First stab at extract brewing

[yabodie]

Hey all,
I have never brewed beer at home, yet. The brew pot and a kit are in the mail. I would like the input of the sages here to critique the recipes I have come up with and let me know if I am off base. I am attempting to brew an Amber Ale (in the style of Alaskan Amber Ale) and a Northern English Brown Ale (New Castle Brown Style). Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Yabodie

Amber Ale
Target stats:
OG 1.053
FG 1.016
IBU 39
ABV 4.8%
SRM 11

Ingredients:
Extracts:
6lbs Light Malt Extract
1lb Amber Malt Extract

Grains: Steeped for 20 minutes
1lb Crystal 60
1lb German Munich

Hops:
1oz Northern Brewer for 30 minutes
1oz Fuggles for 15 minutes
1oz Fuggles for 5 minutes

Yeast:
English Ale (WLP002)

Method:
Bring 5 gallons of water to 130F and steep grains for 20 minutes. Turn off heat and add extracts and dissolve. Turn on heat to a rolling boil. Boil for a total of 30 minutes adding hops at 30 minutes, 15 minutes and 5 minutes.

Transfer wort to fermenting bucket, top off to 6 gallons, cool to 80F and pitch yeast.

Ferment for 2 weeks. Transfer 5 gallons to bottling bucket and prime with ½ cup honey and bottle.

English Northern Brown Ale
Target stats:
OG 1.047
FG 1.012
IBU 29
ABV 4.5%
SRM 29

Ingredients:
Extracts:
3lbs Light Malt Extract
3lb Amber Malt Extract

Grains: Steeped for 20 minutes
1lb British Amber
1lb British Brown
0.5lbs British Chocolate

Hops:
1oz Northern Brewer for 30 minutes
1oz Fuggles for 10 minutes
1oz Fuggels for 1 minute

Yeast:
Edinburgh Ale (WLP028)

Method:
Bring 5 gallons of water to 130F and steep grains for 20 minutes. Turn off heat and add extracts and dissolve. Turn on heat to a rolling boil. Boil for a total of 30 minutes adding hops at 30 minutes, 10 minutes and 1 minute.

Transfer wort to fermenting bucket, top off to 6 gallons, cool to 80F and pitch yeast.

Ferment for 2 weeks. Transfer 5 gallons to bottling bucket and prime with ½ cup honey and bottle.

 

[Angus]

Yabodie,

Amber Ale:

With only 20 minutes at 130, the grains are not going to provide any fermentables (or very very few), so with 6 gallons planned, you are going to have a starting gravity of 1.041 based on the extracts listed. If you are looking for an SG of 1.053, I would increase the Amber LME to 2.5 lbs.

Your hop additions will only result in an IBU around 25.3. To reach the 39 IBU you are looking for, increase the boil time to 50 minutes and boil the NB for the full time.
Also, why are you only transferring 5 gallons to the bottling bucket? Are you assuming 1 gallon will be taken up by the trub?

Finally, carbonation will be very light with only 1/2 cup of honey. Don't forget that honey has less fermentables than corn sugar and you need to add a little more to get the same carbonation. I would increase this to at least 3/4 cup.

Brown Ale:

Same comments as above, except increase the Light LME to 5 lbs and the IBU can be reached through only an additional 5 minutes boil time.

There are a number of alternate methods of reaching your numbers, so wait to see what other brewers suggest and decide on the plan that sounds best for you.

Angus

 

[yabodie]

Angus,
For both brews, after reading up more on the subject, I want to increase the steep temp to 160F and keep it at 30 minutes. Then sparge with 1/2 gallon (largest manageable volume at the moment) hot wort, 4 times, for a total of 2 gallons hot wort.

With this additional info in mind, would you still up the extracts as you described below?

The volume left over from bottling 2 cases (about 5 gallons) I plan to use as a base for a braggot.

Again thanks for any help!!

 

[Angus]

Yabodie,

It is not so much the temperature than the time that you need to consider. The enzymes in the malted grain need time to work on the starch to convert them to fermentable sugars. Inceasing the temperature will increase this process a little, but will still leave you with a lot of starch that has not been converted. Kind of a waste. I would suggest letting it sit for 1 hour at about 155F, thus getting the most efficiency for the amount of grain. Once you have sparged the grain, take a gravity reading of the wort and determine if you need to add more malt extract.

Angus

 

[Oskaar]

Yabodie,

Angus is on the money. The temp will buy you quicker conversion, but the time is still key in conversion of the starch into simple sugars for a good ferment.

Also for that Amber Ale, you might want to consider some Carapils or CaraMunich for that creamy mouthfeel and nice head retention.

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

 

[HomeBrew]

Amber Ale:

For the Munch malt, it depends on whether you are adding it as a specialty grain(i.e. you just want the flavor characteristics) or as a fermentable.

If you are treating it as a fermentable, it is a bit complicated. The factors that will affect your conversion are temperature, water/ grain ratio, time and pH. The optimum temperature range for the enzymes necessary to convert starches to small, more fermentable sugars (Beta Amylase) is 130F to 150F. You would still get 90% conversion, or better at 130F but the optimum temperature would be 150F. The enzymes necessary for conversion to large, less fermentable sugars (Alpha Amylase) work best in the temperature range of 155F to 167F. So, overall your target temperature range for conversion is 130F to 167F. Mashing at the lower end will give you a wort that is highly fermentable, but lower in body. Mashing at the upper end will provide less fermentable sugars but will provide more body. Keep in mind that both enzymes will still work outside these ranges, just not as well.

The water/ grain ratio is also an important variable. A thicker mash produces more sugars/ volume so your efficiency is lowered. A thinner mash means that there is less enzyme to starch contact per unit of liquid so your conversion is slower. The typical water/grain ratio for mashing is 0.75 to 2 qts/ pound.

The time factor is a bit more hazy. Under optimal conditions (i.e. proper temp and water/ grain ratio) you *should* get full conversion in 15 minutes. However, most home brewers mash for 60 to 90 minutes to ensure full conversion.

As far as pH goes, you really don’t need to sweat this factor too much. Both conversion enzymes work well in a pH range of 5.0 to 6.0 and you can assume that you are within range under most brewing conditions. This factor normally only comes into play if you are doing large-volume fly sparging or complicated step mashes.

With your recipe, it is probably not worth it to treat the Munich malt as a fermentable. Regardless of the temperature that you use, your 1lb. grain/ 5 gallons water is way beyond thin. Even after 120 minutes of mashing, you probably won’t reach full conversion. In addition, you overall sugar contribution from 1lb. is not that high. Personally, I would steep it with your other specialty grains in 2 gallons of water at 150F for 30 minutes. This should give you the full flavor affect. If you still want to do the 5 gallon boil you can top it up after steeping.

I agree with Angus’ comments on the hops. You will need to do a full 60 minute boil to get full affect from your bittering input. Keep in mind that you will need to increase your hop input if you decrease your boil volume since they are interdependent. You may also want to keep in mind that Alaskan Amber is around 18 IBU and the brewer uses Cascade and Saaz. So, if you are trying for more of a clone you may want to lower/ modify your hop input.

I also agree with Oskaar’s recommendation for Cara malts but keep the input low. Since you are doing an extract recipe the added body will be necessary to avoid a lifeless brew but you don't want too much going on with an extract backbone. I would also recommend adding 2oz. of Chocolate Malt. This will give it additional character.

For your DME, you would probably do okay with all light extract or a 3:1 ratio of light to amber. A 1:1 ration of light to amber extract may result in a lot of malt flavor, but I am sure that it will end up well not matter what you choose.

As far as yeast goes, you may want to consider Wyeast German Ale (1007). This is my preferred choice for ambers and I like the results. FWIW, I believe this is the strain that is used by the Alaskan brewery. If you do choose the German Ale yeast, try to ferment in the lower 60’s to mid 50’s to produce more of an alt character (which is what Alaskan Amber actually is).

Good luck and let us know how it turns out. Alaskan Amber is one fine brew.

Peace.

 

[yabodie]

Thanks for the advice and input guys. I will have to mull this info over and play around with the tastybrew.com recipe generator to get the vital stats of an Alaskan Amber, or at least in the ball park.

I am planning to use the grains for color/mouth feel/body not as fermentables. The extracts are intended to be the fermentables for both brews.

Again thanks for the input and I hope to have the recipes ironed out in a bit…


EDIT: Hot damn!! Here is a clone recipe for Alaskan Amber. I might have to brew this on during the winter to let it cold condition, outside...

Any of you folks on the West coast I recommend ya give the actual brew a try. Nice every day beer, then again I might be biased, due to the quantity of pitchers consumed at U of Alaska, Fairbanks...

http://www.byo.com/recipe/628.html

Alaskan Amber Clone
by Scott Russell


Alaskan Amber is the brewery's flagship beer. It's based on an historic recipe; the original version dates to the Gold Rush days of the 1880s, when a thirsty immigrant supposedly fermented his beer in the mine tunnels.

The beer was first brewed commercially by Douglas City Brewing in the late 1800s. It was resurrected almost a century later by Geoff Larson, who in 1986 founded his Alaskan Brewing Company in the coastal town of Juneau. His amber has won a slew of awards since then, including several Great American Beer Festival medals and a first-place finish at the 1996 World Beer Championships.

Alaskan Amber is an altbier, more in the Münster tradition than the Düsseldorfer (in other words, it's sweeter, richer, less bitter and less dry). An easy-drinking "session" beer with lots of malt character, it has just enough German hop profile to keep the maltiness from getting out of hand. It's a nice beer and easy to approximate, if you use the right ingredients and yeast.



Alaskan Amber

(5 gallons, extract with grains)

OG = 1.054 FG = 1.015 Bitterness = 20 IBUs

Ingredients

•1 lb. two-row pale malt
•1/2 lb. medium crystal malt
•1/2 lb. light crystal malt
•5 lbs. Munton's unhopped light dried malt extract (DME)
•4 AAU Cascade hops (1 oz. of 4% alpha acid)
•4 AAU Saaz hops (1 oz. of 4% alpha acid)
•1 tsp. Irish moss (last 15 minutes of the boil)
•German ale yeast slurry (Wyeast 1007, White Labs WLP-029 or equivalent)
•7/8 cups light DME for priming

Step by Step

Crush pale and crystal malts. Steep in 2.5 gallons water at 150° F for 45 minutes. Remove grains, add DME and stir well. Bring to a boil, add Cascade hops. Boil 45 minutes, add Saaz hops, boil additional 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, cool. Add to fermenter along with enough chilled, pre-boiled water to make up 5.25 gallons.

When cooled to 68° F or so, aerate well and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68° F for ten days. Rack to secondary, condition cold (40° F) for fifteen days. Prime with DME. Bottle and condition at a cool cellar temperature (50° F) for two weeks. Serve at 50° F in a straight-sided altbier glass.

All-grain option: Omit the dried malt extract and mash 8 lbs. pale malt plus the crystals (as above) in 12 quarts water at 152° F. Sparge with 15 quarts at 168° F. Proceed as above from boiling and reduce wort volume to 5.25 gallons.