Working on an Amber Ale recipe, first recipe I've tried making myself, and hoping for some feedback. 9 lbs Two-row 1 lbs. Crystal 60L .5 lbs. Biscuit .25 lbs. Honey Malt .5 oz Magnum 30 min .5 Cascade 5 min .5 Cascade Flameout Wyeast 1056 Brewcipher calculates: 5.6% ABV, 25 IBUs
Amber is a pretty open style, can you give an example of a commercial version that you like? Regardless, your recipe looks reasonable, but I would reduce the C60 a bit.
Brewing this one primarily for the wife and she really likes Uplands Easy Chair. They posted the description below on their website. I originally had less of the C60 but upped it some to hit an SRM that was within style. Would going to less C120, .5 lbs, be better? "Our amber ale has a malt to hop balance that is nearly even, slightly leaning toward malt. Nutty, light caramel, toasty, and biscuity describes the malt flavors of this easily approachable beer. Low yet perceptible English hop character round out the flavor which ends with a Medium dry finish. ABV: 5.2 IBU: 25"
Looks fine by me. Like @wspscott, what's your recipe intent. For example, you're on the low end of IBUs, but perhaps you like it that way. For me, I'd add a little more late addition hops.
I would bring th caramel doun to .5 and add in maybe 16-24 ounces of a victory or dark munich to get biscuit/nut and bring the srm up.
So, that beer description sounds like an "English Brown Ale" to me and it specifically mentions "English hop character". Given that, 1056 and Cascades does not sound like you are on the right track if this is the beer you are aiming for. If you want to stick with your recipe, I would think about a little bit of chocolate malt for the color/flavor vs extra crystal malt and C120 is probably not the answer given that description ("medium dry finish"). here is an example to think about from Brewing Classic Styles Northern English Brown Ale (approximate percentages) Pale ale malt ~75% Special Roast 8% Victory/Biscuit 5.5% C40 5.5% Pale Chocolate 3% Kent Goldings at 60 and 5 mins with the majority of IBUs coming from the 60 min addition.
You could go with any English style yeast for a minerally spin. I'd stick to a lower attenuating one to keep it malty. Chicks dig it. Also, Nutty = Victory malt. It's used in nut brown ales and a quarter pound wouldn't be out of place so long as you take a quarter pound out of the converted malts. Just a thought if you're near a LHBS.@wspscott Sounds a little harsh, but he's really on track. Stick with the Cascade (American) hops if you want, but feel free to throw a little Britain in there with yeast and or aroma hops. I also agree with the above in that 1# crystal with .5# biscuit and .25# sounds like a little overkill. Remove 25% to your liking, but keep your OG the same. Recipes are trial and error when you are just getting stared on them. Nobody is going to pinpoint how you want to brew. We'll just keep you from doing something incredibly stupid. I see none of that. In my experience light style amber beers take like 4 months before they're really decent to drink. Get an IPA going after this to keep the pipeline going. As for English yeast choices you have a lot to try. Some like high attenuation, others low. Some like a lot of mineral, others, not so much. I'd start with: Wyeast 1968 ESB https://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=22 Nottingham My house yeast is Wyeast 1084 Irish. The yeast cake is good for Irish Reds, Baltic Porters, Dry Stouts, and RIS styles down the chain. I'm not bias. Heh.
Thanks all for the feedback. I've made some adjustments to it based on what you've all said. She hasn't been into brown ales much so I'm OK getting a little further away from an Easy Chair clone, as long as what I'll make should turn into a good Amber. 9 lb Two-row .5 C60 .25 lb Biscuit .25 Honey Malt .25 Vienna .25 Chocolate Malt Mash at 152° 5.6 ABV 27 IBUs 14 SRM.
This is more important right now. Cloning beer is pretty tricky and you should like what you brew more anyway. How are you coming with a hop schedule and yeast choice?
For the hop schedule I'm using Brewcipher to target my final IBU range. The Magnum came up as a pretty neutral bittering hop so that's why I originally chose it. After reading some of the flavor descriptors I might go with a US Fuggle for a little bit of hop aroma/flavor. The yeast choice, 1056, I got from looking at other amber recipes.
US-05 (dry) and Wyeast 1056 and WLP 001 (both liquid), are all very neutral yeasts. They are supposedly all the same yeast strain. You can push them harder than any other yeast strain and all three labels are very forgiving, as far as I'm concerned. Fuggle and EKG are both good choices for English hops. Both are great for bittering. Some like Fuggle late in the boil. Others don't. Everyone like EKG for bittering and late in the boil. It's the crem dela crem. US Fuggle is comprable to Willamette hops. All are good hop choices.
I'll 2nd the recommendation for Willamette For a beer like this, I would want a little more yeast character than 1056 provides. WY1968 is good, but I would probably be lazy and go with dry yeast, either Nottingham or Windsor fermented in upper 60s is good.
Looks pretty nice. I sometimes suggest cutting back on the crystal to reduce sweetness but it depends on what you like. The amount here is not excessive so I suggest you brew it and decide afterwards how you might change it next time. We learn best from experience.
