lowering the SRM to a color more in line with an English brown (though this is certainly a secondary benefit and not my main goal).

Recipe Comparison

Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Brown 4 2-row 75% 75% 77% 77% Crystal 60 9% 9% 9% 9% Victory 7% 7% 9% 9% Chocolate 4.5% 4.5% 5% 5% Biscuit 4.5% 4.5% N/A N/A Hop Addition 1 32 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) 23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) 23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) 23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) Hop Addition 2 7 IBUs Nugget (20 min.) 16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) 16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) 16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) Hop Addition 3 3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) 3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) 3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) Yeast US-05 US-05 US-05 S-04 OG 1.063 1.064 1.053 1.060 FG 1.013 1.011 1.010 1.016 ABV 6.6% 6.96% 5.6% 5.8%