To continue my recent brewing of English styles I had decided on brewing a Southern English Brown Ale (my first brown ale). After doing a fair amount of research into the difference between styles (northern
English brown,
American brown, "other" brown, and southern
English brown) I felt like I had a good handle on what I would like to start off with...
The method behind my combining of malts had partly to do with what I had on hand and partly on what I wanted to create..ideally this brown ale should lie comfortably between a Newcastle Brown and a Sam Smiths Nut Brown..but with more
mouthfeel than both..
...well I missed that mark.
I should explain that I
don't mean that I "missed the mark" in finding something that would be
tasty, brown, and something between the above two commercial style but rather that I missed the
mouthfeel aspect. Now I started brewing this today at 4am..so how do I know about missing the
mouthfeel? Well..when measuring the
temperature before I mashed out (at the end of the mash) I was registering a 151 F..which will likely end up in a
thinner (but still awesome mind you) brown ale..ideally I should have had a 154 F temp at this point..I basically
f'd up my measurements when considering the
temperature of my mash tun and grain..so my water was not hot enough to rest me at 154F-the cooler than expected gear/grains brought me down a few notches.
To
summarize-I'm looking forward to sampling this brew when I keg next weekend, and throw an English
Barley Wine, on top of this yeast cake BUT I'm going to need this batch to mature for a few weeks before having an accurate read on what I ended up with. Then I should have a handle on just how "thin" I made this bad boy.
Nothing like "dialing in" your system. I fine myself doing this more and more lately as I've been
brewing very
similar beers batch-to-batch and this is just another lesson learned.
0 Dark 30: Southern English Brown Ale. 
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