Irish Amber Ale recipe

Thinking of making this during the coming weekend (most likely Saturday, 1/8/11)...

Type: All Grain (BIAB)
Batch Size: 5.125 gallons
Boil Size: 6.125 gallons (approx.)
Boil Time: 90 minutes

5 pounds Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (2.1 SRM)
5 pounds Pale Malt, Maris Otter (2.0 SRM)
12 ounces British Crystal Malt II (65 SRM)
4 ounces British Crystal Malt II toasted for 15 minutes
[0 ounces Chocolate Malt (450 SRM)] removed
.5 ounce Target hops (10.50% AA) 60 minute boil
.25 ounce Fuggles hops (4.0% AA) 5 minute boil
Irish Ale (Wyeast Labs #1084) harvested and washed (will make a starter with some of this yeast).

Mash with 22 quarts water at 154F for 90 minutes
Sparge with 2 gallons water at 168-170F for 30 minutes

Estimated OG: 1.059
Estimated FG: 1.015
Estimated ABV: 5.60%
Bitterness: 18.4 IBU

Due to bad results from this past weekend's brewing in my 70 quart cooler, I'm putting that aside for now and getting a 32 or 34 quart pot for mashing or sparging in (might sparge in my current 32 quart, and then pour the mash wart into it for the boil). I had better results in the partial mash using pots, so I'm going back to that method. I'll just do whatever it takes to maintain the correct temperature range for both steps.

[removed from recipe]The only thing I don't have on hand is the chocolate malt. Would it be possible to toast some of the crystal malt I do have to get it to the same level, or is it better to just pick up some of the chocolate malt? I'd get a pound, so that I have some on hand for another brewing... I plan to vacuum pack whatever I don't use to help keep it fresh longer.

I have the Irish Ale yeast that I harvested in the fridge separating out (three jars)... I figured I could use one of them for this brew, then harvest the yeast from that brew and wash it. I plan to harvest two or three jars from each batch, until I hit either the 5th generation, or start to notice things I don't like. I have two more brews that I'll be able to harvest the yeast cake from soon that are different strains, (one could be early next week, the other in a couple more weeks) to give me a decent range of yeast to work with.

It is really tough to toast malt to get it as dark as chocolate malt without burning it. That said, you could certainly toast a pound of malt to add some toasty complexity and skip the chocolate malt (probably more of an Irish Pale). If you do get the chocolate malt I’d probably cut it down to ~2 oz, 4 oz will probably be a bit darker than amber in my experience.

The only other suggestion I have is to mash a bit cooler, Irish Ale is a low attenuator and I’d worry the beer would end up too sweet as is. Hope that helps, good luck.

Oldsock, made a few adjustments, including pulling the chocolate malt from the recipe, increasing the MO to 5 pounds (matching the UK 2 Row amount), dropped the mash temp from 155F to 152F, mash volume at 18 quarts, which has reduced the sparge volume. Would this work better with a 60 minute or 90 minute boil? I'm thinking of pulling a little of the wort and boiling it to get some darker color (Beer Smith is showing it as a bit lighter than I was hoping for). Increased the British Crystal Malt II to 8 ounces, which gets me closer to my target (on paper at least)... If the 90 minute boil will get me the rest of the way to my target color, then I'll do that.

I plan to use my 5 gallon carboy for this one, with a blow off tube in it for the first few days (to prevent something bad from happening)...

I'm giving serious thought to getting a grain mill sooner rather than later. The grains I have on hand were crushed to .039". Would I be better off crushing them again to a smaller size, like closer to .030 (or below?)?? With the BIAB method here, I'm not concerned about the crushed grains plugging up any tubing. Looking more for better extraction.

Sounds like some fine adjustments. The extra 30 minute boil really won't add that much more color, but boiling down some of the runnings to a thick syrup certainly could add some color. I boil most of my beers for 90 minutes, but unless you are brewing with pilsner malt there isn’t a huge justification.

I haven't done BIAB, so I'll leave that question for someone else. Although I’ll say that my only concern would be tannin extraction, which is something I’ve head can result from an overly fine crush.

I'll leave the crush as it is for this brewing then... I'll also plan to pull some of the runnings so that I can reduce them to add some darker color to the brew. I'll plan on pulling about 4 quarts of wort, to reduce down to 2 quarts (or until dark enough, whichever comes first).

So I should plan on losing that extra 2 quarts of volume before the boil starts, right? Just trying to plan how much wort I'll need at the start of the boil, to make sure I hit my 5 gallon goal in the fermenter (carboy)... If I set my pre-boil volume as 6.5 gallons, pulling 1 gallon, which will reduce to 1/2 gallon (or 2 quarts), that will get me closer to 5 gallons at the end of the 90 minute boil time. I'll plan to start the boil once I've poured the 2 quarts of reduced/darkened wort back into the boil kettle/pot...

Although, looking back at the last brewing, Beer Smith was a lot lighter on it's color indicator than what actually came out of the pot. I think I'll just go with the original plan (no chocolate malt) and see how this one comes out... I might toast a pound of 2 Row in the oven (any thoughts on how high a temp, and for how long?) before brew day.

The IC I made last week worked really well to cool the wort from my batch on Sunday. I'm planning on tweaking it a little so that I can actually place it into the pot 5-10 minutes before the boil has ended. I'll be getting more tubing so that I can connect it to the sink while still on the stove, and get it chilled down right there. Stirring the wort really helped (I think) chill it down quickly. It took 10-15 minutes to chill down the ~5 gallons of wort. The chiller was made from 20' of 3/8" copper tubing. The cold water up here didn't hurt the cooling any (could be part of why it worked so well). I'm planning on getting enough feed tubing so that I can either splice in another chiller (for summer cooling), or coil the tubing into an ice bath closer to the pot. I could pick up 10 feet of 3/8" tubing to make the pre-chiller at some point.

I will say, that since I've used the IC, I can't see not using on to chill my wort. No more needing to add ice to the wort, or try the ice bath in the sink method (which is ok, but not nearly as fast as the IC).

Does anyone skim their boiling wort to get the particles out of it? I skimmed the top, but then also skimmed some of what was floating around while it was boiling (I have a skimmer from a restaurant supply place)...

If you want color development you may need to go down to a cup or two, you'll get some Maillards, but if you want caramelization (and substantial color development) you have to boil nearly all of the water out. No problem starting the boil and just adding the reduced wort back near the end if you want to save some time.

I normally do ~350-400 for about 15-20 minutes. Give it a shake/stir every few minutes until you like the aroma (the color of the husk won't change as quickly as the endosperm, so cut one open if you want to see how it is going).

I just got an cheap immersion sump pump thing so that once my tap water gets back up to summer temps (~75) I can recirculate ice water through the chiller after I use ground water to get it down to ~110 or so.

Thinking that I'll take 4-8 ounces of the British Crystal II and toast it... I have two pounds of that on hand, so I can toast some, see how it comes out, and not worry if I F things up (although I'll probably be watching it a lot)... I'll probably just see how much will fit comfortably on the 1/2 sheet pans I have, and go with that much... Maybe use the toasted amount on top of what I already have in the recipe... hmmmmmm

I'll check the tap water when we hit the warmer months up here. But, I suspect, ours won't get as warm as yours will. Easy enough for me to make a smaller IC to cool down the feed water for the IC (a 10' pre-chiller) in an ice bath... I've been making ice and putting it into a 2-1/2 gallon ziplock bag lately. More to help chill down the mini-keg's since they won't fit into my fridge.

Since I'm not going to use the 70 quart cooler for a mash tun, I might convert it into a mini-keg chiller... hmmmmm, now to just get some parts to make it active cooled (not sure if passive will work too well in the summer)... For now, I could probably get away with using ice, and cooler packs...

I've been thinking about this one a bit... If I mash with 2 quarts per gallon, in my boil pot (a 32 quart pot), which will fit according to Green Bay Rackers. I could then sparge in either my 16 or 20 quart pot with the balance of the water needed (8 quarts) to reach my 6 gallons of pre-boil volume. That means, I won't need to get any more pots, using what I have on hand. I could even pre-heat the sparge water in a different pot, pouring it into the one to sparge in to make sure I don't put too much water in (a problem I had with my first PM batch)...

Got my starter cooling down (before I pitch the washed yeast into it)... Provided the yeast starts munching away (as I hope/expect it to) I'll be brewing this one either Sunday (tomorrow) or Monday... I do plan on toasting some of the 65L British Crystal Malt to darken it up a bit more. From what I've been able to tell, the Beer Smith color indicator (what it shows on screen, or even when printed) tends to be lighter than the actual brew. So I'm thinking that I'll just brew it up without pulling some wort and boiling it up.

I am hopeful that this one will be ready for bottling by the end of the month (or in three weeks) so that I can bring some to a family gathering/party (Feb 12th)... This might be my carbonation experiment batch, where I carb 1 (2.5-3 gallon) corny with CO2 and the other with sugar (honey)... I want to see if there's any flavor difference between the two. I plan to slow carb under CO2 (~2 weeks) so that I can just put it under the same pressure that I'll be serving it at.

I did some last minute tweaking of the recipe, and have it in the carboy now. Using the BIAB method I was able to get 81% efficiency with this batch.

I also adjusted the hops usage to be more in line (I hope) with the style. We'll find out soon enough.

Using my updated copper IC (19' of coil actually in the wort) I was able to cool it down from boiling to about 68F in under 15 minutes.

I'm thinking of doing a full batch size mash for the next brew, eliminating the sparge stage. I would only need a slightly larger pot to do that (a 50 quart would probably do it for most of my brews)... I'm also thinking that for the next brew, I'll be cooking it outside on a propane burner.

I used my auto-siphon to pull the wort from the pot into the carboy. Man that was easy. Don't know why I didn't do that before (other than the info in books and such)... I've already agitated it to get O2 into the wort but will probably do some more before pitching the yeast.

Since I'm using my 5 gallon carboy, I'm going to have to use a blowoff tube this time. Not going to risk not using one, due to how little head space there is above the wort.