Style Suggestions for a Newbie

For simplicities sake, either one of those styles would be fine. Personally I might stick with a pale ale since the slighty higher hopping rate is a bit more forgiving for the inevitable errors, but most people stick with one of those 2.
Every so often you see someone swinging for the fences the first time out with a mega IPA or barrel stout, sour thing, and they always end up frustrated and usually quit.
If I may give a couple hints: First, search the threads here, there are a ton of threads for first timers.
The things to keep in mind: sanitation, sanitation, yeast being happy, sanitation, temperature control and sanitation.
Everything must be clean and sanitary to avoid extra bugs sneaking in to eat your beer. if you use dry yeast, you have more leeway, but if you use liquid, make sure you're pitching enough - you can make a starter or use a couple packs. make sure that the temperature is as close as you can to the mid-60s for pitching and fermentation. Much higher than that you will get off-flavors. Way higher will kill the yeast. Much lower will put them to sleep.
Make sure you keep the temps in that area. A couple degrees plus or minus won't hurt, depending on style.
Finally, have fun. It's only beer, for Bog's sake. Relax, Don't worry, have a (home)brew.

 

A Best Brown clone recipe should be a good one to start with so that you get the brewing basics and end up with a good beer. Does the recipe call for some specialty grains to be steeped? That's a procedure that would be good to learn on your first brewing session too.

 

www.howtobrew.com
Familiarize yourself with the process ahead of time. If you're doing extract get yourself some good water. The brown or palewould both be good. The pale is more forgiving with the hopiness covering alot of mistakes, but the hop schedule is a bit more complex than the brown. Brew what you like though, you have to drink most of it.

 

You should not steep Victory malt, it should be mashed. I also would not use liquid malt extract that the recipe calls for, dry is likely to lead to a better beer. You can drop the Victory and sub 6# of light DME to get close to this recipe. Probably would not notice a difference.

You will need to crush the malt yourself, basically you need a homebrew place with a malt mill or you can order online and ask for the malt to be crushed. Don't try to crush them at home if you don't have a mill.

You might check out the recipe section here, there are a couple all-grain brown recipes to give you ideas.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/cudl-buddy-american-brown-ale-all-grain.182627/

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/brown-ale-american-brown-ale-all-grain.313719/

 

I'll defer to @wspscott about not steeping the Victory malt because I am not an all-grain brewer to know that. This homebrewing hobby is not an exact science, so the substitution of some DME should not affect the outcome very much.

I looked at the recipe that you linked, and I'd like to make comments about the paragraph of the instructions because these are very generic: "When done boiling, strain out hops, add wort to two gallons cool water in a sanitary fermenter, and top off with cool water to 5.5 gallons. Cool the wort to 80º F, aerate the beer and pitch your yeast. Allow the beer to cool over the next few hours to 68-70º F, and ferment for 10-14 days. Bottle your beer, age for two to three weeks and enjoy!"

Depending on your kettle size, you can add as much of the above water amounts that will fit into your boil, as long as you leave some room for foam to occur on top of the liquid. Once you see foam forming, you have only a second or two to turn down (or off) your heat source and stir the wort to stop the foam from rising over the top. Otherwise you have a sugary mess all over your floor. Typically this will happen within a few minutes of the addition of the extract and the boil restarts. BE ON GUARD!

Do you have a wort chiller? If so, you can submerse most of the coiled section into the wort for sterlilizing over the last 10 minutes of the boil. If you have another method to chill the wort, it should be effective enough to perform the task as quickly as possible. (Which may be why your instructions hold back on adding cool water in the fermentor.)

My procedure to remove trub once the boil is finished is to pour the cooled wort (I use my chiller inside the boil kettle because it's already there from the sterilizing process) through a funnel that has a sanitized stainless steel strainer in it, thus I accomplish aeration and removal of most of the trub that is still in suspension. It helps to have a second person in this step. (If your fermentor is a carboy, place the handle of a large spoon also in the neck of the carboy with the funnel so that the displaced air in the carboy can escape through this gap during this pouring process. Also, have another sanitized spoon handy to remove some of the hop debris because it will clog the strainer.) I pour only to the point that the bulk of the trub stays in the bottom of the kettle, although I lose about a pint or so of liquid that is also left behind as part of this transfer process. If you don't have 5.5 gallons of wort in your fermentor now you can add more 'boiled and cooled' water now to reach that level. (Mark your fermentor ahead of time by using measured water so that you know when you have the needed 5.5 gallons.)

If you can get the wort's temp down to 70 before pitching your yeast, that's a little better than 80. Then place your fermentor in a place that maintains a temp around 65 if you can.

One other tip: To help minimize the chance or the strength of an early boil-over, you can add only about 25% of the extract at the start of the boil, and then the rest for the last 15 minutes. When brewing light-colored beers this procedure will help eliminate scorching of the sugar during the long boil and keep the beer looking lighter. But you still have to be on guard for a boil-over, so this is optional when brewing a dark beer.

Fire back with any questions that you might have along the way. Good luck.

 

The difference between between mashing and steeping is minimal. If you steep the grains in 1.5qts of water per pound of grain at 150 degrees you will be mashing the grains. Mash em for 60 minutes, pull the bag out of the wort and rinse them with some 150 degree water and top off your kettle for the boil. Its a mini mash, and I utilized it for a good while prior to going all grain. It works well for styles that have a bit more body as extract doesn't attenuate as well as all grain wort. Ymmv.

 

Lots of good info above. The only thing I will add pertains to the water you will use. If you are on municipal water get campden tablets to add to it to get rid of chlorine or chloramine. If you have a water softener system bypass it when you get your water. I've seen many newbie questions of "why does my beer remind me of bandaids?" that can be traced back to chloramine in city tap water.

 

A mash also requires a base malt with diastatic power (enzymes).

 

Victory doesn't?

 

Victory doesn't have any diastatic power. But it does have lots of unconverted starches. So it's not recommended for steeping.

 

Who the hell are the people recommending it for a SMaSH? I have seen it suggested and assumed it would self convert.

 

You can revisit this recipe after you are ready to try a Mini-Mash. In the meantime, you should be able to find simpler recipes in this style or look at Amber/Pale ales as you've mentioned earlier.

 

I dunno. Maybe this person...

 

I don't know, but it would taste horrible even without the unconverted starch...thankfully Victory (aka domestic biscuit) is usually used as <3% of a maltbill