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American Amber Ale


Hairy

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Yes, Nick's method is a great way to start and get used to the procedure. I personally rather BIAB purely because it is AG and not as time consuming as using a 2V/3V, or similar, system. I guess when the kids grow up a bit I may venture into tinkering around with a bigger system, but for now it will be BIAB in an urn [cool]

 

Those 19L Big W pots are very handy for a lot of things.... i.e. I have an induction stove top so will work on that. Great for cooking Crayfish. Sterilising jars, of course BIAB stove top method, hop boils, extract brewing, Xmas Puddings etc.

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I cracked open my Amber Ale after a week in the bottle. I often try one at this time out of interest (and impatience).

 

Normally at one week the beers are a bit average. They are flat and the flavours haven't quite settled and melded together.

 

This one is surprisingly good. I think it will be a cracker in another month or so.

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[biggrin] just tried a bottle at week 2 and its looking to be a good one so far.I was a bit unsure as I got the water for the BIAB wrong.Didn't change gallons to liters right. So as the colour its abit on the lite side, the taste is good.Calling it a golden ale now.Thanks for telling me about John P. book Hairy really helping the brews.

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tried one of my amber/golden ales next to a james squire golden ale to compare.[lol] [love] just as good with abit more of a tart taste but in a good way. the type of beer you would take home to meet mum, ha ha.

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  • 2 months later...

Only got round to doing my proposed recipe recently, its now kegged and gassed and 2 weeks old. Here was my final recipe - this is a bloody good drop. Came out more the colour of LCPA and tastes pretty similar - I am stoked with that. Cascade and Chinook together is unreal and I would definately brew this again. About 4% alc so it is sessional and about 33 IBU. I want one now!

 

Coopers Liquid Amber Malt 1.5kg

1 kg Light Dry Malt

200g Crystal Grain

50g Choc Malt

20g Chinook @ 30 mins

20g Cascade @ 20 mins

20g Cascade @ 5 mins

10g Cascade Dry Hop from day 1

10g Chinook Dry Hop from day 1

US 05 @ 18c

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About 4% alc so it is sessional and about 33 IBU. I want one now!

 

Hey Paul

 

Sounds good, I have put the data into my spreadsheet, IBU 26 with a 10 litre boil. Just curious as to how big (volume) a boil did you do? Or on the other hand how big a boil do you have to do when brewing extract?

Cheers

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Gday, I did a 4ltr boil with about 400g of malt. My hops were as follows: Cascade 7.8%AA and the Chinook was 11.6%AA

 

Both brewmate and the kit and extract spreadsheet have it coming out at about 32.8 IBU.

 

I am no technical expert but as I understand it as long as you use the correct amount of malt (which equals about 1040) in your smaller boils it helps with hop utilisation (the kit and extract spreadsheet gives you this information) . Another guru may be able to answer that better than me. I always do 4-5 litre boils and it always turns out fine for me, and it takes less time to cool down!

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There is a lot of conjecture about whether utilisation is significantly affected by the size of the boil.

 

I'm no expert but I think that the boil gravity is more important. As long as there is sufficient water I don't think there would be much difference between a 5 litre boil at 1040 or an 8 litre boil at 1040.

 

It is important to look at utilisation when doing full boils because the gravity is likely to be much higher.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I am far from an expert on the science behind hop alpha acid utilisation, so if anyone else has any info I would be glad to hear it.

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There is a lot of conjecture about whether utilisation is significantly affected by the size of the boil.

 

I'm no expert but I think that the boil gravity is more important.

 

Thanks Paul and Hairy

 

I definitely won't pretend to be an expert, hence my question. I was doing 2 litre boils and hitting the IBU targets until I discovered the HCF (hop correction factor) button in IanH's spreadsheet. When using this spreadsheet on Neill's Centarillo Ale the IBU changes from 32.5 with a 5 litre boil to 54.1 with HCF off. Similarly with my old 2 litre boil and HCF on the IBU falls to 20.3. [unsure]

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This topic has piqued my interest because I didn't give any consideration to the SG of my boil when I put down my first extract/hops brew this week. I followed the basic procedures outlined in John Palmer's "How to Brew" & so boiled all of my fermentables in approx 11L of water.

Can someone explain what impact this would have on the hops in my brew? My OG was 1.062 at 21L so would have been really dense on the boil (Beersmith says 1.099 @ 11L).

I feel a little silly for not considering this variable!

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There is a chart in 'How to Brew' showing the utilisation factors at different gravities.

 

I don't have it handy but you will probably find it on the How to Brew website.

 

At the gravity of your boil you would have had less utilisation and the beer will be less bitter than you had planned.

 

But if it still tastes nice then that is what really matters.

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haha, well lucky mistake then because it's substantially more bitter than I planned for (though presumably this will mellow?. I really like very hoppy beers, but I'm expecting my lager drinking friends to find it a bit obnoxious.

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