Miscellaneous

Brew Day Melee – American Amber Ale

7 Comments

For the second installment of the Brew Day Melee, I decided to make an American Amber Ale. I'm running low with both my kegs, so I'll need something that can be turned around fairly quickly to get one filled back up. It will serve a far greater purpose as I plan to wash its yeast after primary fermentation for use in this year's barleywine.

I'll get to the recipe after the jump...

American Amber Ale

5 lbs Vienna Malt
4 lbs American 2-Row Pale Malt
1 lb 120L Crystal Malt
0.75 oz Centennial pellet hops @ 9.9% alpha acid for 60 minutes
0.50 oz Cascade pellet hops @ 6.4% alpha acid for 30 minutes
0.75 oz Cascade pellet hops @ 6.4% alpha acid for 2 minutes
0.25 oz Centennial pellet hops @ 9.9% dry hop for 7 days after primary fermentation
0.75 oz Cascade pellet hops @ 6.4% dry hop for 7 days after primary fermentation
1.00 oz Palisade pellet hops @ 6.7% dry hop for 7 days after primary fermentation
1 capful Irish moss last 15 minutes of boil
1 smack pack Wyeast #1056 American Ale yeast

I mixed in 12.5 quarts of water at 164 degrees F and mashed for 60 minutes. My brew house efficiency for this one was about 66%, so a little lower than I'd been hitting. I had a starting gravity of 1.047 with an estimate IBUs at 38.

For this particular batch, I thought it would be fun to film it. If you've got about 25 minutes, I'll walk you through the process.

Part 1: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atFLVHci7bU

Part 2: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3UTsPXd-9Y

For those without time to watch, I took a handful of pictures.

7 thoughts on “Brew Day Melee – American Amber Ale”

  1. That's a nice shirt you've got there, 'toy, too bad about the trade.

    So, how do you mean this is the starter for your barley wine?

    1. Once I transfer the amber to the secondary for dry hopping, I'm going to dump as much yeast from the bottom of the fermenter as I can into a growler and clean it up using Ball jars. You let it start to settle, then carefully pour the top layer into a jar once it starts to separate. Repeating a couple of times makes clean yeast for use in another batch. Since there will be a lot more of it than in a smack pack, I consider it a starter.

      1. Ah ha. I wasn't sure if you meant going for the cycle with the grain eg brewing a a wee heavy, a scotch ale, and a mild all with the same grain. I'm pretty sure that we could have a good time on that kind of brew day.

        1. That would be interesting, and while I've heard of making two batches from one grain set, three just sounds crazy. Maybe I'll make Corn do that whenever he makes his way down here.

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