Sunday, June 22, 2008

Eat My Ass Amber

I brewed 5 gallons of an American Style Amber. The main reason for 5 gallons instead of 10 is to use the Hopshot I won from Northern Brewer. Which is an alternative hop product for the bittering addition of hops. It smelled really potent and the taste test was insane!! Since I have 2 IPAs brewed, I went for a lighter more simple beer. This will let the hops come thru as well.

The brew day went really well, 5 gallons AG in 5 1/2 hours is pretty good to me! Here is the recipe, this may take a while to read, it's a massive recipe...

9 lbs 2-row
1 lbs Dingemans Caravienne

1 hopshot
1 oz of Argentina Cascade

2 packets US-05 dry yeast.

So I used my large mash tun as my HLT and I brought out the bucket lauter tun. I mashed in a 20 qt stock pot and transferred into the lauter tun.














The hops and the refractometer sneaking in the pic.














Transferring into the fermenter. I am using a little do-dad I forgot I had, it fans the wort out to aerate it. This also was the first time I got to use the brew hauler! It works fantastic too!














After some more aerating, right before pitching yeast.














The next morning I have active fermentation. I had a OG of 1.055 which was a great 80% efficiency, that makes me happy! Yay!

Side oddness, I don't know what the hell this is, but it may taste likes tapioca. This was taken from the boil after it was cooled. We shall see what happens here...

3 comments:

richt said...

You won the hopshot? You suck man. Jealous. The recipe looks good - I've got an amber kegged right now. It had been a really long time since I've had an amber but now that I brewed it I'm super glad I did, a great beer style. Have you used Argentina Cascade before? I just picked up a few ounces and really wanted to try them in the blonde I just brewed, but I got the itch and had to brew with what I had.

Matt Andrews said...

Yup, I won the hopshot! I am stoked about it! I took the cap off and stuck my nose down there and you won't have any problems telling that it's hops!! haha! Then of course I had to taste it, wowie zowie!!!! It's hops alright!!!

I have not brewed an amber, but I wanted something light for the hopshot and for the ease of brewing. This brew was a much better brew day than before. It made me realize that I need to get a few more things in order for my ten gallon system.

I have not used the Argentina Cascade, I tried Brian's pale ale that he used and it was really nice! Very smooth and spicy. The thing that bothered me, is the LHBS here gave me these when I asked for regular old cascade hops. I did some reading and they are not close hops at all. So, they will be fine, I liked the aroma they gave, but I wish he would have offered a true replacement, not just something that has the same name. Oh well though, I'm still going to drink the beer!!!!! haha!!!

Bri said...

The Argentina Cascade is definately different. I used it because std cascade wasn't available, although i was warned that it wasn't nearly the same. I think it is a more earthy aroma, almost nutty. Those crazy Argentines should have just named it something else.

I want to give your rye ipe a go. I'm ready for a serious hop beer.