OK, as of Saturday, this beer is excellent! I’m really happy with it on its own merits, but I just brewed it again with adjustments to grain bill (see below). The original had too much of a roasted character, probably due to 8 oz of chocolate + 2 oz of roasted barley. Heh. Definitely more of a porter or stout than a brown. Turns out, I was using a generic American Chocolate malt with only like 127 SRM, which is why I was getting such low SRMs. The extra hoppiness due to low efficiency worked really nicely. It has a hint of an India Brown character. Still, I didn’t adjust hops addition for my more on-target efficiency this time, as I want to taste it with my originally target balance.
Here’s the new bill:
81% (10 lbs) 2-row
12% (1.5 lbs) c-60
4% (.5 lbs) Belgian Biscuit
3% (6 oz) Chocolate Malt
The color of the wort appears to be exactly what I was going for. A nice, translucent, light-medium brown. As always, I can’t wait until it’s ready!
I also used US-05 instead of 1450 (1450 would’ve been fourth gen, and something about the smell made me hesitant to use it).
