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...

Much darker than the real beer, below While out to dinner at a local tavern, I had the opportunity to try Coniston's Old Man Ale.  I found it to be an enjoyable and slightly tart brown ale. Looking online, I couldn't find a clone recipe, so I decided to see if I could create my own. The brewery's web site gives the following clues: Malt:   Roasted Barley, Crystal, and Pale Ale Malts Hops: Challenger and Mount Hood ABV: 4.2% Description:   "A radically different beer... it has roast barley added to the pale and crystal malts. It has a deep burnished copper color, a rich port wine aroma, a big chocolate and creamy malt palate and a dry, grainy, roasty finish balanced by hop bitterness and tart fruit. It is a remarkably complex beer that deepens and changes as you sup it." The Beer of the Month Club says that you should drink it at 58F or you miss a lot of the nuance.  They describe it as "extremely toasty, crackery, with fruity notes favoring...