Amarillo Pale Ale- what do you think.

[scanman]

Hi All.
I put this down a couple of days ago and wanted some thoughts on it. Its only the second boil up I have done. Now I have some grain spare I'll do a few more.
Never used amarillo hops before so I thought I would give it a go, as it seems a popular hop. I wanted to use crystal grain for this patch, but the LHBS only has 3kg bags and I'm not that much into grains yet to purchase thta sort of amounts.

1 can Coopers Pale Ale
1.1Kg can of Coopers Light Malt extract
1kg can of Brewiser liquid brew sugar ( I had this as a spare )
250gms of LDME
250gm of six row lager grain
20gm amarillo
20gms amarillo at 40mins
20 gms of amarillo at 20mins
Coopers ale yeast ( I was lazy and forogt to get a decent yeast )

pitched yeast at 26C after ooling down

SG was 1.062

I added the Coopers Pale Ale after flame out.
I thought maybe there is a bit to much fermentables in this batch. Should come out a strong brew. Bubling nicely. It has been going at about 24c.

Any thoughts? I was thinking of maybe dry hopping in the secondary with Hallerteu.

[Kevnlis]

What was the 40min addition for? I see alot of people adding 40 min additions and wonder why. Much better idea to use 60+ or 20 and lower additions IMHO.

I would dry hop with Amarillo... Hallertau would not suit that brew... but again it is IMHO. 30g of Amarillo dry in secondary would be great!

[Chris]

Decent amount of hops. I agree with it being perhaps a little excessive on the fermentables, but it'll still come out fine.

What was with the lager grain? I assume you didn't mash it. You won't really get much out of it except a bit of 'grainy' flavour, that I can't see adding any positives to your beer. You'd be much better off with crystal. 3kg is a good size I guess, as I use crystal in ~80% of my ME beers. Basically, I don't see it going to waste.

[Chris]

Kev, I occassionally add at 40-45mins, but only if I'm using 2 bittering hop varieties. The second tends to be the lower aa% hop, and tends to give a small flavour contribution. Of course 95+% goes to bittering, but it does subtly change the beers flavour profile IMO.

And I agree with the use of amarillo for aroma too.

[Kevnlis]

I have given up asking about steeping Lager Malt. It seems to be the new trend, maybe I should try it

[warra48]

Whatever the case is with the lager malt, there are a lot of fermentables in any event.
I would feel quite comfortable in dry hopping at least 30 gr of Amarillo, if not more, to balance out the malt flavours with hop flavour.
Should be a tasty brew.

[scanman]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Think I will dry hop with some more amarillo. I still have some left over so I'll chuck that in. Any other hop styles that might add for an interesting aroma and flavour with a dry hop in this style of brew?
Suprisingly the fermentation has slowed down considerably after 3 days, a lot more then I expected. I'll be leaving it to brew for at least 10 days before racking anyway.

Chris yes the grain was steeped at 70c. As I said I wanted to use crystal but they only had a large 3kg quantity, and I'm only new at this grain brewing, so buying a 3kg bag wasn't going to happen ( plus the cost at the time as well.)

But its all a learning curve for me, which is why I come here to discuss it with you blokes.

[Chris]

You could also dry hop with cascade or any of the aroma c-hops.

Aside from that, you could hop with some brittish hops like goldings, fuggles etc.

[scanman]

Thanks Chris.
I was thinking of maybe trying something a bit different to dry hop it with, other then the amarillo, which it already has plenty of.
I might try cascade and see how I go.

[Trough Lolly]

I have given up asking about steeping Lager Malt. It seems to be the new trend, maybe I should try it

There is one big difference between steeping and mashing lager malt - water volume.

When we steep crystal malts, we typically don't get too carried away with worrying about the volume of water that you steep the grains in. Generally we steep the grains in several litres of water and then sparge the grains with another litre or so to wash all the sugars out of the grains (this is especially important if you steep the grains in a bag) and use that volume of sweet liquor for our boil. Because we are using crystal malts, that have had the starch to sugar conversion done for us by the maltster so we are only interested in steeping the sugars out of the grains. This also explains why crystal typically costs more than base malt.

When we mash, we need to perform the all important task of allowing the beta and alpha amylase enzymes present in the malted grains to convert the starch in the grain to fermentable sugars. This step must occur before we can then wash the converted sugars out of the grains, via sparging, as we did with the sugars in the steeped crystal. Generally, the temperatures we operate at (around 66C) are the same as is the duration of the steep / mash (30 to 90 minutes) thanks to the highly modified malts that we have at our disposal.

Apart from the starch to sugar conversion process, an important issue is grain to water volumes for the mash. There is a lot of technical discussion on thin versus thick mashes but suffice it to say if you tried to mash grains (such as the lager grain in the above recipe) in, say 2L of water, you would only get partial conversion at best. The reason why is that the beta and alpha amylase enzymes present in the cracked grains will be swimming around in a relatively large volume of water and you are inadvertantly hindering the enzymes from accessing the starches present in the relatively large volume of mash water. An ideal grain to water ratio is 2.3 Litres of water per kilo of grains - essentially you want the mash to be similar in consistency to thick porridge that you'd enjoy on a cold saturday morning! The thick mash allows better conversion and reduces the risk of mash oxidisation. Regarding the above recipe, I'd recommend mashing a kilo of lager grain in 2.3L of water - you will lose some volume as the grains soak up the mash water, but you also need to use at least another litre or two of 65C water to finish off the sugar washing / sparge process. To be honest, 250g of base malt will make very little difference to the final product other than a hint of grain flavour, compared to all the LME that's in the recipe...As Chris suggests, if you have to use such a small quantity of grain, you're better off using Crystal.

Anyway, I hope this sheds some light on the key differences between steeping and mashing grains.

Cheers,
TL

[501]

Hey,
Good Post Trough Lolly.
That sounds like a fair bit of hops for a kit mod.

Something to keep in mind though - is the gravity of the boiling solution,
when calculating hop utilization.
The efficiency goes way down if you are only boiling say 1/2 the total water with all the extract(s)...
meaning that may not be that much
bitterness for the recipe mentioned were it not a full boil.

If it was a full boil please ignore the above.

Talking of Hoppy beers,
I'm Interested in trying one of the 15min only full boil recipes as done
by James Spencer on basicbrewing.com.
Particularly the 15min Amarillo Ale.
He theorizes that the 30% efficiency you get from a 60min hop addition,
may be adjusted by adding nearly twice the hops at 15mins only,
as you're supposed to get ~ 15% @ 15mins. ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5 gallons ~ 19 liters batch size

6 pounds - ~ 2.72kgs LDME
1 pound - ~ 450grams light crystal steeped until 76.67 deg c
2 1/2 ounces ~ 71 grams of Amarillo pellets @15mins left
1 ounce ~ 28grams Amarillo @ 5mins left
.5 ounce ~ 14 grams @ flame out

Dry hopping 1 ounce boom!
US1056 / 05 yeast of course.

Sorry AA% not given for Amarillo.
I believe they are normally like ~10% AA

Thanks James.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
total hops = 4 ounces ~113grams + dry hopping 1 ounce

Sounds like a hopheads rejoice beer, but I am so.
What do you all think ?
These guys have some great recipes imo for people wanting to
move away from kit ++.

I wonder if the gurus here would give me an adjustment on using
Cascade hops only as I know and love the aroma of these.

Cheers

[scanman]

Well after about a month in the bottle I cracked a few of these last night for New Years eve, and I think I am now in the Amarillo lovers club. Certainly not a grassy flavoured hop as I have read on here a couple of times. Certainly is a great tasting hop.
Now I have to try and not drink the whole batch to quick!

Thanks to all those who have commented on amarillo onthis forum, who inspired me to give it a go.

Have a great 2008!

[pixelboy]

Yeah my Amerillo ale never lasts long

Bottled a batch on 8th of December.. got 3 longies left

[scanman]

I salivate at the mouth when ever I think about it.

[pixelboy]

after reading this thread I put another one down..

2.5 kg's LDME
20gms Amerillo 45mins
30gms Amerillo 10mins
15gms Amerillo Flame out
Ross's Craftbrewer "American Ale" Yeast

The smell coming outta the airlock is devine

[Ash]

My current amarillo quaffer....

1.5kg tin of Morgans Extra Pale LME
1kg tin of Morgans Master Blend Lager ME
250gm of light crystal (50ebc or so)
50gm of Choc malt (900ebc or so)

10gm of PoR @ 60min
20gm of Amarillo @ 20min
15gm of Amarillo @ 10min
15gm of Amarillo dry hopped after 3 days
Dry 1056 yeast from craftbrewer - 20l of water (kegging)

Comes out as an easy drinking golden coloured mid strength with a shitload of flavor - I'd use more amarillo but the local HBS supplies hops in 50gm bags

[scanman]

Well you can say goodbye to my Amraillo Ale tonight. Got couple of people coming over, and one, George, is a total hop head. I can see the rest of it going. MIght have ot go stash a few away so I can have some for myself.

Thanks to those who posted those other recipes, might drop another one down next week and use one of those recipes.

[warra48]

MODS,

I don't want to be a nitpicking PITA, but any chance of fixing up the thread title to read Amarillo ?

Much appreciated if it's possible.

[pixelboy]

I don't want to be a nitpicking PITA, but any chance of fixing up the thread title to read Amarillo ?

Good call warra... Will help when ppl search

[scanman]

Sorry. My Typo mistake.