Situation: my wife, while liking pale ales, would like something a little more mild for one of the kegs at her bday party this fall since a lot of her friends don't like hoppy beer.
Problem: i want to make a 10 gallon batch that, after sparging, i will split into two 5 gallon boils. one of the 5 gallons i'll make something new and the other i will make a cascade/corainder orange that she liked.
the cascade orange was maris otter (9#), vienna (1#), & crystal 10 (1#) instead of a typical 2 row for pale ales. i should also branch away from pale ales & ipa's and get my feet wet with something else for a change. SOOO, i ask you members of CHAOS, what other recipes would work well with that grain bill? Free homebrews to the winning idea!!!
With that exact grain bill you could make an english pale ale. Sub in some east kent goldings and english yeast.
You could also do an English barley wine if you boil it down to 3 gallons or so.
If you do a separate mini mash of specialty grains you could do anything in the porter and stout category. Just throw a couple pounds of 2row in a pot on the stove with some chocolate/roast/crystal for an hour at 154, pour it through a wire strainer into the boil, it will work fine.
I think that a lot of the darker malts that you could use to make a brown ale could be steeped rather than mashed, so that you could simply put them in a grain bag in your second boil and steep them for ~25 mins at 170* prior to beginning your boil.