How I messed up my amber ale

[boydster]

Had a buddy over yesterday and we were planning on brewing up an amber ale. It was supposed to have 4oz of C40, 8oz of C60, and 10oz of C80, along with some base malts. I had my LHBS give me 1 lb of each so I would have plenty left over for more brews. As we were adding grains into the hopper, I grabbed the full pound of both the C40 and C60 and dumped them in to be ground before I realized what happened. D'oh! I decided to leave out the C80, figured the problem is at least slightly mitigated... I just have an amber ale that is 20% crystal malt.

Next, I let my buddy keep track of the strike water temp. It's a digital thermometer, so I figured how hard could it be? Well, when we hit the strike temp and mashed in, I took a temperature reading at it was 160! So we stirred and added a little more water, but really didn't have a lot of room in the kettle to add enough water to bring it down more than a couple degrees (BIAB), so mash temp ended up being about 158.

That's my story. Now I am going to brew it again, except the right way. It'll be nice to do a side-by-side comparison.

 

[brew_ny]

the 158 will give it more body, I mash SMaSH brews at 156 - 158

the C80 will give it a nice color and in the end it will be beer but maybe not the one you were going for

all the best

S_M

 

[boydster]

Yeah, that's what I figure. The color looked nice when I transfered it from the kettle into primary, I just wonder how fermentable the wort is going to be. Just have to wait and see. I'll post back in a couple weeks when I bottle it.

 

[brew_ny]

I just wonder how fermentable the wort is going to be.

less with the higher mash temperature, you were using 22 oz of crystal you used 32 oz

which may make it bit sweeter, put the numbers in software and that will give a bit of insight

all the best

S_M

 

[boydster]

So this beer went from 1.050 down to 1.024. I took a hydrometer sample today, after giving the yeast PLENTY of time to try and eat every possible sugar they would consume. Very malty and full bodied. It's actually not bad, all things considered - the hop level is just enough to keep it from being cloying, and I kind of enjoy tasting the malts I used to the degree that I can taste them. I saw someone make use of the term "American Mild" recently on HBT, and I think I might steal that for a descriptor for this beer - higher OG, higher FG, and a tad high on IBUs for the English version, plus I didn't use English hops or a great deal of English malt, so it's by no means a traditional mild, but an Americanized description of that style seems sort of appropriate. Malty, low ABV, subdued but still present hops. Or I'll just call it a messed up amber and leave it at that

Moral of the story, though, is mistakes happen, and they aren't usually the end of the world. This beer wasn't what I was shooting for, and I probably wouldn't make this recipe again on purpose, and I certainly won't be winning any competitions with it. But it's not a bad beverage, and I won't have any problem enjoying it for what it is. This is just from tasting the hydrometer sample, so it will undoubtedly change in the bottle over the next several weeks, but thus far I'm not disappointed. It has been a good learning experience, both in terms of process awareness and in tasting some of the flavor contributions from the malts that I used.

 

[Dovage]

You never know what it might be in a few weeks. I made and IPA once that I felt the same way about before bottling ,4-5 weeks after it was one of my favorite beers I've made.


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