This is Mike McDole's recipe for "Janet's Brown Ale" which was published in Jamil's book. It is a big & hoppy west coast style brown ale. I adjusted it for my efficiency a little and darkened it up a bit.
Mash at 154F for 60 minutes. Boil 90 minutes. Ferment at 67F.
Note: The 2-row malt and Carapils are Organic. The Carafa III is actually Carafa "Special" III, which is dehusked. (The addition of Carafa Special III is optional. I did this to darken the beer up a bit. Mike does not use it in his original recipe.)
The final addition of Cascade whole hops was done with a Hopback.
Remember to add 1 oz. Northern Brewer hops to the mash.
Brewed this recipe today. Used a new shipment of Cascade hops from Hopsdirect and they seemed incredibly fresh and fragrant. This inspired me to use the Hopback for the final hop addition. I don't know if Mike McDole uses the Hopback on this recipe (it didn't mention it in the book) but since I know he frequently uses one I had a feeling it would work out OK for me to do so.
Everything went smoothly. I pitched a 2 liter starter of WLP001 which was very active at the time of pitching. Wort was 72 deg. Began the brew at 10:00AM and pitched the yeast at 5:00PM. There is no visible activity yet as of 8:00PM.
O.G. = 1.070
Was still working the bugs out of my system at this point and achieved higher than expected efficiency.
Added hop pellets directly to primary fermenter. Rousing fermenter every day.
Blamo! Herbaljoe (has brewed recipe) December 19, 2007, 11:00 am
Turned out great. Just like I hoped it would. Lots of rich "brown ale" malt flavor and a strong but pleasant hop kick with some medium bitterness to finish it off. The alcohol content is a little bit too high, but this is quickly mellowing out and doesn't detract from enjoying the beer.
Brewed again 4/25/08 Herbaljoe (has brewed recipe) May 5, 2008, 6:24 pm
Brewed it again. This time I hit the right gravity (1.067). Did not add the Carafa Special. Instead, added 3 oz. Pale Chocolate malt. Also used Wyeast 1056 this time.
Kegged (5/7/08) and carbonated. Dry hopped with 1 oz. Centennial. Cut this down from 2 oz. because I'm dry hopping in the keg now and it seems to be much more potent since none of the hop aroma can escape. After 1 day of dry hopping I tasted it and it had already gained a HUGE hop nose. So I took the hops out not wanting it to overpower the beer. I'm glad I did because the aroma is very nice now. Well balanced with the dark grain characters. Good strong Brown Ale flavor and a lingering bitterness. The aftertaste seems to bloom in your mouth after a few seconds leaving a really great lasting impression.
FG = 1.016
ADF = 75%
ABV = 6.7%
Eff = 81.5%
Drinking it Herbaljoe (has brewed recipe) May 18, 2008, 6:04 pm
The second brewing of this beer turned out even better than the first. The slightly lower OG makes it a lot more drinkable, for one thing. Also the hops just seem to pop a lot more and I suppose it's actually a bit out of style for an American Brown Ale, but I don't care because it's really tasty!
Has a really great hop nose which is fairly complex - citrusy, woody, and a little grassy (but not in a bad way). The aroma is also filled with chocolate notes mixed with bready and toasty characters. Very complex and intriguing.
The flavors jump out all over the place once you've taken a sip - a very firm toasty/chocolately flavor mixed with a punchy bitterness and a refreshing citrus undertone.
After all this perhaps the best part of this beer is the aftertaste. It lingers forever on the tongue and seems to blossom there, gaining even more complexity. I can't help but take another sip!
Thanks go out to Mike McDole and Jamil Zainasheff :)
This beer took silver in the American Brown Ale category at the 21st Annual Southern California Regional Homebrew Championship, put on by the Inland Empire Brewers club on June 22 2008!
Some changes Vista (has brewed recipe) May 18, 2008, 1:15 pm
I brewed this recipe but used the extract recipe. It really is delicious. I swapped out northern brewer with chinook, and then used willamette instead of centennial for the dry hop. also added 4 oz of dark brown sugar at 5 min. used 1056, a very delicious beer.
people should really buy jamil and palmer's book. it's a great stepping stone and baseline. it includes extract versions of all recipes too...for the price of a couple 5 lb grain bags you can get a book that will help you brew recipes that will really wow your friends.
