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James Squire Amber Ale


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I'm confused - when you guys are referring to amber malt and sweetness are you talking about my attempt with the OS draught kit?

 

I'm going to be ordering the ingredients for Otto's version (or a sub-version thereof) tomorrow, starting with the original ...

 

3kg Light LME (2 x 1.5kg tins)

580g Light Dry Malt (Because that's what the boil called for)

300g Dark Crystal

50g Choc Malt (I'm pretty sure the one I have is the pale one)

40g. Willamette Pellet @ 50 mins

40g. Willamette Pellet @ 40 mins

20g. Willamette Pellet @ 20 mins

S-04 Yeast

23 Litres

 

... then probably reducing the amount of LDM (to suit a smaller boil becuase I have no large pots and have trouble reducing the temperature, upping the bittering hops and possibly altering the yeast. I might also trade 50g of crystal for 50g of extra chocolate.

 

My main problem, however, is that I haven't done much experimenting with boil times and hops and such. So, tell me, if I started with 10g Willamette for an hour would that be ... a lot? Hardly noticeable? Something else?

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Well, we're talking about amber malt in general. But your attempt with the OS Draught kit and mine with the APA kit are examples. It's made with crystal malts, so that explains why I'm getting the same sort of sweetness with the all extract/grain version. I have read somewhere that boil times have an effect on the color of the brew as well.

 

10g of Willamette won't do much at all, because it's all unhopped extract and Willamette is a low AA% hop, that's why the amounts are 40g. I'd probably leave the Willamette schedule as is and then add 5 or 10g of a bittering hop for an hour on top of it, which would make it:

 

5 or 10g whatever Bittering hop @ 60 mins

40g. Willamette Pellet @ 50 mins

40g. Willamette Pellet @ 40 mins

20g. Willamette Pellet @ 20 mins

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i have a similar issue with Morgans amber ale. its a lovely drop that i have made a couple of time using the can, 500gm of dex, 250gm LDM and 250gm of corn syrup.

i find it does have a fairly sweet aftertaste that i'd rather not have. i have put one down last night and omitted the corn syrup and replaced with extra LDM, but maybe Amber malt is the culprit??

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What exactly is corn syrup? Is it like a liquid version of maltodextrin? Anyway, the amber malt in the kit is probably more likely. Maybe next time try a small hop boil to counter it?

 

I'm actually gonna do a small boil on the stove when I go to put this all grain version of this in the FV with 10g of Magnum for an hour just to up the bitterness a bit and see if it kills off that annoying sweetness.

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I will give it a go, but i dont want to over do it as the style does benefit from a slight sweetness.

 

BTW the Corn syrup i have used is in powderform and is included in a blend i have been getting from my LHBS. he calls it ultrablend.

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What's the AA% on the Willamette and Cascade hops you have? What was the predicted IBUs? I don't take much notice of those style guidelines personally but I do have a target IBU of about 35 on my next attempt. I believe my last two are up in the high 20s and that sweetness is too prominent, so I'm just going to increase the bittering hops until I find a level I like. I've just plugged in my original extract recipe to the spreadsheet and it comes out at 29IBU without any extra bittering hop additions. I have the HCF option as YES as well.

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Hmm, I have no idea what the HCF thing does apart from drastically alter the value!! Does it take the boil volume into account or something? If I switch it on then I get 33.0 IBU for a 7L boil, or only 26.6 for a 4L boil.

 

I'm just using the spreadsheet, so the %AA is 7.8 and 4.3 on Cascade and Willamette respectively.

 

Ok, final recipe time for me I think or else I'll never decide. Here goes:

 

3kg Coopers Light LME

450g LDM (also going with whatever the boil's asking for)

250g Dark Crystal

100g Choc Malt

20g Cascade @60

40g Willamette @40

40g Willamette @20

20g Willamette @20

6L boil

Fill to 23L

S-04 yeast

 

 

And according to the spreadsheet ...

 

OG: 1.052

FG: 1.015

IBU: 36.8

EBC: 41.8

%A: 5.3

 

*phew*

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Yeah, it adjusts the IBU depending on the size of the boil. I don't know the technicalities of it, but when I was doing extract recipes and doing smaller boils I always used the HCF. I never found my beers to be way more bitter than I was expecting. In fact they seemed to be around the right mark.

 

That recipe looks pretty nice. I think the mid 30s IBU is just enough to counter that sweetness without going too over the top with bitterness. I would say make that one, and if after a taste test it needs adjusting (more/less bittering hops or whatever) then do that for any future brews, if not then obviously it's all good.[biggrin] Good luck and I'm keen to see how it turns out!

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I think my next brew, will be an AG Amber using Williamette.

 

Planning on using Dark Munich as part of the base malt, to try and get some of the colour, can't decide whether to go 5 or 10% crystal (have been putting 10% in my IPA's but the IBU has been around 50).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just bottled my recipe and, of course, had a bit of a taste along the way. Not bad actually. Not a JSAA in a clone sense, but still a nice beer and an improvement on my first one.

 

Changes? Well, the colour is a bit dark and I can taste the chocolate so I reckon I'd use less chocolate grains next time. Also the hop isn't very prominent, but I'm not familiar with the variety so not really sure there. That's about all though, just minor things.

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Nice one mate. Experimentation is what it's all about. I had a feeling it might be a little dark when I saw the 41.8 EBC [lol] That's what happened to my English Pale, I added too many dark grains to it and it came out darker than I expected. It tasted really nice though. However, now that it has been bottled, I absolutely love the color, it's a really rich deep ruby red [love] I usually bottle the first bottle of a batch in a clear bottle purely to see how its appearance is. The rest go in brown ones.

 

Anyway getting a bit off track there. I had a bottle of one of my extract amber ales the other day just to see how it's going, it's been bottled for about 2 or 3 months, and that sweetness I got last time I tried one didn't seem to be there as much this time.. maybe more time in the bottles helped it? I'm not sure.

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I had a feeling it might be a little dark when I saw the 41.8 EBC [lol]

 

Mmm, see I don't really know what the numbers mean in real life so all I had to go by was the colour of the example in the spreadsheet. I think next time I'll pay a bit closer attention and do some comparisons as research.

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If you were using the kit and extract spreadsheet, I don't think the beer glass color thing actually works. I'd probably aim for about 25-30 EBC for an amber ale, although it really doesn't matter that much. I'll definitely be making that English 'Pale' again, except I might add a bit more bittering hops next time, it tasted a bit sweet out of the FV. Might be a bit different once carbed up though.

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