Begin Brewing!

My two previous attempts at cloning Coniston's Old Man Ale resulted in very tasty brews, but beers that had no real resemblance to the original. Both were extremely dark, nearly black in color, while Coniston's beer is a nice reddish brown. Both of my attempts tasted more (to me) like a Foreign Export Stout than a brown ale. I believe that's due to including too much roasted barley in the grist. This time around, I'm going with a little less than a third of an ounce in a 2.5 gallon batch. I'm hoping that will achieve the right color profile, and allow me to begin focusing on adjusting the flavor. Ingredients 4.25 pounds Maris Otter Pale Malt 8 ounces British Crystal 60-75L Malt 0.30 ounces Roasted Barley 0.55 ounces Mount Hood hops pellets @ 4.2% AA (60 min.) 0.45 ounces Challenger hops @ 7.8% AA (10 min.) 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the mash 1/4 tsp. Gypsum in the mash water 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the boil (15 min.) 1/8 tsp. Yeast nutrient in the boil (10 ...

My first attempt to clone Coniston's Old Man Ale was sort of a flop. Instead of producing a reddish brown English style brown ale, it produced a deep black ale reminiscent of an export stout. I don't know if this is because the homebrew shop didn't measure the specialty malts correctly, or because I ordered the amounts incorrectly, or what, but it bore no resemblance to the beer I was trying to brew. On the other hand, it was actually quite a tasty beer and I view it as a happy-but-unrepeatable mistake. I ordered a new set of ingredients this time, and the resulting beer was indeed a reddish-brown color as it came out of the Zymatic. This leads me to believe the original set of ingredients from the homebrew shop contained a bit too much roasted barley. Ingredients 3.75 pounds Maris Otter Malt 1 ounce UK Roasted Barley Malt 12 ounces Crystal 80L Malt 0.25 ounces Challenger hops @ 6.8% AA (60 min.) 0,20 ounces Mt. Hood hops @ 5.6% AA (15 min.) 0.15 ounces Challen...