Nut brown recipe critique?

ChrisR · February 23, 2019, 5:37pm

Greetings fellow brewers. I was hoping to get some comments on my nut brown recipe below. It’s OK, but it’s not quite what I was going for in terms of warm nuttiness. It’s got a tad of bitterness to it that I wasn’t expecting. My suspicion is that I may have overdone the Victory malt in my nuttiness pursuit. I appreciate any insight you can provide:

7 lb 15 oz 2-row
1 lb 9 oz 80L crystal
1 lb 9 oz Victory
0 lb 7 oz brown malt
0 lb 3 oz chocolate malt
1 oz Fuggles and .5 oz NB (60 and 30 min intervals for each)
1 pack of rehydrated S04
BIAB mash (all grains mashed, no steep)
7.5 gallons distilled water

No mistakes that I’m aware of in the process. thanks a bunch.

sneezles61 · February 23, 2019, 7:09pm

I’d question why so much C-malt… In fact… I would’ve omitted it… Your starting gravity about 1.065? Thats getting to be a big brew…Maybe 2 packs of yeast?? Your hops shouldn’t really bitter your brew… Fuggles is a nice laid back hop…
Is this a recipe you’re starting from scratch? The 2 row is good, The Victory is good… perhaps at the top end how much used in your recipe… My taste buds really like the chocolate malt to sneak in some flavor… Do away with the brown malt and up the chocolate to about 5 oz… Then tweak the chocolate a bit more or less in the next batches…Got a picture to post? Sneezles61

squeegeethree · February 23, 2019, 7:43pm

I’ve always had a problem with the descriptor “nut” when it comes to beer. I can see color being nutty but I have yet to come across a malt that is truly nutty.
I just googled “What makes nut taste in beer” and was shocked… shocked I tell you… at how R rated the results were
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=what+makes+nut+taste+in+beer&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

brew_cat · February 23, 2019, 8:43pm

We don’t judge on this forum

sneezles61 · February 23, 2019, 8:49pm

Sneezles61

WMNoob · February 24, 2019, 2:52am

LOL Getting back on topic, did you build your water from distilled or just use it straight up? You may have extracted tannins if the pH was too high. I like the recipe other than the amount of crystal which is a teeny bit high for me but thinking the bitterness is tannins. Maybe try it again with different water and see how it goes.

sneezles61 · February 24, 2019, 2:18pm

Noob has probably explained where the bitterness came from… If pH isn’t addressed, at the last bit of the lautering, proteins and tannins will make its way out of the barley (mainly from the husk) and into your brew… Trying to keep from lautering any wort below 1.007 will help… That means you need to keep checking the gravity as you go…
So this is just another step to learn as you go… Sounds overwhelming… it seems to be as you figure this area out… But its not at all… Once you’ve done a few HL corrections, is a very simple process… Sneezles61

ChrisR · February 24, 2019, 8:05pm

Thanks to you both for comments. I used the distilled water straight up, which I guess is because that’s what I used when I did extract. I may have to do some research on mash ph. One thing I will mention is that I tried to mash a full 5 gallon yield in a kettle that wasn’t large enough. In doing so, I took the bag out and sparged it with about a gallon of hot water to extract some more yield. Could this type of sparge method pull tannins with it? Hope I explained it sufficiently. I didn’t squeeze the bag!

ChrisR · February 24, 2019, 8:09pm

Thanks. I will say that the simpler the grain bill, the fewer problems I have. I made a pale in line with SNPA and a stout in line with Guinness and they were both near perfect. All done with distilled water. so I never really gave the water profile any consideration in these or other recipes.