Harvest Brown Ale (Hoppy Dank Brown Ale) with Midnight Wheat and Honey

With the Harvest Moon in the night sky and the hops harvest over, it was time once again to brew my favorite beer of the year.   My yearly harvest time hoppy brown ale.   For those who lean towards a darker beer in the Fall and Winter months but lean towards IPA's in the summer, this is the perfect transition beer!   This year I decided against using locally grown hops and decided to use locally sourced Honey that I bought from the NE Mpls Farmers Market.   I love using honey in my IPA's for a few reasons.   Honey is extremely fermentable and will help dry out the beer, and I like my IPA's fairly dry.   The other added benefit is that it does leave a little bit of residual sweetness that I like instead of excessive amounts of Crystal malt.  That all being said, I started thinking more and more about honey lately because of my sons love for the cartoon movie "Bee Movie."   This movie got me thinking about honey and why and how bees make honey.  They make it to eat during the winter months.   In my research on honey I came upon this little fact..."it takes about 556 foraging bees to visit 2 million flowers, just to make a pound of honey!"   That's what went into this beer!   Some more fun facts about honey and bees....

Why do bees make honey?

We know that bees have been producing honey as they do today for at least 150 million years. Bees produce honey as food stores for the hive during the long months of winter when flowers aren't blooming and therefore little or no nectar is available to them. European honey bees, genus Apis Mellifera, produce such an abundance of honey, far more than the hive can eat, that humans can harvest the excess. For this reason, European honey bees can be found in beekeeper's hives around the world!

The Colony

Honey bees are social insects, with a marked division of labor between the various types of bees in the colony. A colony of honey bees includes a queen, drones and workers.

 

The Queen 

The queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive. She is the largest bee in the colony.

A two-day-old larva is selected by the workers to be reared as the queen. She will emerge from her cell 11 days later to mate in flight with approximately 18 drone (male) bees. During this mating, she receives several million sperm cells, which last her entire life span of nearly two years.

The queen starts to lay eggs about 10 days after mating. A productive queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a single day.

The Drones

Drones are stout male bees that have no stingers. Drones do not collect food or pollen from flowers. Their sole purpose is to mate with the queen. If the colony is short on food, drones are often kicked out of the hive.

The Workers

Workers, the smallest bees in the colony, are sexually undeveloped females. A colony can have 50,000 to 60,000 workers.  The life span of a worker bee varies according to the time of year. Her life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 days. Workers that are reared in September and October, however, can live through the winter.  Workers feed the queen and larvae, guard the hive entrance and help to keep the hive cool by fanning their wings. Worker bees also collect nectar to make honey.  In addition, honey bees produce wax comb. The comb is composed of hexagonal cells which have walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.   Honey bees' wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.\

Anywho....

I’ve tried for three years to bitter my beers with locally grown hops to very mixed results.   Instead of using locally grown hops,  I decided I wanted to really dial in my DANK hop profile.  I fell like Centennial may be the perfect match for this task with it’s burnt citrus pungency.   I’ve been trying to reach a certain hop profile in my IPA’s lately and they always seem to be overpowered by Simcoe, or Citra, or any of the very distinct American fruity varieties of hops.  I’m hoping that Centennial with my Summit/Apollo blend is the right blend for what I’m going for.  I wanted to get a nice brown color but I didn’t want huge chocolate, roast, or really much character from roasted malts what so ever.  Instead I wanted a nice big mouthfeel, a tiny bit of caramel and toffee (Maris Otter and Caramel), some sweetness and dryness from honey, and then absolutely be blasted by dank resinous hops that lean more toward pine and less on the citrus.   .   I decided that in place of Chocolate Malt, and Roast Malt, that I’d go with Midnight Wheat.   It should provide a tiny bit of roastiness, but mainly will aid in the color and mouthfeel of this beer.   In order to get a substantial enough mouthfeel I decided to mash at 156 for 60 minutes.  The idea being that the addition of honey will thin the beer out, so mashing high will balance that out.  This beer definitely looks more like a West Coast IPA, but people will say that it’s a Black IPA and that it doesn’t have enough roast flavor for a Black IPA.  Well…that’s exactly what I was going for…you can’t put me into a box.

Specific Gravity: 1.067

Final Gravity: 1.016?

Color: 26° SRM  Dark Brown to Black

Mash Efficiency: 76 %

Bitterness:  71.9 IBU

Alcohol: 6.7% ABV

Calories: 221 per 12 oz.

Malt & Fermentables

	%	LB	OZ
	48%	6	8	Rahr Two-Row	Mash
	37%	5	~	Pale Malt (Maris Otter)	Mash
	7%	1	~	Honey	Boil
	4%	~	8	American Crystal 80L	Mash
	4%	~	8	Briess Midnight Wheat	Mash
		13	8

Hops

	Usage	Time	OZ			AA
	first wort	60 min	0.7	Chinook		5.0
	boil	75 min	0.3	Chinook		5.0
	boil	10 min	1	Apollo		19.7
	boil	10 min	1	Centennial		10.0
	boil	10 min	1	Simcoe		13.0
	boil	1 min	1	Apollo		19.7
	boil	1 min	1	Centennial		10.0
	boil	1 min	1	Summit		18.0
	dry hop	7 days	2	Apollo		19.7
	dry hop	7 days	1	Centennial		10.0
	dry hop	7 days	2	Summit		18.0

Yeast

Dennys Favorite 50 (1450)

***I also took ¾ gallon of this wort and fermented it on 100% Brett Drie.  Whoa baby that is gonna be tasty!