Wedding beer

[Jbpiv]

Alright guys, looking to take on the task of making a few brews for a wedding in July for my good friend. We were discussing the first of two beers we want to make, and this is what we are looking for, for this brew.

Looking for an American Amber Ale (something everyone can enjoy, our goal is to turn people onto craft brews if possible).

His fiance and him are avid campers, so the idea of a piney, smokey, mapley beer is the goal.

I dont know how to upload my beer smith recipe how everyone else does (help there too!) but here is a screen shot of what i have now... Help me tweak this! We plan on doing a small scale trial run soon, but would like to be at a good point.

Let me know what you think.

I was thinking using maple syrup to carbonate with. The other idea we were tossing around was the use of pine needles or spruce tips. Our only worry is, we dont want the pine side to over power the other flavors we are looking for. Basically we want a well balanced beer that is enjoyable by all beer drinkers. I am open to criticism and changes, it will only make it better!

 

[itsratso]

a wedding beer? make it really really bitter. (i keed i keed). anyhoo, i'm new at this but i would go with piney hops for that flavor rather then something like pine needles. and having just brewed a porter with bourbon soaked oak chips, they will give you a mellow smoked flavor and aroma without going way smoked overboard. maple syrup could just be added to taste before bottling/kegging.

 

[BoShimTang]

Seems like BYO mag published some Scandinavian recipes that might suit your needs. It would have been within the last two years... Wish I could be more specific but I gave them all away. You may be able to find them online or maybe this will ring some bells here on the forum.

Seems like they talked about using smoked malts and juniper branches and berries. The maple aspect would be something you would have to figure out separately.

The concept sounds delicious... Let us know how your final recipe turns out!

 

[Jbpiv]

Seems like BYO mag published some Scandinavian recipes that might suit your needs. It would have been within the last two years... Wish I could be more specific but I gave them all away. You may be able to find them online or maybe this will ring some bells here on the forum.

Seems like they talked about using smoked malts and juniper branches and berries. The maple aspect would be something you would have to figure out separately.

The concept sounds delicious... Let us know how your final recipe turns out!

Hmmm I'll hafta to do some digging on that article.

 

[dpatrickv]

That seems like a ton of smoked malt to me.

 

[BGBC]

Looking for an American Amber Ale (something everyone can enjoy, our goal is to turn people onto craft brews if possible).

His fiance and him are avid campers, so the idea of a piney, smokey, mapley beer is the goal.

These two statements seem contradictory, to me at least. If you really want this to be the beer for potential non-craft beer lovers, I'd keep it more basic. Simple amber, not too bitter, maybe more on the malty side.

Or maybe it's just because I hate smoked malt...

 

[motorneuron]

Shooting from the hip here, and I don't have precise details because I'm at work, but here goes:

*maple is an extremely delicate flavor, and just using syrup for carbonation won't give you much of anything. I recommend using a small quantity of fenugreek in the late boil--Randy Mosher suggests this in Radical Brewing--because it has a flavor akin to maple (and in fact is used as a maple flavoring agent).

*for smoke, err on the side of too little. You can always tweak later by adding liquid smoke. But it can become overpowering, so you want to be careful. I'd say 5-10% smoked malt is a decent target to start. Smoked malts can be very different in their potency. Another thought: you could use a small amount of lapsong souchong tea, which is smoked over pine branches, to add some smoke.

*for pine flavor, Gordon Strong has some great advice in Brewing Better Beer about how to use spruce tips. The gist is that you add them at the beginning, not the end, of the boil. I don't know about quantities, but that book will have advice. I would definitely recommend using an actual evergreen product here rather than "piney" hops, which would be harder to control and could potentially clash with other flavors.

*Make sure that your grain bill is pretty straightforward. Get the color right, but let the spice shine here. I'd guess something like 85% 2-row, 8% Munich or biscuit, 5% crystal 60, and up to 2% debittered black or roasted barley to get a deep amber color.

*Similarly, use a clean American yeast and ferment it cool. A lager could work too.

All told, I think this is a cool project. I would recommend trying a pilot 1-gallon batch first--there are so many elements to balance that you may want to tweak it, and you seem to have plenty of time if it's in July. Good luck!

 

[Jbpiv]

Shooting from the hip here, and I don't have precise details because I'm at work, but here goes:

*maple is an extremely delicate flavor, and just using syrup for carbonation won't give you much of anything. I recommend using a small quantity of fenugreek in the late boil--Randy Mosher suggests this in Radical Brewing--because it has a flavor akin to maple (and in fact is used as a maple flavoring agent).

*for smoke, err on the side of too little. You can always tweak later by adding liquid smoke. But it can become overpowering, so you want to be careful. I'd say 5-10% smoked malt is a decent target to start. Smoked malts can be very different in their potency. Another thought: you could use a small amount of lapsong souchong tea, which is smoked over pine branches, to add some smoke.

*for pine flavor, Gordon Strong has some great advice in Brewing Better Beer about how to use spruce tips. The gist is that you add them at the beginning, not the end, of the boil. I don't know about quantities, but that book will have advice. I would definitely recommend using an actual evergreen product here rather than "piney" hops, which would be harder to control and could potentially clash with other flavors.

*Make sure that your grain bill is pretty straightforward. Get the color right, but let the spice shine here. I'd guess something like 85% 2-row, 8% Munich or biscuit, 5% crystal 60, and up to 2% debittered black or roasted barley to get a deep amber color.

*Similarly, use a clean American yeast and ferment it cool. A lager could work too.

All told, I think this is a cool project. I would recommend trying a pilot 1-gallon batch first--there are so many elements to balance that you may want to tweak it, and you seem to have plenty of time if it's in July. Good luck!

this post is exactly why i put this on here, so much that i would've never thought of nor would have found in my research alone. i'll be looking into all of this, and like the thought on using actual pine over the hops. And i definitely will be doing small 1 gallon batches to nail this down.

 

[motorneuron]

Haha, well, talk is cheap--but I hope those things give you a starting point at least. Let us know how it goes. It sounds pretty interesting.

 

[TravisT]

I brewed 15 gallon of amber for my wedding. I put it in a sankie keg, carbed it up and just used a regular hand/keg pump to serve. You can disassemble and reassemble commercial sankie kegs. I also had a keg of bud light just for the bmc drinkers, its cheap and some people will not drink anything else.