Abita Amber-1st attempt

[Oceantendency]

Well decide to make an Amber Ale since they age quicker and so I can drink on that to let my Abbey's properly age better. So I had found a couple recipes, took what I wanted and tried this one.
6 gallons of Spring water
.6lb- 60*L
.4lb-Dark Munich
.5lb- Vienna
1.5oz Perle (45min)
.25oz Perle and .25oz Mt Hood hopps (15min)
Irish Moss- 1 tablespoon
Yeast Nutrient- 1 tspn
White Labs- CA Ale yeast
3lbs- Pale DME
3lbs- Extra light DME
1tsp of Raw organic honey

Steeped grains at 150-155* for 25 min, removed and strained, added DME, put up the heat and boiled for 90 min. hop additions at 45 min and then 15 min, also added raw organic honey. Chilled to 75*, pitched yeast and yeast nutrient, aerated and transferred to fermenters with blow off tubes. BAM !!
1.06 OG, 8% initial ABV. just a slight kick of spiced hoppiness, not too shabby. Less than 18hrs and it's bubbling like a bat out of hell.

 

[Oceantendency]

So after 5 days, transferred to my secondary, Reading was 1.02. 5 days more in secondary, 1.012-FG (6.52%ABV); taste pretty darn close to Abita Amber. I even had my dad give an Analysis without telling him what I brewed and "hhmm taste pretty close to Abita Amber." primed and put some into bottles and about 3.5 gallons in the keg. Beautiful color and hoppyness is already evening out!

 

[Oceantendency]

And here's the final product

 

[WhizardHat]

Feels good, don't it? For future reference (and feel free to ignore this; it's your beer after all), Abita Amber is a Vienna lager, so something like this might be a more appropriate yeast choice.

 

[Oceantendency]

Feels good, don't it? For future reference (and feel free to ignore this; it's your beer after all), Abita Amber is a Vienna lager, so something like this might be a more appropriate yeast choice.

Yes, but when you have to cheat a bit, due to inability to lager in my No AC house in Vista, CA. I maintained a mere perfect 72* with less than +/- 1* fluctuation, which was perfect for WL CA Ale yeast and it's neutral flavor helped keep the malty balance and the hop spicey notes are subtle and as much Abita as I drank while living/growing up in the New Orleans area and here in SoCal, I'd say CA Ale yeast was perfect.

 

[Brüverine]

Sorry to revive this, but thanks for your awesome documentation of the process. I'm in Texas and will have trouble hitting 72 ambient, but should be doable with an ambient ice water bath.

I'm gonna try this weekend and assume that your 72 degrees is ambient temp and not the temp of the wort at any given time. If not, I'll post back and let everyone know how 72 ambient went