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I’m showing a friend the brewing process and asked him what style of beer he likes. He answered with IPAs and ambers, and since I haven’t made an amber in a while we decided to go with that. This recipe is a combination of our very first beer, the Dirty Lizard Amber Ale, and the only other amber I’ve brewed, the Frolf Amber Ale. Both of these beers, very roughly based on an Alaskan Amber clone, turned out very well and I’m hoping this brew is even better.
Process:
Activated the yeast packet. We heated 1.5 gallons of water to 160 F, then turned off the heat and added my grains to steep for 30 minutes. Rinsed the grains with 1.5 gallon of warm water. Turned the heat back on and brought the wort to a boil as we added the malt extract to dissolve.
Added the bittering Cascade hops when the boil began. With 15 minutes left we added the flavor/aroma Saaz hops and the Irish moss to help clear the beer. After the boil, we strained the beer into the primary bucket. I added 2 gallons of ice and enough cold water to bring the volume up to 5.5 gallons, which brought the temperature to around 85 F. Checked the OG and then pitched the yeast.
3-28-12: Put into primary. OG measured at 1.060 giving a potential strength of 7.9 %ABV.
4-4-12: Racked to secondary carboy. SG measured at 1.020; 5.3 %ABV.
4-18-12: Racked to bottling bucket and measured FG at 1.016, a strength of 5.8 %ABV. Added the priming sugar dissolved in water and bottled in 27 12-ounce bottles and 19 16-ounce bottles.
Tags: amber, dirty lizard, frolf
Nice. I remember that first one, the Dirty Lizard. We just threw basically anything we could in there. I remember going and picking up some random grains at Valley Harvest, even.
Yeah, and it turned out very well. I used the same grains we got from Valley Harvest (oats, rye, and barley) minus the winter wheat berry. It’s got a steady fermentation going now, looking forward to tasting it and seeing how it turns out.