Kieran the Irish Immigrant American Amber Ale

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Coastarine

We get it, you hate BMC.
HBT Supporter
Joined
Apr 21, 2008
Messages
2,515
Reaction score
33
Location
New Bern
Recipe Type
Extract
Yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale
Batch Size (Gallons)
5
Original Gravity
1.059
Final Gravity
1.014
Boiling Time (Minutes)
60
IBU
32
Color
14 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
7
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
14
Additional Fermentation
3 wks @ 70 in bottle
The best way to buy this recipe if you're doing extract is to buy the brewer's best red ale kit plus 2lbs Light DME, 1oz Cascade, and the yeast. You can use the nottingham dry yeast that comes with the kit, or you can use wyeast 1056 and save the dry for another brew.

1lb Crystal 60L
1oz Black Patent

^Steep at 160 for 20 mins

4 lbs Light DME
3.3 lbs Pale LME

1oz Cascade (5.5%) for 60 min
1oz Willamette (4.8%) for 30 min
1oz Willamette (4.8%) for 5 min

edit: I switched to AG since I came up with this, so for AG brewers just sub the appropriate amount of 2-row instead of extract according to your efficiency to get the OG right.

Kieran white text.jpg
 
Im gonna try this tomorrow....let you know how it comes out!

Question My beersmith profile with this recipe says my OG will be 1.065 and my IBU will be 29.1. Any ideas?
 
The IBU I can understand since there are 3 different formulas and we probably are using different ones. I'm not sure what the deal is with your gravity, as long as you have the volume set to 5 gallons. Just use a can of LME and two lbs dry. Whatever it comes out is what it is :D
 
Well I brewed this today. Hit my SG at 1.062 target was 1.063 I blame the 1 point on a massive boil over I had. Yeah never seen anything like it, shot out of the pot with so much force none touched the pot. The stove? well I collected about a gallon out of it. So this might not come out perfect and it looks to be a tad dark, we will see when it is in a glass. If it attenuates as it should this beer will be on the stronger side.

Looking forward to it.
 
Since I never followed up...

I hit both the OG and FG right on the money.

This is a good beer. It's got a very strong taste and meets the description/expectations of the beer fantastically. As such, I would not describe it as a "thirst-quenching" type of brew.

My big issue was that I have almost no head retention. I'm assuming this is something I did wrong on my side. Bottle residue maybe? I think I forgot the Irish Moss? I'm not sure.
 
Thanks for the update! I consider this a moderately thirst quenching beer, but I might have a different scale than you. My winter brown, at 8.3% and 40some IBU isn't refreshing, but I'd put this one about even with an ESB or dry stout for the refreshment value. Definitely not a lawnmower beer, but it isn't a dessert beer either.

I have a batch that's 11 days into the primary and I took a gravity reading last night. It was the first time I ever used servomyces and it attenuated another 2 points down to 1.012. I think it will be great.

Since I have my keezer menu now, and I don't label the beers by their name anymore, but by the style (most of my friends need the little bit of beer knowledge). This one is going up as "East Coast Amber".
 
Since I stopped using the "personification" labeling system, this one has been renamed "East Coast Amber". I'm serving it at an event next friday called "Hot Glass, Cold Brew" where our homebrewing club gets together with a glassblowing studio for a public demo and free beer. That sounds like a damn good time to me; glassblowing is a real trip to watch, and I'm sure there will be plenty of people with preconceived notions of what homebrew is...and that's when their mind will really get blown.
 
Wow! My keg was the first keg out of 14 that was kicked, and it kicked after 2.5 hours! After about 4.5 hours a few other kegs started to get kicked. This was the most popular beer of the evening, and I couldn't be happier. I had a few other beers in growlers (dopple o-fest, citrus kolsch, ESB) and of course those were gone fast, and by the end people were just asking if I had any of my beers left. When I told them no, they just kinda scratched their head looking at the remaining beers. It felt great, but I better brew another amber now! I hadn't even pulled two pints from that keg.
 
Just opened my first bottle of this and it was excellent. My housemate, who sticks to belgians and crappy lagers (he grew up in belgium and his preference varies depending on his wallet) stated "I would buy that." Since he usually is pretty narrow, that sums up the general reaction to this beer. Great brew!
 
So I went to make my second batch of this today. Everything was fine until I tested my OG: 1.082. I realized I used 4lbs of Pale LME by accident instead of 3.3. It shouldn't affect my hop efficiency much, as I did a late malt addition of about 50%.

Would someone more experienced than me give a prediction how this will turn out? Is it going to be nasty? Should I go add some more water? Will the ABV get too high for the yeast?
 
Call it a double amber. The yeast can handle that just fine. Do yourself one favor though and try to keep the fermentation temps 66-70. Much warmer than that and it may taste strongly of alcohol, which will fade with age, but better to avoid it in the first place.

Edit: Hold on...with 4 lbs DME and 4lbs LME in a 5 gallon batch I calculate an expected OG of 1.064. Your wort probably wasn't mixed thoroughly. Expect ~6.2%.
 
Your wort probably wasn't mixed thoroughly. Expect ~6.2%.

Yeah, that's probably it. I took the sample from my filtering/bottling bucket before I transferred it to my Carboy (where I shook the hell out of it to oxygenate and mix). Fermentation seems slower than I would have expected, but my laundry room is a little chillier than the rest of the house, so I'll look at that as a good thing.
 
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