James Squire Amber Ale Clone

[Mantis]

ok, I now have free fermenter & keg available to put this down this weekend, as this is my first attempt at an extract brew I fear i may have done something silly.

At this stage I have placed the grain into the water for steeping and was rewarded with a rich dark liquid, now about 1/2 hour later it appears that the grain has soaked up the all the water in the pot (1lt as per recipe) and now looks quite dry. My question will the water come back out of the grain if left for the 12-24 hours? or will I need to pour some hot water through it when straining it into the malt & hop mix?

I have done this and use more water. More like 3lt. Anyway, I would just add a couple of litres of 60 deg water to the pot tommorow and leave it for 10 min then strain into the boil pot.
I have another one of these in the fermenter at the moment but I bigged it up a bit to do 25lt.

 

[Bubba Q]

cheers for the info

 

[Crunched]

And instead of steeping for 12-24 hours like the recipe says, maybe try 30 mins? So get your water for your wort ready at temp, then steep for 30mins, then remove grains (in a grain/hop bag or something) then boil water and begin hop schedule?

One thing I have learnt about this site - while there may be many talented brewers, it's always good to read up on many methods before following a recipe. Work out what works and what doesn't, then make your own brewing decision.

 

[petesbrew]

Made up a quick one on the weekend. A very Half Arsed attempt.
I was more interested in watching Alien Vs Predator on telly that I couldn't be bothered stirring out the lumps. (those ones you get after stupidly pouring hot water straight onto DME).
meh. Amber Ale
Coopers Real Ale
1kg Amber DME
20g Willamette
Wy1099 Whitbread Ale yeast
OG 1042 (not counting the lumps).

Expecting the worst, so things can only get better hey?

 

[Supra-Jim]

I did this recipe on Saturday. didn't steep the grains overnight, just gave em 30mins at 65degs in about 5ltr water.

All is looking well at the moment and smelling good!

 

[doon]

I am going to give this a go according to Tony's recipe on saturday

So is the steeping for 12 - 24 hours not really that necessary??

Bloke at Grain and Grape said 30 mins

 

[MarkBastard]

Tony, my first ever batch is your James Squire Amber Ale clone. It's currently cooling down and I'll add the yeast tonight.

Will let you know how it turns out!

 

[Bubba Q]

been sneaking in a few pints of this during the week (keg not fully carbed up yet)...

bloody billiant stuff, will definately be putting this one down again in the future

 

[HoppingMad]

The Malt Shovel Kit "Nut Brown Ale" has similar flavour profiles to the James Squire Amber and is made by the same brewery you're wanting to clone. You could look at using that kit (which is closer to the real deal) as a base option also rather than an APA, or check out some of the other kits in that Malt Shovel range.

Hopper.

 

[Tim]

The Malt Shovel kits are made in bulk by Lion Nathan and not produced at the malt Shovel brewery. They are sold in NZ as Mac's brew kits. I think they are made there as well.

 

[MarkBastard]

Over half way through my second pint of this!

It's more bitter than I was expecting but other than that is quite close to JSAA. I'm not sure if the bitter came from the way I brewed it or not.

I didn't use a hop sock and I fermented for about 8 days at 18 degrees and then chilled to about 4 degrees for 6 days and then kegged today. There was a lot of hop sediment at the bottom of the fermenter and only small amounts made it to the keg. In fact just holding my second one up to the sun now and can see hardly any sediment.

Great colour. I'll be making another batch of this for sure.

 

[MarkBastard]

Okay the first few glasses were a bit too bitty, but they also had some floating hop particles. After that it settled down a bit and although still with a bitter hoppy flavour, the malt shone through nicely. Great beer. Thanks heaps for the recipe.

 

[MarkBastard]

As I was getting near the end of this and it was running out I decided to stop drinking it for a while.

I was still thinking it was too bitter but I've since realised it was probably over gassed and the gas feeling on my tongue was making me think it was bitter. All part of the learning experience.

Anyway, so it's about 1/5th full, I purged the co2 from it and then let it sit for a week. Just hooked it back up and poured a glass and my god this is good. It's really malty if anything with just the right amount of hops, but a massive malt flavour. Pretty much my idea of the perfect beer.

I'm definitely gunna make this again, though probably do it all grain once I'm set up.

Cheers again.

 

[Tony]

Ahhh forgot about this thread.

Probably not vital that the grain is soaked overnight. 30 to 60 min will do it but i used to like to cold soak it overnight is all. As said very well above...... try a few different methods and work what works for you!

If your getting hops in your keg you need to strain them out. Use a hop sock! Or even better..... hop flowers or plugs and use a good old (steralised) kitchen strainer to remove them when you tip it in the fermenter once cooled.

The bitterness and hoppiness may have come from the hops staying in the beer right through the the keg. Make sure you rack and let it clear before kegging it. yeast and hops in the keg will spoil the flavour a bit.

As far as AG goes.......just use a good quality ale malt and mash at about 66.

get your selves a brewing software package and you can then use it to work out your bitterness, strength and colour if you want to tinker with the recipe..... as you will.

cheers

 

[Supra-Jim]

This turned out to be a very tasty beer. I didn't find to be overly close to the JSAA (side by side taste comparison), though the responsibility for that may be in my brewing efforts. But for my taste i preferred this recipe over the original/commerical product.

 

[Tony]

Well, it is hard to get really close to an origional beer.

That recipe was to get close, then build on it to fine tune it

cheers

 

[FarsideOfCrazy]

Hi Tony and all,

I made this the other day (it's sittng in the secondary as i type). I had 2 questions.

Firstly after steeping the grain I didn't boil it I just straind through a cheese cloth and then disolved the remainder of the LME. Is this a major problem?

And secondly upon taking the OG reading it was 1060, way higher than what the report said. So I just topped it up with another 3 litres of water which then brought it down to 1052, and yes I already have checked the markings on the fermenter. I know this isn't a big problem but I was just wanting to know why would the OG be so different to the report, just to satisfy my curiosity.

john.

 

[Supra-Jim]

Well, it is hard to get really close to an origional beer.

That recipe was to get close, then build on it to fine tune it

cheers

Very true, and i'm not critisizing the recipe, as said i found this to be a more enjoyable beer than the commercial version.

 

[big78sam]

strain the liquid from the little pot with your crystal ect in it into the big pot with the hops, just use a fine kitchen strainer to do this and dont go rinsing it with boiling water to get more colour from it, all you will get is tannins......... yuck.

Now disolve the other tin of coopers liquid extract in the big pot and cool it down in the laundry sink, bath tub, where ever.

tip it in the firmenter when cool strain out the hops if you can, and top it up with cold water to 23 liters.

I gave Tony's recipe a lash today. No major problems. However I have a question. The recipe calls for steeping the grains then adding the resultant liquid into the boiled extract/hops, then into the fermenter.

I've read in other posts that the liquid that results from steeping should be boiled as there is a chance of bacteria from the grains. How likely is this? The grains were steeped for 30-45 minutes at 70 odd degrees but never got to boiling.

I didn't think of this until too late and didn't want to reboil after adding the steeped grain water as I was worried boiling the hops for longer would increase the bitterness too much. For future reference, how much bitterness would an extra 10 minutes boiling make?

 

[buttersd70]

Boiling the liquor from steeping grain is pretty critical. If you're concerned about extending the boil time with the hops, then don't....just boil the steeping liquor seperately.