Armadillo Ale

View attachment 546701

I am by no means a lifelong brewer or even a great brewer but I am a bit excited about this one. An easy drinking 4.6% Ale. Just enough hop bitterness and flavor for what I was aiming for. This was loosely based on EdWort's Haus Pale Ale as I could not get all of the same ingredients locally for my Brew Day.

6 lbs Pale Ale Malt
2 lbs Munich Malt
1 lb Carapils
1 oz Amarillo at 60 min
1 Whirlfloc at 10 min
2 oz Amarillo at whirlpool for 30 minutes
1 pack of Safale English Ale #S-04

Mashed at 152 for 2 hours(I had to put the kids to bed so it was a bit longer than I normally would do and I don't know enough to know if it made a difference)

Fermented at 65F for 7 days and then dropped temp to 38F for 4 days

I know enough to realize that I need to do it again to fine tune it but overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

There was a thread floating around here on HBT some time back asking if you only had one hop to use, what would it be. Amarillo came up several times and I concur with that sentiment. That may be the one I'd pick too.

Local micro brewery does a single hop series and keeps them rotating. My favorite so far in the series was the Amarillo single hop. His recipe (I think) may be similar to yours, and the malt bill is simple but looks like an easy drinker. Nice job!

BTW...you said you may "fine tune" the beer. What changes do you think you'd make?

 

I want to try some different hops just so I can figure out the differences each hop addition brings to the table.

I was pleased with the flavor of this one and definitely excited that I had made my clearest beer yet.

 

Another variation that can make a big difference is your yeast selection. Safale US-05 may be a good one to try keeping all things the same (except the yeast) so you can see the impact that one single change makes. This strain is a dry version of WLP001 or Wyeast 1056

Agreed changing around the hops is another area worthy of experimentation. This is why I'll always sample my local brewery's single hop series as this gives me a real taste of what that particular hop is all about. Southern Cross was a hop in a beer before the Amarillo, and I decided Southern Cross was not my cup of tea. This is a good way to learn the hop before wasting an entire batch.

 

Recently picked up some Amarillo to play with as well. I've been using a clone recipe for Founder's All Day IPA which suggests Centennial, Amarillo, and Cascade.
First try with that recipe, I couldn't get Amarillo, so I substituted Chinook. It turned out very well, but want to see what Amarillo brings to the recipe.
As far as other suggestions for your current recipe, I'd say play with the the yeast as well. US05, Notty, Mangrove Jack's West Coast, or 34/70 would all work I believe.

 

My original intent was to use US-05 but my local shop was out so I went for the English Ale Yeast. I want to try it with US-05 to see if I notice a difference

 

Good idea. I often like to test myself with a 3 way taste test, for example:

Make a beer like yours with S04. Next beer I'll keep it the same except use US-05. My wife will put two samples of the same beer in two cups, then one sample of the other beer in a cup. She marks them A B C and asks me to pick the odd beer out. Some tests like this are easy, some not. But it gives you a real good heads up test.