Minnesota Black Bitter - Single Hop

Yo. Check it out. I brewed up numero duo on the all-grain train this weekend. Friday night for me was all about brewing. I had a bunch of hops in my freezer that I picked from a dude in New Hope that grew em. He had hops growing like 40 feet up his deck. I had 4 1/2 ounces of Cascade hops so I decided to put together a nice hoppy brown ale. I found a nice recipe on brewdudes that used all Cascade hops. Cascade is one of the most common hops in america pale ales. Not sure how it's gonna work out. I've read that heavily hopping a darker beer doesn't have the same effect as it would with a pale because the hops is more in the background. We will see. I ended up getting 10 lbs of Rahr 2-row grown right here in our very own Shakopee, and my specialty malts from Sconnie. Breiss Crystal 20, Crystal 120, Chocolate malt, and a little Roasted Malt. Now that I look at it, it kinda looks like it's gonna be a light hoppy porter. We'll go with India Brown Ale. I mashed is at 154 for 60 minutes and by the end of the 60 minutes it was down to 151 so not too bad. I collected the first runnings and then sparged at 166 for 20 minutes. I ended up collecting 7 gallons of wort. I added the Cascade hops through out the boil and after 60 minutes I cooled it down real fast with my wort chiller to 75 degrees. My gravity reading at that point was 1.056. I ended up pitching it with two different kinds of yeast, one american, and one british. It's gonna be interesting to see how the two different flavor profiles effect the finished beer. So, there you have it...a nice Brown ale, with only cascade hops and
two varieties of yeast. Five and a half gallons, burpin out Co2, and poopin alcohol like mad right now.

Malts 
10.0 lbs  American 2-row
1.0 lbs    Crystal 15L
0.25 lbs  Crystal 125L
0.5 lbs    Special Roast
0.75 lbs  Chocolate Malt
2.0 oz    Roasted Barley
(Mash temp 155 F)
Hops
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 60min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 10min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 1min



Tasting notes: This Brown ale is tasty as shit. It's a favorite amongst my friends at least! It's almost like a light porter with slight roasted coffee notes, huge hop aroma from late additions and dry hopping, and it spent a long time in my fridge so it's fairly clean. The yeast aren't present very much which is to be expected with clean yeasts at low temps. It tastes pretty smooth and creamy like a light cream stout. I used a lot of hops in it for bittering because I adjusted the AA's down a bit to be on the safe side. I think I made a wise decision. This is an extremely well balance Hoppy Brown Ale. Hopefully I can make it again next year with some Homegrowns.