Ivan Raho has been a friend of ours for a long time and we have chatting about brewing something to together for a long time. And here it is. A big malty double brown ale. The recipe was formulated on a friday afternoon over a few drinks at the brewery and we all got very excited by it. Brown ale may not be the sexiest style in the world and it is terribly underappreciated style by beer drinkers. This beer is designed to set the record straight. Packed with flavours of toffee, caramel, biscuit, light roast coffee and a hint of chocolate but without the harsher roast flavours of stout and porter. We loaded this one up with flaked oats to really create a smooth mouthfeel but fermented adequatley down to ensure drinkability. With just a bittering addition of hops, this is balanced very much towards malty. Traditional English Brown malt leads the creating light coffee notes, then biscuit malt gives a rich depth of biscuit and toasted breadcrust. A slight addition of debittered chocolate malt gives a touch of chocolate and espresso. This is tied together with an english crystal malt to sweeten up these flavours with toffee and caramel notes. We didn’t skimp on the base malt either as the king of malty bases Maris Otter does the heavy lifting ensuring deep malt flavours come from every angle. This is one to sip in front of a nice warm fire over the cold winter months.