Texas Tornado Brown Ale

The Texas Tornado brown ale is a beer I first brewed last year around this time.  It's a hop forward beer with a Cascade hops that we all love an enjoy through our summertime pale ales.  This recipe is taken directly from the Ray Daniels and Jim Parker book "Brown Ale: History, Brewing, Techniques, Recipes.  A book I really enjoyed, so much so, I haven't given it back.

I have slightly altered today's recipe given extra ingredients I had laying around.  Just 3/4 of a pound of 2-row addition is all.

• 9.75 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row - US)
• 1.00 lb Chocolate Malt
• 0.50 lb Caramalt (80L)
• 0.25 lb Carapils 
• 0.25 lb Special Roast

With a brewhouse efficiency set at 75%, the estimates are as follows.

• 31.3 est. color (SRM)
• 1.062 est. O.G. (style 1.045-1.060)
• 1.016 est. F.G. (style 1.010-1.016)
• 6.03% ABV

In total, Beer Smith calculates this to be a 31.3 on the SRM scale.  Fairly dark brown ale.  With just a 0.50 lb of the Chocolate malt it would have been much lighter.  As this is a Texas style brown, I wanted to go all with the recipe.

The hops really dress up this beer with a nice bittering underneath with a hop aroma and taste.  

• 1.0 oz Galena (75 min)
• 0.5 oz Galena (45 min)
• 0.5 oz Willamette (15min)
• 1.0 oz Cascade (0 min)
• 1.0 oz Cascade (Dry Hop)

The Cascade addition in secondary really puts the mark on this beer.  This beer was the first beer that I had ever dry hopped and really enjoy the results of the finished product.  I am looking forward to a comparable beer this time around and hope that my guests will appreciate this one again.

Amber Ale Recipe

I picked an amber ale for my first all-grain batch on my new system.  It's a good summer time beer, one that I can put on tap and make available to the general drinker.  I found the original recipe at TastyBrew.com, going by the name of, Air Pirate Amber.  I liked the color and hop profile and became intrigued with the use of Special B.  In my first three all grain brews, I did not use anything beyond a typical Crystal malt, so I picked this one.

I have altered the recipe slightly to be more of a session style beer, by reducing the 2-row from 11 pounds to 9.5 pounds.  I used the ultra-helpful BeerSmith to make my adjustments.

Here is what I ended up with,

9.50lb American 2-row Pale Malt

1.00lb Belgian CaraMunich Malt

0.50lb Belgian Special B Malt

Original Gravity (OG) Estimate: 1.054

Final Gravity (FG) Estimate: 1.013

Estimated Color (SRM) of 15.4

This becomes a lighter beer with some color.  The final gravity leaves it a bit sweet.  I have also tweaked up the hop additions by adding a half ounce to combat that extra sweetness.

Here are the hop additions,

60 minutes 1.50 Oz Cascade (Whole) - start of boil

15 minutes 0.50 Oz Cascade (Whole)

0 minutes 0.50 Oz Cascade (Whole) - flame out

The hop additions assuming a 5.5% alpha ends with an IBU of 30.9.  Per recommendation I went with the old stand-by for dry American Yeasts, Safale US-05.