Rasp-muttin Raspberry Honey Nut Brown Ale

May 1, 2020 Mike

One of the first recipes I ever made was a recipe kit from Northern brewing for a honey nut brown ale. To make a long story short, it ended up being named “Sweet Mutt” after our beloved Black Lab. The beer was delicious, and it held a real special meaning for us. You can find the original recipe here.

Time moves on, and I’ve made it here and there, but the last time I adjusted the grain bill to make it more black, and it didn’t really turn out (that’s not this recipe, this one is good, I promise).

In one of the recent episodes of our video series, Episode 14: Remote Drinking, I mentioned that I hoped to brew a Raspberry Brown beer that would hold a candle to the Raspberry Brown at Cogstone Brewing. I quickly scaled my trusty sweet mutt down to a 3 Gallon batch, and thought it might work.

I believe this really does hold a candle to Cogstone’s recipe. The Raspberry is pretty apparent in the nose, and carries over into the flavor, where it marries well with the malt flavors. As it warms, a bit of chocolate flavor comes in and reminds me of chocolate covered raspberries.

It’s medium bodied, and finishes slightly dry, leaving just a hint of raspberry flavor that hangs around.

As a bonus, if you’ve been wanting to play around with Kveik yeast, this was fermented with Voss Kveik from Omega (OYL-061). So it ferments quick, and it doesn’t need to sit around for long.

The recipe below is for a 3G batch, feel free to scale it. I used Raspberry flavoring, and please taste it as you add before kegging or bottling so as to not overdo it.

Rasp-Muttin Raspberry Honey Nut Brown
All Grain Brew in a Bag
3G batch
OG: 1.055
FG: 1.008
ABV: 6.3%

2.6oz Biscuit Malt
2.6oz Chocolate Malt
2.6oz Special B Malt
2.6oz Special Roast
4lbs 12oz 2 Row Pale Malt
.64 oz Cluster hops (7%AA) at 60 minutes.
9.6oz Honey – at flamout
Omega OYL-061 Voss Kveik yeast (or US-05, WLP001)
2.5oz Raspberry Flavoring (at bottling)

Mash at 150 degrees for 60 minutes. I used 20.37Q of water for my brew in a bag setup.

Ferment around 70ish until reaching final gravity, I kegged it within a week of brewing, and it was good to go. Target about 2.3 volumes, if you’re bottling, go use a calculator for whatever you’re using for priming.

If you play with water chemistry, I used a “Brown Balanced” water profile from Beer Smith, and had a mash PH of 5.2