Janet’s Brown Ale Seven Ways Homebrew Recipes

In the Chop & Brew episode Janet’s Brown Ale Seven Ways, a group of us got together to brew seven different versions of the popular Janet’s Brown Ale homebrew recipe, created and popularized by the late and great Mike “Tasty” McDole. The American Homebrewers Association chose Janet’s Brown Ale as one of their suggested homebrew recipes for this year’s Big Brew for National Homebrew Day.

See this link for a slightly bigger version of Janet’s Brown Ale being promoted by AHA for Big Brew 2021. Omit the corn sugar for a version more true to the original recipe as published in Brewing Classic Styles. The AHA included both all-grain and extract versions.

When it came to our variant project Paul Fowler brewed the all-grain version of Janet’s Brown Ale true to the original recipe from Brewing Classic Styles, fermented with White Labs 001. Chip Walton brewed the extract version using dry malt extract and fermented with Imperial Flagship.

Paul Illa brewed an extract version of Janet’s Kveik’d Brown Ale fermented with LalBrew Voss Kveik and fermented at 100F.

Chuck Gosnell put some English on that Janet’s with a sort of Ye Ole Janet’s Brown Ale subbing in English Medium Crystal and English Chocolate in the specialty malts, and fermented with Imperial House.

Leif Neilson brewed Janet’s Smoked Brown Ale by subbing in 2 lbs of Briess Cherrywood Smoked malt in place of 2-Row. Also fermented with Imperial Flagship. Check out his full recipe on BeerSmith Recipe Cloud.

Bad Ass Bryon Adams doubled down and brewed a 10-gallon batch, split it in half, then fermented with wood in primary for two different Janet’s Wood-Fermented Brown Ale. He used the very bad ass Honey Comb wood chunks from Black Swan Cooperage. One batch got hard maple, the other got hickory. Fermented with Imperial Darkness.

Barry Salem made the varant Janet’s Big Brown Barleywine by brewing the recipe above and adding 1 lb Maris Otter malt and 2 lbs Clover Honey. His original gravity was 1.100 and final gravity was 1.008; White Labs 001 in beast mode!