A little rusty on recipes - Amber Ale critique?

[Fells_Pint]

I'm a bit rusty at this so I thought I'd reach out for some input. Use to be an avid homebrewer (4-5 brews a year) until about a year and a half ago when my wife & I moved to FL and I quickly realized there was no dark, cool basement to store my fermentation bucket in!

We finally have our own place, and my project this month is to build myself a fermentation chamber so now I'm also working up my first homebrew recipe since Feb of 2015.

I'm looking at doing an Amber Ale, and wanted some input on how it sounds to other home brewers. Thanks for any advice in advance!

American Amber Ale
All grain - 5 gallon batch
ABV: 5.62% IBU: 33.7 Color: 12.0 SRM
OG: 1.055 FG: 1.012

8 lbs 2-row Pale Malt
1.5 lbs Munich Malt
.5 lbs Crystal 120L
.5 lbs Crystal 60L
.5 oz Galena - First Wort Addition
1 oz Willamette - 15 mins
1 oz Cascade - 2 mins
White Labs California Ale liquid yeast w/ starter

Ferment at 65 degrees for 2 weeks, then bottle.

I feel like this will turn out to be quite the tasty beer, not too hoppy, not too malty.

Any critiques are appreciated!

Cheers,

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Just curious I doubt it matters either way but why I starter with an ale? I usually only make starters for Lagers.

 

[Fells_Pint]

I think I read making a starter was a 'best practices' type of deal when I was first starting out and have always done it since. Creates more yeast babies that are ready to go & hungry when you pour it into the wort, leading to a better overall fermentation.

 

[kh54s10]

Just curious I doubt it matters either way but why I starter with an ale? I usually only make starters for Lagers.

Whenever you have a wort over 1.040 and using liquid yeast you should make a starter. If you pitch a package of yeast it contains about 100 billion yeast cells on the date it is packaged. Immediately the cells start dying off. Most ales would require 200 billion cells to ferment optimally. If you pitched only one pack, it will ferment, but the initial phase would be to reproduce cells to the count required to ferment the wort. If you used enough yeast to start they would not have to reproduce first, giving a more optimum fermentation.