Imperial Brown Ale: Suggestions Appreciated

I personally like some brown malt (along with Victory) in my brown ales for good toast. My standard brown is definitely situated on this side of the pond, though.

 

If you want nutty...nix the C-60, Victory, and Honey malt and replace with GNOs (IMHO)
Looks tasty as is

 

I'm a fan of pale chocolate malt, but I find that 8 oz in a 5 gallon batch gives more chocolatey flavor than toasty or nutty. If you really want toasty/nutty and not chocolatey, you might consider bringing this down.

 

After I posted, I was trying to think more about what an Imperial Brown Ale with emphasis on toastiness and nuttiness (as opposed to chocolate) might mean. What I was coming up with was English barleywine. Not sure if that's quite accurate as I have less experience with the bigger beers.

 

Just something to consider. Most homebrewers concentrate on malts when they want to brew a beer that is malt forward. Yeast selection can play a very important role on how malty a beer tastes (perhaps just as important as malt selection).

Perhaps using S-04 would be a wise choice for this beer since many BAs report that it produces a bready flavor. There may be other yeast strains which will accentuate the characteristics of “bready, toasty, and nutty notes” but only S-04 is coming to mind at the moment.

Cheers!

 

I'd be all over that idea, but if you've used GNO before, it is slightly nutty, but it also tosses a pretty obvious berry note to the beer, and in a brown.. meh.

 

Up the victory if you want the nutty and bready notes, IMO. Knock the chocolate back, maybe even some munich added.

 

Have used GNOs extensively in Browns, etc and never gotten "berry notes"...even though I've seen them described as such...could be their appearance...they kind of look like berries.

 

To each his own I guess. I like to use it in saisons and some pales myself. Adds some body like crystal without the overly sweet taste of a straight up crystal malt. I enjoy the berry note it tosses in those styles.

 

+1 on adding brown malt to that, as well as your inclusion of the pale chocolate.
i'd personally nix the honey malt for c-80.... but that's b/c i think honey malt, even at 3% is just too sweet, and the c-80 will round out the beer a little bit with some bittersweet goodness.

 

I think that the WLP007 would be a better choice. WLP005 is very fruity and needs care through fermentation to get the job done with a 1.05 O.G. let alone an imperial anything. Good luck.