I'm taking the day off work tomorrow to brew this -- it will be my first beer that didn't come from a kit! I started with the Elbro Nerkte Brown Ale recipe in Charlie Papazian's "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing," and modified it a bit.
If anyone has any suggestions before tomorrow morning, let me know! Also, I'm going to explain the procedure in more detail than is typical. That way someone can tell me if I'm doing something dumb, and also this thread will be more helpful to future noobies like me -- assuming the beer turns out!
Ingredients:
6 lbs Dark DME
8 oz American Crystal 40L
4 oz Black patent malt
Hops:
3 oz Fuggles pellets (4.0% AA)
0.5 oz Cascade pellets (5.5% AA)
Yeast: Safale US-05
Procedure:
1. Steep the crystal malt and black patent malt in a grain bag at 65-71 C (150-160F) for 30 minutes. Use about 3 gallons of water.
2. Remove the grain bag, bring the water to a boil.
3. Take the pot off the burner. Add DME, and stir until it's dissolved.
4. Back on the burner until boiling again.
5. Add the Fuggles and start a 60 minute timer.
6. When 5 minutes are left on the timer, add the Cascade.
7. When the timer runs out, cool the wort down, transfer to primary, add water to top up to 5 gallons, and pitch yeast.
Changes from Papazian's recipe:
-I'm using Briess DME instead of Munton's LME. This is just because it was the only dark malt extract they had at the place I was ordering from. I'm using slightly less than was called for because it's dry... I know there's a formula for that conversion, but I just tweaked it a bit in Hopville's Beer Calculus until the OG and color were close to what the book listed.
-He didn't specify how dark the crystal malt should be, so 40L was pretty arbitrary
-My IBU rating calculated by Hopville was really low, so I increased the Fuggles by an ounce, which got it close to the number from the book. I'm guessing the difference is because my Fuggles are on the low end for alpha acid.
-I'm boiling more water, because my pot is (hopefully) big enough, and I've read that boiling bigger is better
Are any of my changes crazy? Have I wildly misunderstood some aspect of the brewing process? Would anyone recommend doing anything differently?
I'll be sure to post an update tomorrow after brewing... and more importantly, another update in a few weeks after drinking some! If it's good I'll probably also edit this post with more details about the procedure, to make this a better reference for potential noobs.
UPDATE: This beer turned out SUPER boring. There's nothing unpleasant about it, there's just not much to it at all. So it's not bad, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.