Amber malt extract

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Headcase

Active Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2009
Messages
43
Reaction score
3
Location
Grand Junction, CO
Heya guys. I've got 6 lbs of Amber LME and 6 lbs of Amber DME. What kinda brews do you usually make with these? I'm thinkin mabye some kinda Brown Ale, though I know those are usually made with Light malt extract. Or even mabye a porter of some kind. I don't know. I'm still pretty new at this and have only been brewing since Sep. I would appreciate any ideas you fellas would like to share with me.
 
Yooper that recipe is almost exactly what I had in mind before I noticed Brown ales were being done with a different extract. I was planning on using Cascade Hops and tinkering with the idea of throwing a few orange peels in at the last 10 minutes of boil. I'm also going with WLP060 American Ale Blend yeast. Still not sure how this will come out. What's your take on this?

ChshreCat, that beer looks amazing! It's going to take EPIC discipline not to quite work and go home to brew that right now! Also I don't think I have the gear at the moment to do a partail mash. :(

Thanks for the input guys. I believe I'll learn alot form you all:mug:
 
Yooper that recipe is almost exactly what I had in mind before I noticed Brown ales were being done with a different extract. I was planning on using Cascade Hops and tinkering with the idea of throwing a few orange peels in at the last 10 minutes of boil. I'm also going with WLP060 American Ale Blend yeast. Still not sure how this will come out. What's your take on this?

ChshreCat, that beer looks amazing! It's going to take EPIC discipline not to quite work and go home to brew that right now! Also I don't think I have the gear at the moment to do a partail mash. :(

Thanks for the input guys. I believe I'll learn alot form you all:mug:

I'm not a fan of orange peels or other fruits in any beer, but I especially wouldn't do it with a brown ale. I like the tradition English brown, which tastes quick similar to Newcastle. I'm not sure what citrusy US hops and orange peel would be like, but if it sounds like something you'd like, go for it!
 
I have brewed a caramel brown a few times that was great.

That sounds like 10 gallons though ;).

10 gallons

Your leftover extract
2 lb of crystal 60L
2 oz fuggles 45 min

Top up to 10 gallons.
 
I have enough for two 5 gallon brews. I think what I'm going to do is make the regular brown ale as it's suposed to be made. The other will just be an experiment. We'll see how it turns out.
 
Amber extracts are made with any number of different ingredients. Briess's, for example, is mashed with Pale, 60L Caramel, and Munich malts. Thus it is quite well-suited for styles like Stout and especially Brown Ale.

I'm going to disagree with Yooper and recommend you simply steep a few ounces of cracked Chocolate Malt instead of the extra Crystal/Caramel malt. I've done a simple Brown Ale many times which consists of 6.6 lbs Amber LME and 4 ounces of Chocolate Malt, hopped with Fuggles.

The reason you see very few recipes featuring Amber or Dark extracts is because you have more control over recipes featuring Pale/Light extracts and specialty grains. The darker extracts already have specialty grains added to them to make them darker and give them distinctive flavors; since no maltster provides analyses which list the exact proportions of each, you can't know exactly what's in there, so you lose a certain amount of control. Moreover, not all extracts are the same - Briess Amber is different from Muntons Amber, etc.

You get the picture. Good luck! :mug:

Bob
 
ChshreCat, that beer looks amazing! It's going to take EPIC discipline not to quite work and go home to brew that right now! Also I don't think I have the gear at the moment to do a partail mash. :(

If you have a pasta pot and a kitchen strainer, you have everything you need to do small to medium sized partial mashes. I've made both my brown ale and my chocolate stout recipe that way.
 
Add an ounce of Fuggle at bittering and an ounce of fuggle at the last five minutes and it is a decent british pale ale. Use White Labs British ale yeast (not London).

Forrest
 
Thanks for the great info Bob. That's very helpfull and good to know.

ChshreCat, if you get some time and are feeling up to it can you explain your method on using the pasta pot and strainer? Is it basically like steeping specialty grains or do I need to keep pouring heated water over the grain bed in strainer? I'm still trying to understand advanced brewing like PM and AG, which is where I want to go with my brewing. Thanks again for the great info guys:mug:
 
Simple. Turn on your oven to the lowest setting. Put your water in the spaghetti pot according to how much grain you're using (Beersmith is great to calculate it for you) and put it on the stove. Once it's at your strike temp (Beersmith again) turn of the heat dump in your grains and stir.

Check the temp and adjust with either ice cubes or hot water from the microwave. If you do it right, you won't need much if any adjustment. Then stick the pot in the oven and turn the oven off. The residual heat will keep the mash at the target temp.

About a half hour later, turn the oven back on to the lowest setting while you take the pot out and give it a stir. Put it back in and turn the oven back off. Get another pot and start warming up your sparge water (you got it... Beersmith tells you that too).

When you're done mashing (an hour, usually) you're ready to collect your wort and sparge. Depending on how much grains your using, I used two methods....

If I'm using a small amount of grains, just pour it through the strainer into your kettle and let the strainer catch the grains. Then dump the grains back into your spaghetti pot and add your sparge water. Give it a stir, let it sit for a few minutes and then pour that into your kettle through the strainer too.

With more grains, like with my chocolate oatmeal stout, there's too much for the strainer to handle. That one FILLED the pasta pot to the top with grain and water. When that happens, I ladle the grains and wort into the strainer over the kettle. When the strainer is full, then I run some of my sparge water over it to "rinse" it. Once your down far enough to pour, start pouring it through the strainer, stopping to rinse it with some more of your sparge water when the strainer is full. That's a bit more involved than what I did with smaller amounts of grains, so that's why I moved to the igloo cooler. MUCH easier.
 
Thanks. It's a good beginner recipe. The first one I came up with for my first batch, actually. Doesn't use too much grain.

If you want to step up to bigger partial mashes, but can't get a cooler yet, check out DeathBrewer's partial mash post. I think if you combine the technique he uses plus using the oven to keep temp, you'd have about the perfect process.

His post is here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/
 
Well here goes. Next week I'll be brewing Cats Brown Biscuit and with some help from you guys I came up with a simple Brown Ale I'll be doing as well.

3.3 lbs Amber LME
2 lbs Amber DME
4 oz Chocolate malt (Steeped @ 155-160 for 45 minutes)

1 oz Fuggle 60 minutes
.5 oz Fuggle 30 minutes
.5 oz Fugggle 5 minutes

Yeast: WLP060 American Ale Blend

How does this look? I don't have Beersmith or anything else yet to crunch numbers. The yeast is one that I just happen to have on hand. Will it be ok for this? Thanks for the help in steering me in the right direction.
 
Below is what came out of my copy of ProMash. There are any number of convenient online recipe calculators; you don't really need standalone software, especially at your stage of the game. There's the HBD Recipator, TastyBrew, and others.

Your beer looks yummy. I think I'll have to brew one of these; my pipeline is getting rather low. :mug:

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
-------------------------------

11-C English Brown Ale, Northern Brown

Min OG: 1.040 Max OG: 1.052
Min IBU: 20 Max IBU: 30
Min Clr: 12 Max Clr: 22 Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Wort Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Extract (Lbs): 5.55
Anticipated OG: 1.041 Plato: 10.33
Anticipated SRM: 14.8
Anticipated IBU: 29.4
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
59.5 3.30 lbs. Briess LME- Amber USA 1.035 9
36.0 2.00 lbs. Briess DME- Amber USA 1.043 13
4.5 0.25 lbs. Chocolate Malt USA 1.029 350

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 oz. Fuggle Pellet 4.75 23.4 60 min.
0.50 oz. Fuggle Pellet 4.75 6.0 30 min.
0.50 oz. Fuggle Pellet 4.75 0.0 0 min.


Yeast
-----
WLP060 American Ale Blend
 
Back
Top