Today we brewed a Brown Ale with the malts we smoked on Monday. Everything went very smoothly for once, and we also managed to get a huge bump in efficiency (75% instead of the 60-65% we have usually been achieving) by batch sparging. We have previously been using no-sparge, but decided to try batch sparging to improve efficiency. Couldn’t detect any smokiness in the post-boil wort, but hopefully there will be some in the final beer. The beer will most likely be a strange mix of styles, as color and malt profile brings it into Brown Ale territory, the yeast is English (WLP002), the hops are American (Summit; wanted to use up 2010 harvest hops), while the smokiness adds to the complexity. I hope the resulting beer will be drinkable. We ended up with 41 liters of 1.062 wort, which is now placed in the fermentation chamber set at 19C.

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