I decided to make Janet's Brown Ale from Jamil Zainasheff's book, Brewing Classic Styles. Brown ales are my favorite type of beer, and this one looked interesting; it has lots of hops, but is hopefully balanced out with a strong malt flavor.
When looking back on the beers that I've made, there are a few things I wanted to improve. I wanted more malt character, as well as more body. According to How to Brew, you can increase the body of the beer by adding carapils to your grain bill. This recipe calls for carapils, so I wanted to see if I could tell the difference in the body. Another interesting part of the recipe is dry-hopping. I haven't done that before, and I'm curious to see how it affects the hop character, or even if I have the palate capable of tellling the difference.
Here's the recipe as written (I changed it when I was brewing to use the hops I had on hand.):
Ingredients:
12 lbs American 2-row
1.25 lbs Belgian Cara-Pils
1.25 lbs Crystal Malt 40°L
1 lbs White Wheat Malt
.5 lbs American Chocolate Malt
.3 lbs Weyermann Carafa® III
1.25 oz Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8.00 %AA) boiled 60 min.
1 oz Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8.00 %AA) boiled 15 min.
1.5 oz Cascade (Pellets, 4 %AA) boiled 10 min.
1.5 oz Cascade (Whole, 6.5 %AA) boiled .01 min.
2 oz Centennial (Pellets, 10.4 %AA) used as dry hop.
1 oz. Northern Brewer pellets added to the mash.
1 tsp. Whirlfloc tablet boiled for 15 minutes.
Yeast : White Labs WLP001 California Ale info
