What is this gonna taste like? (I was shooting for an amber)

I had a ground up bag of mixed grain I was saving for a banana flavored porter. After deciding to give more time developing that recipe, I threw the grains and 8 pounds of LME together with some left over hops for the hell of it.

2 oz 2-Row Chocolate Malt
8 oz Crystal 60
8 oz Crystal 120
8.0 lb English Light Extract (MoreBeer)
.5 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
.25 oz Hallertau (4.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
.5 oz Fuggle (4.8%) - added during boil, boiled 30.0 min
2 packets of Nottingham (first time with notty)

Original Gravity: 1.062
Terminal Gravity: 1.016
Color: 17.1 °SRM
Alcohol: 6.15%
Bitterness: 29.3
Kettle Volume: 5.71 gal (S.G.: 1.055)
Boil Duration: 1 hr
Evaporation: 0.5 gal
Water Volume Added: 0.0 gal
Final Volume: 5.0 gal (S.G.: 1.062) Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Evap/Hour: 0.5 gal


Steeped grains for 30 at about 165ish.

It's in a part of my basement that's a consistent 60 all of the time. Took about 10 hours to get going full steam. Still chugging away next to my lager in its d rest.

This is going to sound silly, but my fragile brain originally though that crystal 120l was 12, even though I had fully acknowledged there was a zero in front of it. Then I thought man, sounds like a pretty intense malt, hope it's not too much. I was thinking if I'd do it again I'd have a larger variety of crystal malts in smaller proportions. But eff it. I have a feeling after this clears out and is cleared further with gelatin, I'll at least have a nice lookin' beer.

What do you guys think, to much 120?

Here are some crappy pictures I took with my phone

It's going to be like a bastard Irish Red. Slightly higher in alcohol, slightly lower in dry roasty finish, a little higher on bitterness but the higher FG will counter some of that. Expect a slightly sweeter drinking beer.

It might be a good candidate for some light dry hopping (like .5oz).

Oh, and you should have steeped the grains for longer (60 mins should be your minimum) and at a lower temp. 165 is so high that you're approaching mash out temps - i.e., you deactivate enzymes. Without enzymes, the starch in the grain won't get broken down, and you'll have a lot of unfermentable starch in the final beer. Your final gravity might be kinda high.

kanzimonson said:

Oh, and you should have steeped the grains for longer (60 mins should be your minimum) and at a lower temp. 165 is so high that you're approaching mash out temps - i.e., you deactivate enzymes. Without enzymes, the starch in the grain won't get broken down, and you'll have a lot of unfermentable starch in the final beer. Your final gravity might be kinda high.

Click to expand...

I was going by John Palmer who says 30 minutes between 150-170. Are you talking about a partial mash?

You don't have to mash those grains, so i think you're okay. I might have gone with less 120, but that's hardly outrageous to use 1/2 lb.

About that hop schedule. Cenetennial + Hallertau + Fuggles is, um, non-traditional. Given that you're bittering already with Centennial, I suspect the Hallertau might just get lost in the shuffle.

Definitely an Amber. I would have used the Hallertau at 15 or less.

Oops, I always have mashing on the brain and didn't pay attention to the fact that you don't need to mash those grains.

Hallertau is a maybe, as in it was inside an unamed sandwhich bag. I'm about 99 percent sure it's aa was somewhere between 4 and 8 cuz I'm running out of hops and I havent used anything like nugget or the like in a while. I like the smell of this one, nothing fancy like a saison in the bucket, smells like beer.

I think that will taste like crap! I will PM you my address, send it to me for proper disposal and I will send you back the empties. In all honesty, it will likely be a pretty good drinkin beer, and a good way to clean up the brew supply shelf!