Recipes Using amber and dark extract

What brand is this? Some manufacturers, including Briess, publish the contents of their extracts so that you can back out the recipe. That's pretty important in a case like this because in the abstract it's very hard to tell what you're dealing with here.

Edited to fix spelling and to add: Oops, I guess Briess doesn't publish the recipe for all their malt extracts, including the amber one, so if you're using Briess we're back to square one.

 

Firstly, I have no experience in using 'colored' malt extract - I am uncertain exactly which malts were used to produce them.

By my reckoning the two 3.3 lb. liquid extracts would get you an OG around 1.047 (5 gallon batch) and the color would be consistent with a Brown Ale.

As to the specific flavor profile?

Yeah, why not brew a Brown Ale and use some DME if you want some more 'oomph' here.

Cheers!

 

It would appear that Briess is a ‘mixed bag’ when it comes to releasing details about their ‘colored’ malt extracts:

· CBW® Sparkling Amber: Ingredients – Proprietary

· CBW® Traditional Dark: Ingredients - 54% Munich Malt 10L, 30% Base Malt, 13% Caramel Malt 60L, 3% Black Malt

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Extracts.htm

Cheers!

 

If they're Briess LME, here are a couple pdf's of product info & typical analysis:
http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_CBWSparklingAmberLME.pdf
http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_CBWSpecialDarkLME.pdf
Do you know how old they are, or how they were stored? LME will darken with age.

Briess has a recipes page with a search function for plugging in their malts, ale/lager, style, 5-gallon/commercial size, etc. It doesn't let you select more than one malt at a time though. Look for the Advanced Search and More Options. It might give you some food for thought:
http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Recipes/

 

These products sound as though they are going to provide a lot of malt character but very little of the roastiness that you would associate with dark beers like porter and stout. There are a lot of ways to go with this. You could steep some roasted grains to darken it up and add roasty character and make a porter or stout, or you could go without and make a fairly dark malty beer. Speaking personally, I would go with some dark steeping grains and ferment with Nottingham. Back when I was extract brewing that's how I made some surprisingly good porters.

 

Yup, as I listed on post #4:

"CBW® Sparkling Amber: Ingredients – Proprietary"

If you are willing to give it a go I would think these two products could produce a nice Brown Ale. You could decide to augment with some steeping grains but without the details of what exactly was used to produce the Amber malt you run the risk of 'double dipping' here and perhaps using too much of a given specialty malt.

A Brown Ale is a nice 'middle of the road' sort of beer from a malt profile perspective. If you are so inclined you could 'bump it up' in different ways. Use some American aroma hops for example? If it was me I would go more for an English Brown Ale sort of thing but with a characterful English Ale yeast. I would utilize Wyeast 1469 with the warm ferment (e.g., 70 degrees F) to encourage the development of esters (e.g., stone fruit flavors).

Best of luck with your batch.

Cheers!

 

I would recommend using the LME as an ice cream topping.

 

At one point I believe Briess indicated their Amber was 2 row and C60 (10% stands out in my mind), and I think it was 10 srm. Anyhow that stands out in my mind. I used it once, before I would have known about its grist, in the first recipe I ever tried to make, an Irish red. Not a great beer, and I overhauled just about everything in my brewing after that batch, including the use of colored extract. I doubt the extract caused that batch to suck, but my misunderstanding of it didn’t help. If I were to brew with the same extract today, I’d partial mash it with maris otter making up about 50% of the gravity and may an oz of roasted for color. Hop it English style for the red I wanted back then, or with cascade and centennial to make the beer I’d like tonight.