American Amber Ale Caramel Amber Ale

+ 1 to brew, tks for the recipe

On my to brew list! THANKS for posting this recipe and info about making the candi syrup! +1

This is a great recipe! I am a big fan of Amber Ales and will be brewing this soon. Can you tell me what the pre boil volume is? Thanks!

AlkiBrewing said:

This is a great recipe! I am a big fan of Amber Ales and will be brewing this soon. Can you tell me what the pre boil volume is? Thanks!

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It depends entirely on your system. Pre-boil volume should be whatever it takes for you to get 5.5 gallons in the fermenter.

AlkiBrewing said:

This is a great recipe! I am a big fan of Amber Ales and will be brewing this soon. Can you tell me what the pre boil volume is? Thanks!

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That depends on your system...... how much you evap. Per hour.
I loose almost 1.5gl per/h. So id have more pre boil than another guy

How long do you guys let this ferment?

evandena said:

How long do you guys let this ferment?

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OP did a month in the primary. I did 3 weeks only cuz I was bottling 2 bathes any way so I decided to this one also..... I bottled at. .009 IIRC

davis119 said:

OP did a month in the primary. I did 3 weeks only cuz I was bottling 2 bathes any way so I decided to this one also..... I bottled at. .009 IIRC

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Thanks. How long for you before it hit its prime?

evandena said:

Thanks. How long for you before it hit its prime?

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Not sure. Mine is still carbing up.
Op will chime in

evandena said:

Thanks. How long for you before it hit its prime?

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I've been drinking it by 1 month after brewday, and it tastes great at that point. My typical fermentation schedule these days is about a week at ferment temps, then crash cool to ~40F for a week, then keg and let carb for a week or two. It may continue to get slightly better for a couple months, but it is damn good at 1 month when I follow the above schedule.

KingBrianI said:

I've been drinking it by 1 month after brewday, and it tastes great at that point. My typical fermentation schedule these days is about a week at ferment temps, then crash cool to ~40F for a week, then keg and let carb for a week or two. It may continue to get slightly better for a couple months, but it is damn good at 1 month when I follow the above schedule.

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Awesome. I'm only a few batches into brewing, and I've been looking for some for some sort of guideline like that. Thanks!

Hey kingbrian.
what do your hydro samples taste like?
Sweet malty caramel?
Mine was not sweet like I had hoped a bit hoppy. I missed my OG ended up 1.040
I wont know for sure til its carved an chilled but I was jw

davis119 said:

Hey kingbrian.
what do your hydro samples taste like?
Sweet malty caramel?
Mine was not sweet like I had hoped a bit hoppy. I missed my OG
.004.
I wont know for sure til its carved an chilled but I was jw

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Hydro samples after fermentation can be a little tricky, sometimes they taste great, sometimes thin and watery. That goes for all beers, not just this one. Missing the OG by 0.004 shouldn't make a huge difference and it looks like your FG was 1.009? I'd say let it carb up and give it a taste. I've found that when a beer tastes thin and watery right after fermentation, that it really richens up given a little time.

KingBrianI said:

Hydro samples after fermentation can be a little tricky, sometimes they taste great, sometimes thin and watery. That goes for all beers, not just this one. Missing the OG by 0.004 shouldn't make a huge difference and it looks like your FG was 1.009? I'd say let it carb up and give it a taste. I've found that when a beer tastes thin and watery right after fermentation, that it really richens up given a little time.

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I agree, a few of my batches have been this way. After a few weeks in the bottle went by everything had balanced out and I had great beer.

So I took this out of primary and forced carbed it. It tasted more hoppy than I like. It is good but I'm not a hoppy person. Next time I'll put kents in at the 60 min and none else. My FG was 1.025 so I don't know why its hoppy tasting

I'll give it a try

KingBrianI said:

Hydro samples after fermentation can be a little tricky, sometimes they taste great, sometimes thin and watery. That goes for all beers, not just this one. Missing the OG by 0.004 shouldn't make a huge difference and it looks like your FG was 1.009? I'd say let it carb up and give it a taste. I've found that when a beer tastes thin and watery right after fermentation, that it really richens up given a little time.

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Wasn't your OG 1.050? Mine was 1.040. And yea my fg was 1.009 (im pretty sure I need to take notes)
What was your fg?

KeyWestBrewing said:

I agree, a few of my batches have been this way. After a few weeks in the bottle went by everything had balanced out and I had great beer.

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Im sure it will be great beer. I just wont know if it tastes correct... maybe ill find some one to swap a bottle with

davis119 said:

Hey kingbrian.
what do your hydro samples taste like?
Sweet malty caramel?
Mine was not sweet like I had hoped a bit hoppy. I missed my OG
.004.
I wont know for sure til its carved an chilled but I was jw

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davis119 said:

Wasn't your OG 1.050? Mine was 1.040. And yea my fg was 1.009 (im pretty sure I need to take notes)
What was your fg?

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I'm confused, you said above you missed OG by 0.004 and now you're saying you missed it by 0.010?

well i imagine that the trick is to keep the percentages close to the original recipe and adjust your grain and hop bill according to what you normally get for your brew house efficiency. I actually took this recipe information, and plugged it into my recipe formulation software(s). I had to add more base malt to reach the OP's numbers, and also wanted to add a few OG points to it as i thought that the orig recipe was a bit low for OG. I'm going to shoot for an OG of 1.055 and mash @ 152. I have my brew software set to 76% efficiency, so we'll see where this takes us......more to come! If anyone wants to do a bottle swap of this recipe, please pm me and we can discuss this option further...(i'm game if you are)

wottaguy said:

If anyone wants to do a bottle swap of this recipe, please pm me and we can discuss this option further...(i'm game if you are)

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Id be up for that

KingBrianI said:

I'm confused, you said above you missed OG by 0.004 and now you're saying you missed it by 0.010?

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Sorry typo. I fixed it.... yea I finished 1.040. So I know that will cost me some sweetness

davis119 said:

Id be up for that

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ok....I need to brew the recipe first so it's going to be a while before we can do the swap. keep in touch!

davis119 said:

That depends on your system...... how much you evap. Per hour.
I loose almost 1.5gl per/h. So id have more pre boil than another guy

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K, thanks. I only brewed 3 batches with my new system so I still don't have a good feel for the evaporation rate per hour. Guess I'll start out with about 6.75 gallons this time.

Brewing this today and pretty excited! Just finished my syrup =)

pfalor said:

Brewing this today and pretty excited! Just finished my syrup =)

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I'm looking for the mosquito in there.

Just finished brewing an extract version and had an OG of 1.054 - I expected it to be a little higher than OP's, as I used 6 lbs of light LME. My hydro sample was very tasty and I am hoping these 4 weeks go by fast =)

My wife just made me brew this, OK...I really just needed more beer and she loves the caramel beers and ambers so it was a no brainer. This was a fun one to brew and I'm very excited to see how it comes out, thanks for the recipe!

I'm getting ready to brew a batch and was wondering what the pre boil volume for a five gallon batch should be, and what the OG & FG targets are. Thanks.

AlkiBrewing said:

I'm getting ready to brew a batch and was wondering what the pre boil volume for a five gallon batch should be, and what the OG & FG targets are. Thanks.

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Preboil will depend on your boil off rate. I do about 7.50 to get 6 when I'm done. I rack about 5.5 and leave a lot of crap behind.

kapbrew13 said:

Preboil will depend on your boil off rate. I do about 7.50 to get 6 when I'm done. I rack about 5.5 and leave a lot of crap behind.

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Thanks Kapbrew. I'm using a new propane burner so I don't have a good feel for the boil off rate yet. I'll guesstimate and take notes for future brews.

AlkiBrewing said:

Thanks Kapbrew. I'm using a new propane burner so I don't have a good feel for the boil off rate yet. I'll guesstimate and take notes for future brews.

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So use this as your test brew. Use 7 pre boil water I picked this number because I use to do 6.5 and now 7.5. So in between nothing complicated.

AlkiBrewing said:

Thanks Kapbrew. I'm using a new propane burner so I don't have a good feel for the boil off rate yet. I'll guesstimate and take notes for future brews.

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It's more related to your rate of boil and size of pot.
It's not a huge deal though, you can always top off or boil longer.

Sounds good. I'll go with 7 and keep notes. I'm a big fan of amber ales so am looking forward to this one.

AlkiBrewing said:

Sounds good. I'll go with 7 and keep notes. I'm a big fan of amber ales so am looking forward to this one.

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Good luck. This is a great amber. Made mine with D2 because I have a bunch on hand.

AlkiBrewing said:

I'm getting ready to brew a batch and was wondering what the pre boil volume for a five gallon batch should be, and what the OG & FG targets are. Thanks.

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OG and FG are in the OP:

Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.010

Just ordered everything to make this. Really looking forward to it.

Now I need to burn through some pipeline to have room... Cheers!

I have been enjoying my batch of this. Really really good.
However, I screwed up and scaled all my grains for 85% efficiency, not just my base game. So it's not quite malty as I would like, but it's still very tasty.

I have posed a question in another thread and gotten no help. I came upon this thread while doing some research on my issue. Basically, I ordered mixed grains for a Rye Stout but accidentally ordered way too much caramunich (56L), and the grains are already mixed. I've adjusted the recipe by scaling up a bit and adding more dark malts to compensate, but I'm still at 17% caramel malt. To fix, should I add sugar (cane? brown? what percent?), mash low (148?), or both? I thought I might get an answer since you're using lots of caramel and still drying things out well.

I like your propaganda for Ambers--I just brewed one today and will have to try this one sometime soon!

sorry, double post!