American Amber Ale Bottle Rocket American Red

Bottle Rocket American Red
Beersmith 2 Recipe

This is my first original recipe that I really 'developed' over eight different brew sessions. It's also the first original recipe where I felt my beer met "commercial quality". I use a 2000ml starter whenever using White Labs or Wyeast, either work fine in this recipe.

Its a super tasty beer. The Simcoe and Amarillo provide an amazing piney, citrus, and tropical aroma while the Magnum leaves a nice spice in the beer. The crystal malts leave a pleasant roasty slight sweetness that balances out the hops. The Carafra II and Roasted Barley help give the beer a pleasant roasted malt flavor, and a great color. I took a case of bombers to a 4th of July BBQ, and they were gone within a couple hours. A huge hit, and now have a keg dedicated to just his beer as it has became my "House Amber." I hope you all enjoy it as much as my friends and I do.

This looks interesting and I bet it's a very good beer. I'm interested in your process here, especially since you refined this over eight iterations. Specifically, I noticed the Carafa 2 and the 300L roasted barley. The Carafa seems like an obvious coloring addition while avoiding any bitter roastiness. Why the ounce of roasted barley and why is it the lighter version of roasted?

I'm still fairly new to this and trying to learn about all the special little malt characteristics.

Originally I began with only Carafra for the "dark" malt which was good, but I wanted to try for a bit of that bite that comes from roasted barley to compliment the sweetness of the Crystal Malt. The lighter color is the only roasted barley the LHBS had at the time, and a pound of roasted malt lasts a while with my brewing. It's only almost 2% of the grist, so the flavor is very subdued, but there is definitely a roasted flavor in there not coming from the Crystal.

I might make this and ferment it out with a belgian yeast, see what goes down.

looks malty..... I'm afraid it may be too malty/sweet for me.

on he dry hops I see you only added 1 ounce total. does that give you enough aroma??

I do like the idea.

hotpants said:

I might make this and ferment it out with a belgian yeast, see what goes down.

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Let me know how that turns out, I've never used a belgian yeast so I'm interested in hearing how it turns out.

CBelli said:

looks malty..... I'm afraid it may be too malty/sweet for me.

on he dry hops I see you only added 1 ounce total. does that give you enough aroma??

I do like the idea.

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It's quiet malty, however I don't find it too sweet. I do know some are fans of the crystals though. The .5 oz of Simcoe and Amarillo seems to do the trick quiet well. I just didn't use a full oz. of each because I was low, I'm sure upping would give it plenty more of the aroma. In fact I just ordered a lbs. of Amarillo and Simcoe and am going to give this a try with my next brew day.

iammatt said:

Let me know how that turns out, I've never used a belgian yeast so I'm interested in hearing how it turns out.



It's quiet malty, however I don't find it too sweet. I do know some are fans of the crystals though. The .5 oz of Simcoe and Amarillo seems to do the trick quiet well. I just didn't use a full oz. of each because I was low, I'm sure upping would give it plenty more of the aroma. In fact I just ordered a lbs. of Amarillo and Simcoe and am going to give this a try with my next brew day.

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Absolutely, I'm actually gonna split the wort and ferment half with WLP530 Abbey ale yeast, and the other half with WLP001. Ill let you know how they turn out and compare

Will be bottling this next week. I progressively added .5 oz simcoe whole leaf to this in the last 20 minutes, and it smells and tastes AWESOME so far.
Had to sub the amarillo for ahtatum
Great recipe!

kroach01 said:

Will be bottling this next week. I progressively added .5 oz simcoe whole leaf to this in the last 20 minutes, and it smells and tastes AWESOME so far.
Had to sub the amarillo for ahtatum
Great recipe!

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Awesome. I bet those Simcoe hoppings through the final minutes give this an amazing piney/earthy taste. I've done the same with Willamette and it gets an awesome woody tea like character that goes with the cirtrus and fruit of the hops.

Sweet! Wilamette is another good one for this. Will have to try that!

I brewed this not so long ago and am drinking a pint now. WOW this is good.
The caramel is quite prominent but balanced well with bittering hops. Definitely a great example of american red/amber. The hops give it a great dank taste/piney with a hint of citrus.

kroach01 said:

I brewed this not so long ago and am drinking a pint now. WOW this is good.
The caramel is quite prominent but balanced well with bittering hops. Definitely a great example of american red/amber. The hops give it a great dank taste/piney with a hint of citrus.

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Exactly what I was shooting for with the beer. I love malt and I like hops, so just bring em both together in a reasonably sessionable brew. Glad you enjoy it.

Brewed this baby 2½ weeks ago and just just took a final gravity while racking it over to my brite tank for the dry hopping.... I was originally concerned that it may have been too malty (post#5). But after sampling the left over from the primary, I stand corrected..... This is nice and dry.... finished at 1.008. I can't wait to see what the dry hops impart into the profile...

IMHO I have to say it is closer to an American Brown than to an amber in color and taste... but the dry hops may swing the profile back to Amber.

I really like the flavor...great recipe.... will be experimenting with this over the next few months.

I made this but with basically a completely different hop schedule. I used galaxy to bitter and then some more galaxy in the last 5 minutes for some flavor and aroma, then I dry hopped it with a good dose of simcoe and zythos. This beer is reeally nice, the malts definitely bring some caramel but its just the right amount and its balanced with them hops. The best part though is the aroma. Im getting some piney and tropical notes, which in addition to the malts makes for a very interesting beer. I also fermented some with a belgian yeast, which is also very good, it brings that added bit of complexity. Very good but I think a clean american yeast suits this beer.

Cheers

CBelli said:

Brewed this baby 2½ weeks ago and just just took a final gravity while racking it over to my brite tank for the dry hopping.... I was originally concerned that it may have been too malty (post#5). But after sampling the left over from the primary, I stand corrected..... This is nice and dry.... finished at 1.008. I can't wait to see what the dry hops impart into the profile...

IMHO I have to say it is closer to an American Brown than to an amber in color and taste... but the dry hops may swing the profile back to Amber.

I really like the flavor...great recipe.... will be experimenting with this over the next few months.

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I've made a few tweaks to the recipe over the last couple brew dates and it's now the best to date. I like to add an additional pound of Munich to the mash. Bumps the ABV up to 5.9% or so and adds a bit more flavor. I also like to do .5oz additions of Willamette at both 5 minutes left and Flame out. This adds a nice base to the big flavors of the Simcoe/Amarillo dry hop.

I'd update the Original Post, but I can't and don't know if that's an intended feature of a recipe post?

hotpants said:

I made this but with basically a completely different hop schedule. I used galaxy to bitter and then some more galaxy in the last 5 minutes for some flavor and aroma, then I dry hopped it with a good dose of simcoe and zythos. This beer is reeally nice, the malts definitely bring some caramel but its just the right amount and its balanced with them hops. The best part though is the aroma. Im getting some piney and tropical notes, which in addition to the malts makes for a very interesting beer. I also fermented some with a belgian yeast, which is also very good, it brings that added bit of complexity. Very good but I think a clean american yeast suits this beer.

Cheers

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I bet those Galaxy hops make it a fruity beast with the Amarillo. I have no experience brewing with Galaxy and have only had them in a few commercial beers, but I do recall massive amounts of fruit. What flavors came out with the Belgian batch vs. the Chico yeast?

Welp, looks like I'm going to have to brew this one again!!

started a batch of this today, and it looks great.

The hobby beer store I frequent didn't have the Carafa II, so I replaced it with the closest thing they had, which we thought would be a chocolate malt. Probably because of that it seems quite a bit darker. I guess this one is an American Brown. I also used Chinook hops in place of simcoe, which I can't seem to find. I also upped the Pale Malt by two pounds (for a 5.5 gallon batch). The OG is closer to 1.06. Smells great though, and I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for the recipe.

Just cracked the first bottle of this one today, and it was great. I made quite a few adjustments, as I mentioned above, but since then I've found another HBS that carries the right hops, so I'll have to try it again soon and follow the recipe.

It's quite an interesting and delicious beer, with a great balance of caramel, citrus, and spice.
It's the kind of beer I could drink back a few liters of in a sitting.
Cheers!

somehow only managed to hit 1.045 OG

i believe not as much water boiled off as i expected to, and since i do 1 gal batches, it makes a big difference. I'm sure the final product will still be good though!