India Brown Ale

Carmelising the sugar

Finally, at long last, I am back to home brewing. Between moving back to Victoria and starting the new job at Phillips, it has taken me a bit longer than I would have liked to get back in the brewing saddle, but this Sunday, after an awesome Beerfest, I was able to roll up my sleeves and get Basement Breweries back into production.

The beer was one I've been contemplating for some time, an Indian Brown Ale, inspired by Dogfish Head's version of this emerging style. No local brewery does an India Brown to my knowledge, and Dogfish Head's is no longer available in town, so it would be cool to make a beer not really accessible in Victoria. The recipe started with one from the book by Dogfish Head's founder, Sam Calagione's, and evolved from there. One of the main challenges came from carmelising the brown sugar, a task that took me two tries to achieve without burning the sugar and one that was only successful in the end thanks to the assistance of my super-chef room mate. I also decided to add star anise to the brew, to add some further complexity. I was tempted to add a lot more hops than I did, but my most recent brews have been somewhat hop heavy so I restrained myself. I am going to try a fairly aggressive dry-hopping regimen as I've read  Dogfish Head heavily dry-hops their beer.

Geek Info


Method: All-Grain

Original Gravity: 1.074


Malt
13 lbs. British 2-row
10 oz. Crystal 60
10 oz. Biscuit malt
6 oz. Chocolate malt
2 oz. Roasted barley

Hops
1 oz. Bravo pellets                             60 min
1.5 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets      30 min
1.5 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets     Flameout
Dry hops                                   To be decided (suggestions?)


Other
8 oz. Carmelised Brown Sugar           10 min
1 Star Anise                                         5 min

Yeast
Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale