Today I am brewing a Brown London Ale using Wyeast 1318 yeast, which is a “London Ale III”.
Here I will do my standard 10 gallon batch sparge, but also do a 2nd running on the (same grain) and brew a secondary 5 gallon batch. I’ve done this before and you basically get 50% more beer with the same grain bill, just a bit weaker beer.
For this I always like to start with a high-er gravity beer, like 6% or higher, and then this way your secondary will end up around 5%+
In your secondary, you do have an option to add more DME or like in this case, we added 1/2 pound of Dark Brown Sugar. In the second batch you have the freedom if you want to use a totally different hop profile or even yeast. Of course you can keep everything the same, like I did.
malt:
primary 10-gallon grail bill:
- 18 lbs Golden Promise
- 5 lbs Munich Malt
- 1.5 lbs Crystal 15
- 1.5 lbs Crystal 60
- 0.60 lbs Chocolote malt, 200 Love
- 0.50 lbs Dark Brown Sugar
secondary running – same grain on a 5 gallon batch, plus 0.50 Dark Brown Sugar.
hops:
10 gallon – batch 1.5 ounce Cascade whole hops on 10 gallons from start of boil and 1 ounce of Willametter at 15 end of boil
5 gallon 2nd running – exactly the same
yeast:
London Ale III – Wyeast 1318 yeas
On the 2nd running I will use 6 gallon of water, re-heat it only and then transfer out of mash tun to the boil to finish it off, with standard 1 hour boil.
OG on 10 gallon – 1.06 – about 6% + – this one fermented for only about a week, and it comes out nice and sweet, I bet if you let it go longer it will end up higher ABV and less sweet, if you like this.
OG on 5 gallon – 1.04 – FG was 1.004 but also I left it in the fermentor for over a month, it comes out nice and clear and lighter color, more like a Newcastle Brown (also way better), so this comes out at a surprising 4.7% – so basically a 5% beer – see pic below:
Some nice outcomes from the secondary running is that the grain had more time to cook, so it is a little more of a roasty/nutty flavor, and in a English Brown Ale that is not a bad idea.