Bring the taste of summer and autumn into your favorite fermented beverage with this fig brown ale recipe. Brown ale recipes brew up a deep coppery brown beer with subtle caramel and chocolate notes, perfect with mission figs. Craft beer enthusiasts, add this fruity beer to your seasonal home brewing timeline.
Shortcut for Brewing with Figs
Brewing small batches of beer with Blue Ribbon Fig Concentrate is a simple way to infuse the distinct honeyed, jammy flavor of California Mission Figs into the beer. The fig concentrate is a pure concentrated water extract of figs and does not have any preservatives or additives.
Figs for Brown Ale and Other Kinds of Beer
California Mission Figs complement several styles of beer, and are often already present to a degree in darker beers such as stouts, porters, and Belgian-style Quads. While those examples are generally higher ABV and intensity, a brown ale is a slightly lighter style and also a natural contender for a fig addition, using Fig Concentrate.
Flavor Notes
This recipe balances the base caramel and subtle chocolate characteristics of a brown ale with the sweet fig flavor imparted by using Blue Ribbon Fig Concentrate, ideal for brewing small batches of beer.
Fig Brown Ale Recipe
Ingredients
- 10 pounds Pale 2-Row malt
- 3/4 pounds Chocolate malt
- 1/2 pound Crystal 60L malt
- 1/2 pound (170ml) Blue Ribbon Fig Concentrate
- 1/2 ounce Cascade 60 minutes
- 1 ounce Liberty 30 minutes
- 1 ounce Willamette 15 minutes
- White Labs WLP002 English Ale Yeast
Instructions
- Begin your brew by mashing grains at 153°F for 60 minutes, then sparge to collect 6 gallons in the boil kettle. Boil for an hour adding hops as indicated. Add fig concentrate at 15 minutes remaining. It’s best to remove the kettle from the burner for this step to prevent the concentrate from settling to the bottom and scorching. After the boil, cool the wort, transfer to the fermenter, pitch yeast, and ferment at 66° for 12 days or until fermentation is complete. Transfer to a keg or bottle and carbonate. There may be fig particles in suspension, and adding gelatin before packaging may help clear them out of the beer.
- There are a few considerations to account for when adding fig concentrate to a beer. Firstly, fig concentrate is roughly 60% fermentable sugars, which must be accounted for when developing the malt bill. The concentrate also affects color by darkening the beer slightly and the fig addition also lends to the body of the beer. Another decision when adding concentrate is whether to add to the boil or during a secondary fermentation. Adding during the last 15 minutes of the boil incorporates the fig flavor into the beer and blends nicely, whereas adding during a secondary fermentation may result in a more fig-forward flavor in the final beer. Either way, the combination of brown ale and Blue Ribbon California Dried Figs is sure to please!
Notes
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV: 6.8%
IBU: 29 (calculated)
SRM: 30
