Js Amber Clone

[Tim]

Hi,
Im thinking of making another James Squire amber clone. I have already tried one following Doc's recipe and found that there was way to much crystal and it came out too dark, sweet and heavy. I have decided to scale back the quantities to something like below:

Squire Amber clone

Type: All grain Size: 22 liters
Color: 19 HCU (~11 SRM)
Bitterness: 23 IBU
OG: 1.054 FG: 1.010
Alcohol: 5.7% v/v (4.5% w/w)
Grain: 4.5kg JWM Trad ale
200g Carapils
300g CaraMunich I
75g Cararoma
Mash: 75% efficiency
Boil: 90 minutes SG 1.042 28 liters
Hops: 20g Pride of Ringwood (8% AA, 60 min.)
10g Cluster (7% AA, 15 min.)
5g Willamette (5% AA, 15 min.)
10g Willamette (aroma)

Yeast: WLP002 or maybe WLP001?


There is a recipie for an American Amber Ale in the JAn Feb edition of BYO which looks fairly similar. They use WLP001, instead of a british ale yeast. I thought the more neutral yeast may work better than the ESB yeast to help re-create the 'evolved' JS Amber (ie now it is made in Lidcome).
Anyone else got a good AG clone recipe??
Opinions greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Tim

 

[Doc]

Hey Tim,

Sorry your brew of the JS Clone didn't turn out well.
When I brewed it, it came out great, and actually placed second at Bathurst a few years back.
WLP001 is more of a neutral yeast than WLP002 and may help you get closer to what you are looking to brew.

Beers,
Doc

 

[Tim]

Thanks Doc.
It didnt turn out as a bad beer, but was a lot darker and sweeter than anticipated. Mind you it was all consumed on xmas eve (in about 3 hrs with a couple of matesand I told everyone it was 'Santa beer' due to the Red/almost maroon colour!

 

[Gough]

G'day Tim,

In terms of balance, if your previous brew was too sweet for your taste I'd reckon a 23IBU beer with an og of 1054 is going to still be on the malty sweet side of the ledger. Maybe up the IBUs a bit and/or drop the gravity. Does the Amber Ale finish at 5.7% alcohol?

Just a thought. Hope your brew works out for you

Shawn.

 

[Tim]

Shawn,
I was after malty-sweet, but the previous recipe i tried had over 2kg of crystal in it. Just way to much.

As for the alcohol, 5.7% v/v or 4.5 % w/w is about 5% w/v which is how we measure alcohol here in Australia.

I think i'll give the recipe a go using WLP001 and try and ferment it between 16-18 degrees.

 

[Gough]

Shawn,
I was after malty-sweet, but the previous recipe i tried had over 2kg of crystal in it. Just way to much.

As for the alcohol, 5.7% v/v or 4.5 % w/w is about 5% w/v which is how we measure alcohol here in Australia.

I think i'll give the recipe a go using WLP001 and try and ferment it between 16-18 degrees.

[post="49310"][/post]​

Fair enough. Good luck with it.

Shawn.

 

[Stagger]

G'Day Tim i did one 6 mounths ago from a recipy i got from this web site using 60% Marris otter 29% Munich 11% crystal didn't come out so good very drinkable through. let us know how she turns out.

Stagger

:super:

 

[Plastic Man]

Tim

I can smell that mash from here.....

 

[jgriffin]

Tim, i've done Doc's recipe and didn't find it too sweet, but thought that it was not quite on the mark as a clone. There was another clone recipe in the (now offline) recipe database that i thought was a bit closer.

 

[Bronsimo]

How did the this recipe turn out.

I'm keen to get a JS Amber Ale AG clone going and was looking to learn from previous recipes/experiences.

Any advice tweaks to this recipe are apppreciated.

Cheers,
Simon
:beer:

 

[T.D.]

I have a recipe at home that is pretty close to the real thing. I'll try to remember to post it later on. In a nutshell its something like:

1.050 OG

77% Ale
10% Munich
5% Carpils
3% Crystal
3% Dark Crystal
2% Amber Malt

Bitter with POR or similar to 26IBUs
1g/L Willamette @ 15mins
1g/L Willamette @ 0mins


That's gonna get you pretty close in any case. I've brewed this style quite a few times and have always gotten pretty close without trying too hard.

 

[Randall the Enamel Animal]

Very little changed when it went to Lidcombe as it was always supposed to. They moved to a single crystal rather than two types, that's all. Don't over think your JSOAA clones, it's a pretty straight forward beer. Poorly attenuative yeast is the key.

 

[Jazzafish]

This premium hand~crafted ale is a unique brew of three malts and three Tasmanian hops added late to the kettle plus an original 125 year old, top fermenting ale yeast, creating an easy~drinking, deep copper~coloured ale with distinct richness, creamy head, and a slightly nutty finish. A blend of pale, crystal and carapils malts produces a distinctive coppery colour, rich malt sweetness and persistent creamy head. The flavour is very ale-like with a lingering slightly nutty finish. Willamette hops are added late in the kettle boil for a refreshing citrus (almost grapefruit) hop character.

They had a store room full of Joe White Malt, and also CSR cane sugar. I only recall seeing full sacks, no half sacks or opened sacks. Each sack was 25 kilos. Going by the quote above, it is given that they use a blend of JW Ale Malt, JW Crystal and JW Carapils. However, I believe that some JW Roasted Wheat may be also used?

Consider this when figuring out the grist...

The MS Brewery has two 6,000 litre combination mash tun/kettles. Eleven combination fermentation and maturation tanks, seven 13,000 litre tanks, four 20,000 litre tanks.

The beer is 5% abv, so aim for target gravity of 1.048, final fermented gravity of 1.010. Or something like that.

Grains come in sacks of 25Kg. I doubt they'd measure odd amounts of grain, and are likely to stick to half bags or full bags per batch?

I believe they would put 2 brews into one 13000Litre fermenter?

1 tonne of grain, with a 75% efficiency should give sg of roughly 1.048 in a 5000Litre brew. I believe I heard on a tour that they do 1 tonne mashes, but I was drinking

So maybe they did something like:

84% JW Ale (850Kg or 34 sacks)
9.9% JW Carapils (100Kg or 4 sacks)
4.9% JW Crystal (50Kg or 2 sacks)
1.2% JW Roasted Wheat (12.5Kg or half a sack)

Please keep in mind that everything I have mentioned in this post is an uneducated guess!

For Hops I'd start with what has been previously mentioned.

Cheers,
Jarrad

EDIT: The Grist recipe may be way off, but the point I'm trying to make is that the grist percentage should give you a total amount of grain that fits into a complete sack of grain, or a half sack of grain. Purely an example.

 

[Randall the Enamel Animal]

Very far off the mark Jarrad. For starters, base malt comes in bulker bags and is ground by time, given a fixed feed rate to the mill. No carapils. Not brewed at sale gravity. No roast wheat (in the AA), FV sizes are 145 and 250 hl... I don't think you were paying attention.

 

[T.D.]

The other thing that occurred to me not long ago is that what MSB call "carapils" is not what we all call carapils here. Forgive me if I'm wrong but I think the stuff MSB use is more of a light crystal, like JW Caramalt. So the MSB boys must get a bit of a laught out of all of us (myself included) throwing in Weyermann Carafoam in our "clone" recipes!! :lol:

In my opinion, the key ingredient in the grist for making a beer like JSAA is Amber Malt. I have made a few beers in this vein and the amber malt is really important. I find you only need around 1-2% to get that slight biscuity, nutty, almost roasty flavour that is in JSAA.

Randall, just out of curiosity, why do breweries often not brew to sale gravity? Is it to enable more tweaking and blending, or is there another reason?

 

[therook]

I have a recipe at home that is pretty close to the real thing. I'll try to remember to post it later on. In a nutshell its something like:

1.050 OG

77% Ale
10% Munich
5% Carpils
3% Crystal
3% Dark Crystal
2% Amber Malt

Bitter with POR or similar to 26IBUs
1g/L Willamette @ 15mins
1g/L Willamette @ 0mins
That's gonna get you pretty close in any case. I've brewed this style quite a few times and have always gotten pretty close without trying too hard.

I have this one waiting to be bottled on the weekend....

Rook

 

[Randall the Enamel Animal]

Randall, just out of curiosity, why do breweries often not brew to sale gravity? Is it to enable more tweaking and blending, or is there another reason?

Generally, larger breweries use DE filters that introduce a little water during the filtration process, the amount my change depending upon the yeast load (and therefore DE dosage rate) of the beer being filtered. Also, because alcohol can change a bit from brew to brew, big guys will generally aim to brew half a percentage point higher to safely account for these variations and allow enough room to trim the alcohol back to the +/- 0.2% required by law (actually, they will trim to exactly 0.2% less than that stated on the label to save a squillion on excise duty)

That's for beers brewed at 'sale' gravity. Most in reality are brewed way, way higher and cut with oceans of water to yeild bright beer volumes far in excess of kettle volume. Why? Efficiency. Make 50% more beer from the same number of brews and a given tank capacity.

 

[Randall the Enamel Animal]

Oh, and you're right, JW Carapils is just a light crystal. They use it for their Golden Ale. Not to be mistaken with Weyermann CaraPils (Carafoam).

 

[hughman666]

That's for beers brewed at 'sale' gravity. Most in reality are brewed way, way higher and cut with oceans of water to yeild bright beer volumes far in excess of kettle volume. Why? Efficiency. Make 50% more beer from the same number of brews and a given tank capacity.

bloody great idea. this way i can make double batches with my same setup and not have to get a bigger kettle etc.

the other benefit would be adding the 50% top up water which would chill the beer significantly, particularly if you were prepared and chilled the water in the freezer whilst brewing....double batches without the need to chill or no-chill!

now you've got me thinking

 

[Jazzafish]

Very far off the mark Jarrad. For starters, base malt comes in bulker bags and is ground by time, given a fixed feed rate to the mill. No carapils. Not brewed at sale gravity. No roast wheat (in the AA), FV sizes are 145 and 250 hl... I don't think you were paying attention.

Randall,

I wasn't suggesting what I posted was how the beer is made.

I was just suggesting that it was possible that grain was added to a batch in amounts that they come packaged in. From there I tried to formulate some sort of recipe that would support my idea.

The Fermenter size I mentioned came from the malt shovel web site. As did the grain I put in the example, with exception to the JW Roasted Wheat. But I was recomended to try it in a amber ale by a brewer from MS... I guessed it was a "hint hint" to the JS Amber Ale at the time. I also saw some sacks of it on the tour, even if it was no longer brewed there when I did the tour! :blink:

So after being shot down in flames you only commented on the base malt packaging size being wrong. Does the concept of grains being added to the brew in amounts they come packaged in have any merit? Which was the whole meaning behind my post.

Also, how close is the JW Carapils to the JW Caramalt?

Cheers,
Jarrad