Opinions on American Amber

7.5 lbs 2 row
2.0 lbs munich 9L
0.75 lbs C120
0.75 honey malt

expecting OG of ~1.054 and shooting for 35-40 IBU.

I have columbus, centennial, cascade, and willamette hops. Plus a few other non-american varieties.

My questions are:

1. How does the recipe look? I have never used honey malt.
2. What mash temp? I want a final around 1.012-1.015 using either us-05 or pacman.
3. What hops and times. I will probably use the columbus for bitter addittion.

I'd mash 152.

Hops
.5 each of Centennial and Cascade at 20, 10, and 0.

Add enough of anything else at 60 to put your IBU where you want it.

Don't know about honey malt - never used it.

My 2¢

ezerhoden said:

7.5 lbs 2 row
2.0 lbs munich 9L
0.75 lbs C120
0.75 honey malt

expecting OG of ~1.054 and shooting for 35-40 IBU.

I have columbus, centennial, cascade, and willamette hops. Plus a few other non-american varieties.

Click to expand...

150-154 anywhere in there for mash temp depending on how dry or chewy you want the beer to be.

I like my Ambers to have a nice hop presesnce in the nose, so I'd load up on cascade and centennial in the last 10 minutes. Maybe an ounce of each at 10 minutes and again at flameout. Dry hopping with those two as well might take you into a whole other world of aroma pleasure.

Bitter it with a small amount of columbus, like 0.25 to 0.5 ounces. Nothing overpowering, but you'll get a bit of dank columbus goodness that should complement the malt nicely.

I haven't used honey malt either, so I can't comment on the amount, but its supposed to have an intense sweetness, so you might consider cutting back on the crystal 120 and/or Munich, as these are also sweeter malts. Crystal 120 tends to give this dark raisiny character that might be unpleasant with the honey malt added. Maybe go down to .5 lb C-120, or go half and half with a lower Lovibond Crystal Malt.

Another way to downplay that sweetness is to go a little higher on the base malt percentage. The hop bill I typed above is really suited to a cleaner grist, so you might consider upping the base malt to 9-10 lbs and reducing the munich a tad.

Or just brew it and throw hops at the kettle like its a dart board. Report the results either way!

Up front sweetness is important for a Amber and Honey malt will give you that. Crystal 40L is normally used and I think that taste similar. Honey malt will not give the body of an amber ale. A large percentage of Crystal malt is needed for that.

I'd use Crystal 40L in place of the Honey malt. That's 14% Crystal so you can mash lower and get plenty of body. I don't think I'd use that much 120L.

As for hops I love to use a 20min addition. It gives a bunch of flavor and adds some bitterness. A half once to an once of Centennial would be great there. A healthy flame out addition will give aroma if your not going to dry hop. Cascade is a great Aroma hop.

I get something like this,
http://hopville.com/recipe/197397/american-amber-ale-recipes/ezerhodens-ale