Holiday/Christmas Spiced Amber Ale Recipe - thoughts help?

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KG-Brew

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A while back I brewed Jamil's American amber ale from BCS.. It is really good. I want to make a holiday beer and hoped to just adapt/add-on to this recipe. Here is my adaptation below. I have added some malt to increase the ABV from 5.5 to about 7%. I plan to add cinnamon, nutmeg, and hazelnut probably at end of boil. Still working on that aspect but wanted to get this board's view on my base recipe. Thanks



Holiday Amber Ale (SantaKloz 2.0)
By Brewing Classic Styles
Method: Partial Mash Style: Holiday/Winter Special Spiced Beer
Boil Time: 60 min Batch Size: 5.5 gallons Boil Size: 7 gallons Efficiency: 70%
Original Gravity:1.071Final Gravity:1.017ABV (standard):7.08%IBU (tinseth):30.97SRM (morey):24.29
Fermentables
Amount Fermentable PPG °L Bill %
7.5 lb Liquid Malt Extract - Amber 35 10 62%
1.5 lb Liquid Malt Extract - Munich 35 8 12.4%
1 lb Caramel / Crystal 40L 34 40 8.3%
1 lb Caramel / Crystal 120L 33 120 8.3%
0.6 lb Victory 34 28 5%
0.5 lb Special B 34 115 4.1%
Hops
Amount Variety Time AA Type Use
0.6 oz horizon 55 min 13 Pellet Boil
0.3 oz cascade 10 min 6 Pellet Boil
0.3 oz Centennial 12 min 9 Pellet Boil
0.3 oz Cascade 0 min 6 Pellet Aroma
0.2 oz Centennial 0 min 9 Pellet Aroma
Yeast
White Labs - California Ale Yeast WLP001
Attenuation (avg): 76.5% Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Temperature: 68°F - 73°F Starter: No
Notes
Plan to add:

Cinnamon (ground or sticks)
Nutmeg
Hazelnut
Ginger (sm amount)
 
I think it might be a little heavy on crystal malts. I would probably switch the amber LME for pale LME since you already have about 2.5 lbs of crystal in there. I would also up the hop additions to balance out the sweetness from the crystal. Maybe 1 oz Horizon to bitter and 0.5 oz for all the other additions.
 
Thanks Peterj. Currently the IBU is around 30 which worked great for the amber. I like your suggestion of increasing to offset the sweetness of the beer, changing the additions to your rec results in an ibu of 50. For me that seems a bit high for my tastes, not sure if I need it that high due to the abv, sweetness,spices, etc? Thanks for the help.
 
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