What do you brewers think and or would change for this 5% ABV amber ale?
Im on the fence about having 1lbs of carastan 30/37 malt thinking of going with .75 lbs = 8% of the grist to play it safe or not? Had it at .5lb then .75 then as it is now 1lb
I do want the caramel and toffee notes to come thru BUt Not an overly sweet thick cloying beer.
Ive never used 1 lb of crystal by the way, hence my hesitation…
Yeast: Wyeast 1056 or any suggestions?
Hop schedule as is; simple or how would you change it?
BU/GU ratio:.64 (Mine)
reference listed BU/GU Style Amber Ale .62
Mash In temp: 152F @ 1.55qts 60 min.
All Grain Style: American Amber Ale
Boil Time: 60 min Batch Size: 5.5 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 7.52 gallons
Boil Gravity: 1.037 (recipe based estimate)
Efficiency: 80% (brew house)
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.012
ABV (standard): 5%
IBU (tinseth): 31.99
SRM (morey): 11.16
Fermentables
Amount Fermentable PPG °L Bill %
6 lb United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale 38 3.75 65.3%
2 lb **German - Vienna **37 4 21.8%
1 lb United Kingdom - Carastan (30/37) 35 34 10.9%
0.1875 lb United Kingdom - Pale Chocolate 33 207 2% 9.19 lb Total
Hops Amount Variety Type AA Use Time IBU
1 oz Willamette Pellet 4.5 Boil 60 min 17.55
0.5 oz Cascade Pellet 7 Boil 25 min 9.49
0.5 oz Cascade Pellet 7 Boil 10 min 4.95
I think overall it looks pretty solid, though being an American Amber I’d sub out the Maris Otter for good ole 2 row. Don’t get me wrong, MO is great malt - I just think using it as your base malt makes closer to a bitter. Just me. And a lb of crystal isn’t out of place in an American Amber by any means. Using 1056, being a very attenuative, clean strain, will help dry the finish. As would a small amount of gypsum. Don’t know if you use water software to track water additions, but 100- 150ppm sulfate from gypsum would help dry the finish a bit, too. If not you could add ~ 1/2 tsp of gypsum to the kettle. Good luck !
Hoosier, I was going to use Golden Promise instead of Marris but the Marris got me closer to Amber color range rather than adjusting the dark or crystal malts. That’s why I used Marris Otter…but you got me thinking!
Maybe I’ll brew two versions one with Marris and one with GP
***Water treatment what’s that! LOL
Actually I just buy 50% spring water/ 50% dispensed RO water
And brew like that 50/50 I want to get into water treatment very soon though…
Blatz, thanks as well…
Marris Otter… I recently brewed a Pumpkin Ale minus the pumkin and the spice’s… Lol I couldn’t bring myself to add pumkin or spice to a beer. Leave that for pies…LOL … So I faked out my friends and said It brewed it with pumkin and spices…I know I know I’m EVIL…
I had a commercial pumkin Ale that’s supposed to be good…umm I almost barfed…hence why I couldn’t ruin a batch of beer…
My fake pumkin Ale:
Marris Otter, base Malt, 86%
Crytsal 40, 5%
Flaked barley, 7%
American chocolate, 2%
My family and friends can’t get enough of it …i love it…that’s why. Decided to go with Marris Otter on this Amber as well as well as the color contribution although Golden Promise is soooo Goood too! Hmmm choices!
I’m gonna seriously think about bumping the carastan Malt maybe to 12% so maybe 1.125 lbs and keep everything else same. …
I’m already tasting the beer recipe in my mind I think it looks like it will be a tasty brew!
So that’s it you guys wouldn’t change anything else ?
Well you guys are amazing as always!
I’ll check back in a bit…I’m in CA. So its 8:32pm
Thomas Fawcet Golden promise (originally planned to use marris)
why: ( malty sweetness)
Bairds carastan malt
why: toffee, nutty, caramel
Weyerman Vienna malt
why: malty clean
crisp pale choclate malt
why: Nutty, some color , keept he flavor roast impact to nil…
The color is like a translucent honey… BEAUTIFUL!
taste… at this point is pretty awesome… Im comparing it to Boont Amber in regards to something close…
By the way I made some hot teas with the following malts:
What I tasted in the Hot teas after cooling and color: Marris Otter: slightly toasty, very slight sweetness like if you ate a piece of sandwich wheat bread sweet…very slight almost neutral, very light brown color
Thomas Fawcet Golden promise: Sweet(much Sweeter than Marris) , light creamy grey color… like if you soaked a blob of raw dough in water and left it their to color the water
Franco Belgiess Caravienne 20: toasty, nutty. I couldnt detect sweetness, almost kinda bland, color; light brown
Bairds Carastan 30/37: toasty, sweeter than caravienne to me by a tiny margin… toffeish, caramish, color; light brown (my fav of the 2 crystal malts)
Weyerman Vienna: Neutral-not sweet at all, kind like drinking water that had a blob of dough sitting in it…
as an expiremnt I mixed marris and the Golden promise… wow… very tasty… You get the malty sweetness from the GP and the toastyness, breadyness from the Marris… Im gonna do that on my next recipe!
The vienna to me is so neutral im thinking you have to have a big ratio of Vienna to other in your recipe to make a flavor impact against a big flavor malt like GP or Marris…
2me it tasted like drinking water that had the dough sit in it for a bit… that’s my perceived flavor analogy…
The Golden promise … is alot sweeter than the marris that’s for sure… But not cloying sweet…
I dunno what to say the sweetness reminds me of… NOt sugar sweet for sure…
The teas gave me a very good idea of what to expect from those malts… I want to do more…
I was bored last week and i had a 1lb bag of patagonia dark malt (dont know the Lovibond or style)
I made a small tea with it and i was very impressed by the flavor and color…
color: dark like roasted french cup of coffee
Taste: very smooth very mellow roast… Not ashy or acrid at all…
Too bad I dont know h Lovibond…
so i went to my brew store and purchased more malts; the malts that I made the tea with…
Now I want to do more… and mix them in different ratios… like i did the Golden Promise and the Marris Otter
which by the way that Combo was amazing!
Check out Youtube… lots of videos how to do it… very simple!
chewing on malt is good and gives you a taste… but the teas gave me a very close approximation of what to expect of the malts in the recipes after the boil… much more than chewing on them…
Thanks for the beer compliment… It tasted amazing at 1 week… even though its at 1 week and i was checking color and gravity :) im excited… … I did 50/50 water mix by the way… spring water and RO water…
I was aming for my new favorite beer: Boont Amber Ale awesome beer!!!
Thanks! and have a very good holiday week :) as well to everyone on here
Lol you caught that …lmao!
The bathroom photo bombed me. That damn bathroom!
The beer turned out fantastic in my humble opinion!
I took a growler and a 12 oz… to a dinner party. They had other beers commercial styles…new Belgian Amber … Etc… And this is a Amber
Umm needless to say they stopped drinking that and killed the 1 growler I took plus the one bottle… I was nervous and didn’t want to impose my beer on other people so I only took that amount…
Had some guest(artist) from San Diego… Beer snobs aka “ballast point drinkers”…
They asked for more and said wow…so this is your 1st Amber!
I think these compliments were/ are very cool… lenphallock, I hopefully answererd your questions
