Recipe Help - Amber Ale

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Space Ace

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Hi guys, was wondering if I could get some advice on a recipe I'm building. I'm still pretty new at this - this is my 5th brew in the partial mash (BIAB) method, and am fairly inexperienced using hops too.

The concept of this brew is a nice, warm caramel malt body, crystal clear burnt orange colour, with an earthy, spicy aroma, finished with oak and cinnamon.

I'm unsure about the late addition hops as any grassy flavours would be a poor fit, what I'm really looking for is the subtle undertones from these hops. With the oak and cinnamon, the qty and method are my best semi educated guess as I have never used them before. Regarding the clarity I plan on chilling the wort with ice packs (I think I can get it down to around 12 degrees) before racking to secondary.


Rusted Nail - American Amber (21L batch)

Fermantables
1 kg American 2-row
1 kg Crystal 60L
1.5 kg Amber DME
250g Carared
250g Munich Malt

Hops
25g Chinook (60 min)
20g Fuggles (15 min)
20g Crystal (Flame Out)
10g Fuggles (dry hop 6 days)
30g Crystal (dry hop 6 days

Flavour / Finings
1 tsp Irish Moss (boil 10 min)
40g Oak Chips (dry hop 6 days)
1x Cinnamon Stick (dry Hop 6 days)

Yeast - Wyeast Denny's Favourite


Any suggestions / advice / corrections would be most appreciated, thanks :)
 
Hi SA,

AAA is a style that offers a great variation with hop type and as well as the timing of the additions.

My personal opinion is that I tend to avoid dry hopping in an Amber with the accent on the malt however with the oak and the cinnamon it may well subdue the hops to a degree.

Dry hop as per your recipe and taste a small sample daily to get an idea and a feel for how it is going to taste. 6 days should be fine. At the same time you may want to assess the effect from the Oak Chips as well.

I like that yeast, it is a ripper IMO.

Let us know how it turns out.

Cheers
 
My first impression is that seems like a huge amount of crystal. 25% of your recipe is crystal 60 and 6.3% is carared. Ive only used up to 7.5% total crystal malts in a beer before but 25% sounds like way too much. Id be dropping that to 10% as a start. The rest looks reasonable.

For comparison, this is what my amber uses

62.5% base malt
30% munich
5% carabohemian (crystal) - im going to bump this up to 7.5% for the next recipe
2.5% pale choc
 
By trying to do too much you may get a kitchen sink flavour rather than a pleasingly complex one. Then again, I've never tried anything like it, and probably no one I know of has, so you could call it an experiment. If so, please report back or, better, send me a bottle.

I like the choice of hops in that style and maybe the cinnamon stick, but wonder about the oak chips in a very malty brew. Not only is that a whopping load of crystal (Carared is a crystal malt too), but I wonder if you have enough base malt to convert it. On the other hand the Munich could go higher, and it self-converts. I too vote for losing the dry hops.
 
Put this down on boxing day
boxing day brew
American Amber Ale

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 17.0
Total Grain (kg): 5.120
Total Hops (g): 69.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.068 (°P): 16.6
Final Gravity (FG): 1.015 (°P): 3.8
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 6.95 %
Colour (SRM): 15.7 (EBC): 30.9
Bitterness (IBU): 60.9 (Average - No Chill Adjusted)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 73
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
3.000 kg Maris Otter Malt (58.59%)
1.100 kg Pilsner (21.48%)
0.350 kg Crystal 30 (6.84%)
0.330 kg Munich I (6.45%)
0.300 kg Crystal 60 (5.86%)
0.040 kg Roasted Barley (0.78%)

Hop Bill
----------------
15.0 g Horizon Pellet (13% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (0.9 g/L)
22.0 g Chinook Pellet (11.4% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (1.3 g/L)
20.0 g Centennial Pellet (9.7% Alpha) @ 1 Minutes (Boil) (1.2 g/L)
12.0 g Amarillo Pellet (8.6% Alpha) @ 0 Days (Dry Hop) (0.7 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
3.0 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) @ 0 Minutes (Mash)
10.0 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) @ 0 Minutes (Mash)
1.5 g Lactic Acid @ 0 Minutes (Mash)

Single step Infusion at 65°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 18°C with Safale US-05
 
Thanks everyone for your helpful replies, and sorry I took so long to get back to it - crazy time of year.


I used a lot of crystal because I wanted a lot of caramel flavour and quite a dark colour, but as I looked into it a bit more it seems I got carried away. I backed it off and put in a bit of roasted barley to bring out the colour. I decided to leave out the dry hops as a couple of you have suggested. I'll stick with the oak chips though - all of my beers are experiments ;)

Also I substituted some of the base malt for rye. I've read that it gives the beer a spicy flavour, which was always what I was looking for. Any advice on this would be most appreciated.

Here is the recipe as it stands. I plan on brewing this on the weekend.



Rusted Nail - American Amber (21L batch)

Fermantables
1 kg American 2-row
1.5 kg Amber DME
0.5 kg Munich
0.5 kg Rye
350g Crystal 60L
100g Roasted Barley

Hops
20g Chinook (60 min)
20g Fuggles (15 min)
20g Crystal (Flame Out)

Flavour / Finings
1 tsp Irish Moss (boil 10 min)
40g Oak Chips (dry hop 6 days)
1x Cinnamon Stick (dry Hop 6 days)

Yeast - Wyeast Denny's Favourite
 
consider a beta-glucan rest at 40*C for 10-20 min to prevent the rye gumming up your bag. As it represents ~20% of your grain bill (note not total fermentable bill as this is a partial) it may make your grain bed/bag base really sticky. Rice hulls may help here too but i haven't used these before, so cannot comment on their applicability.

I made a roggenbier with ~50% rye and it was a nightmare. you wont have the same problems as I did due to the reduced % of rye but i reckon it will still give you some grief. It tends to give the beer a thicker mouth feel too (mine was like olive oil), so keep that in mind...

If you haven;t done a step mash before just reserve some of your strike water (the volume will depend on your actual mash volume) and boil it up separately. Then once the rest is complete add boiling water to your mash volume till the mash temp is where you want if for the 2nd step. There are a few online calculators that can tell you how much you need to add depending on your mash volume and the temp change you want to achieve. Beersmith has this built in.

Have fun
 
Space Ace said:
[...]
Here is the recipe as it stands. I plan on brewing this on the weekend.

Rusted Nail - American Amber (21L batch)
[...]
So, how did it turn out?
 
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