My First Recipe - American Brown Ale

For my first recipe I chose an award winning American Brown Ale from my Homebrewing for Dummies handbook. I had to make some slight substitutes for ingredients and I pray it doesn't taste like dirty bathwater. My two major concerns are first, is my calculation from dry malt extract to liquid malt extract and LME by weight to LME by volume correct? My second concern is using the proper yeast strain for the recipe.

Formula: 3.2lbs of LME = 1L of LME

but the recipe also called for DME so it first had to be converted to LME then to litres. .. here is the formula I used for that

DME > LME = weight of DME X 1.10

so - the recipe called for 6.6 lbs of Northwestern Light which I could not find so I will be using 2 lbs of pale malt extract. It also called for 1 pound of William's Austrailian Dark DME, so I will be using .35 litres of dark malt extract.

I found these formulas on various homebrewing forums, and I hope they are correct.

My next concern, being new to this, is how much effect the strain of yeast used effects the final beer? I have been reading a lot but find many different answers. This recipe called for a product called Wyeast #1007. I was able to find this at a home brew supply shop in Brampton, however, it sold for $9.99. I just ended up purchasing the standard ale yeast that the Brew Kettle in Richmond Hill sells for 10cents a gram - it's called Mauri Ale Yeast and it only cost me 90cents for the 9 grams I need. You can see why I chose to go this route and I will let you know if I made the right choice in a bout a month from now.

Today might be brew day if the kids will give me an hour or two .....

Here is my final recipe:

Malt Extract
2 litres of pale malt
0.35 litres of dark malt

Specialty Grains
6oz of chocolate malt
6oz of roasted barley
6oz of carastan

Bittering Hops
1oz Fuggles (60min)
1oz Northern Brewer (60min)

Flavoring Hops
0.5oz Fuggles (10min)
0.5oz Cascade (10min)

Finishing Hops
0.5oz Cascade Hops (2min)

Yeast
9g Mauri Ale Yeast

Clarifier
6g Irish Moss

Primary Fermentation 7 days @ 65F plastic
Secondary Fermentation 7 days @ 65F glass carboy

I'm going to throw the malt extracts on the bathroom scale and see if my weight to liquid calculation is correct.