Blast from the Past: Desperation Brown Ale

What do you do when it's your first chance to brew in over a month, but the local homebrew store is closed?

My initial reaction was to panic. Of course my homebrew store had to be closed on the one day I had time to shop! How typical!

Then, I started to go through what brewing supplies I already had at home. Leftover Malt Extract from a beer kit? Check. Some random specialty malts? Check. Hops? Check. Yeast? A spare packet of dry that I'd forgotten I even had.

The beer I decided upon is an American Brown Ale.

For grains, I used all of the liquid extract I had. The Caramel 60L was leftover from my Power-Outage Pumpkin brew day. My Chocolate Malt was leftover from an Oatmeal Stout. The Hops were around from my last online shopping spree. It's brewing time!

Oddly enough, the ingredients I had on hand let me put together a beer eerily close to one of the first beers I ever brewed back in the mid 90's: Gushing Geyser Brown Ale. That beer netted me my first ever ribbon in a homebrew competition. Creepy. Perhaps my store being closed was the universe's way of telling me to revisit my past. It also means that the recipe below is this blog's first Blast from the Past beer.

He's the finished recipe:

Fermentables:
6.5 lbs Northern Brewer Pilsen Malt Extract Syrup: 60 min

Specialty Grains (Steeped at ~154F for 30 min):
1.25 lbs Briess Caramel 60L
8 oz Bairds Chocolate Malt

Hops:
0.5 oz Newport (9.8% a.a.): 60 min
1 oz Willamette (5.3% a.a.): 20 min
1 oz Willamette (5.3% a.a.): 5 min

Total Boil Time:

90 min

Yeast:
Danstar Nottingham Ale

Original Gravity:
1.053
Estimated Final Gravity:
1.013

IBU: 35
SRM Color: 21

Fermentation Schedule:
2 Weeks Primary
3 Weeks Secondary
2 Weeks Bottle Conditioning

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