AA1-Amber Waves by Jamil

I want to brew this Friday.  I’m thirsty.  I also want to use a yeast starter, which means I’ll need to use the Safale 05 I have on hand, because my ingredient order may not get here by Thursday, which is when I need to start the yeast.  So…what to brew?  I’ve been listening to older podcasts from the Brewing Network  and like what Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer and the guys have been saying about getting and tweaking recipes.  So I found one of Jamil’s recipes for an American Amber and thought I’d give it a try.  I happened to have a Red Tail Ale yesterday, which by coincidence is a Red/Amber Ale…and a great beer!

What to Expect

BJCP Guidelines for this style (10B American Amber Ale)

I’m hoping to produce a light-ish ale with decent body.  It should be a little reddish.  I’m trying to bring out the roast flavor in the malt.  It should be firmly hopped, but I’m shooting for the hops to take a back seat to the malt.  Hopefully it won’t be too heavy…something to enjoy several of on a warm day.

Recipe

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
6 gal 60 min 25.9 IBUs 13.2 SRM 1.054 SG 1.010 SG 5.8 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
American Amber Ale 6 B 1.045 - 1.056 1.01 - 1.015 20 - 40 11 - 18 2.3 - 2.8 4.5 - 5.7 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Great Western 2-Row pale malt 11 lbs 81.48
Crystal 40, 2-Row, (Great Western) 1 lbs 7.41
Munich (DURST MALZ) 1 lbs 7.41
Crystal 120, 2-Row, (Great Western) 0.5 lbs 3.7

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Magnum 0.5 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 14
Centennial 0.25 oz 10 min Boil Pellet 10
Cascade 0.25 oz 10 min Boil Pellet 5.5
Cascade 0.25 oz 0 min Boil Pellet 5.5
Centennial 0.25 oz 0 min Boil Pellet 10

Miscs

Name Amount Time Use Type
Whirlfloc Tablet 1.00 Items 5 min Boil Fining

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
Safale American (US-05) DCL/Fermentis 77% 59°F - 75°F

Notes

http://byo.com/stories/item/126-american-amber-style-profile
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold the mash at 154 °F (68 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete. Infuse the mash with near boiling water while stirring or with a recirculating mash system raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.040 (9.9°P).

Total wort boil time is 90 minutes. Add the bittering hops with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes left. Add other hop additions at 10 minutes remaining and flame out. Chill the wort to 67 °F (19 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is 9 grams of rehydrated dry yeast, 2 packages of liquid yeast or 1 package of liquid yeast in a 1.5-liter starter.

Ferment at 67 °F (19 °C) until the yeast drops clear. Fermentation should be complete in about one week. Allow the lees to settle and the brew to mature without pressure for another two days after fermentation appears finished. Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 2 to 2.5 volumes.

Substituted Magnum for Horizon hops due to availablility.

Brew Day – Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Summer Wheat

Cameron and Cassie gave me this cool kit for my birthday last month.  I brewed it yesterday and it was a lot of fun!  It came with the needed yeast, so I thought I’d try a yeast starter.  I don’t have a stir plate yet, so I just swished it a bit whenever I walked by the beer fridge for about a day.  It was a real kick doing a complete all-grain brew of 1 gallon.

Recipe and directions

The mash was a little challenging because I didn’t want to use my regular brewing equipment, as I felt it would have been too cumbersome for this small batch.  Using some of their suggestions and a few ideas of my own, I came up with this setup:

Mini-sparge in progress

Mini-sparge in progress

I did decide to enhance the recipe a little by adding the zest from 2 limes and a handful of fresh mint from the garden to the last 30 minutes of the boil.

Boil in progress

Boil in progress

The yeast starter proved fine, and there was an active fermentation this morning.  Maybe a little too active for the fermentation lock.  BBS suggested a blow-off tube for the first few days, which I will heed the next time I brew a 1-gallon batch.

All in all, a very enjoyable session.  Thanks, Cass & Cam!

Overnight Ale – CDA2 … Success!!

After a week in bottles at around 80° F I cracked one open, as I usually do, just to see how the young beer is coming along.  Carbonation and head were just fine.  The first taste was all I could have hoped for, I think:

  • Dark and clear brown color
  • Up-front hop flavor
  • Crisp taste
  • Decent mouth feel
  • Enough malt to stand up to the hops without contributing bitterness of its own
  • More hop flavor and aroma on the back end

We ended up killing 4 of these on Sunday.  More of a kick than I expected.  My hydrometer broke before I could get a final gravity reading at bottling, but I was expecting 4-5% ABV maybe.  This felt more like 6% or maybe a little more.  I won’t touch it again until this weekend.  I’m keeping it down around 60° until then.

So what’s up with the name?  Well, I had previously vowed to name our beers if I ever felt the desire to brew the same one twice.  I wasn’t expecting the CDA1 debacle, but I will stand by my promise to myself.  We thought long and hard about it and decided to remember and honor our first overnight adventure on Andeleen on New Hogan Lake.  Calm, dark and a true adventure.