El Dorado Amber Ale

Now having an all-grain amber ale, IPA, and porter under my belt, I decided to try another all-grain amber ale. I based this recipe off of Amarillo Amber Ale from BYO magazine. I made some small substitutions for what was available at my local (and awesome) homebrew store, primarily in switching up the Weyermann malts with approximate equivalents. I also ended up using El Dorado and Nugget for the hops (they had just run out of Amarillo!). As I designed this recipe in BeerSmith, I was super excited to try a whole bunch of new grains and hops.; this sort of beer geekery is why I got into homebrewing! And even better, this was my most successful all-grain brewing session. I scored 75% efficiency, my best to date.

El Dorado Amber Ale

• 9.3 lbs. Best Malz Pilsen malt
• 0.25 lbs. aromatic malt
• 0.25 lbs. 40° crystal malt
• 0.25 lbs. carastan malt
• 0.25 lbs. caravienne malt
• 0.1875 lbs. chocolate malt
• 1 tbs. 5.2 pH stabilizer
• 0.5 oz. Nugget hops pellets (14.4% alpha acid) - 30 minutes boil
• 0.5 oz. El Dorado hops pellets (15% alpha acid) - 10 minutes boil
• 0.5 oz. El Dorado hops pellets (15% alpha acid) - 5 minutes boil
• 0.5 oz. El Dorado hops pellets (15% alpha acid) - 14 days dry hop
• 1/2 tsp. Irish moss
• 1 pkg. SafAle English Ale Yeast S04

Steps

• Add 1 tbs. of 5.2 pH stabilizer to grist
• Add 13.5 quarts of water at 170° to grist in mash tun, for target temperature of 152°. The temperature stabilized here within 5 minutes, and only dropped 1 degree over the entire 60 minutes of mashing.
• Mash for 60 minutes, add 1 gallon of water at 170°. I collected 3.5 gallons of runnings.
• Next, I added 3.1 gallons of water at 170°. The temperature settled at 160°. I let the mash tun sit for 10 minutes, and then I collected 3.4 gallons of runnings. This totaled 6.9 gallons of wort collected; with a gravity of 1.042, I calculate 75% efficiency for my mash.
• Because I had collected such a volume of wort, I elected to boil for a total of 90 minutes. Once I had the wort to a boil, it boiled for 60 minutes before the first hop addition.
• At 60 minutes, I added 0.5 oz. Nugget hops pellets.
• At 75 minutes, I added the Irish moss.
• At 80 minutes, I added 0.5 oz. of El Dorado hops pellets.
• At 85 minutes, I added 0.5 oz. of El Dorado hops pellets.
• At 90 minutes, I removed the pot from the heat, and began cooling it with my wort chiller.
• It took around 30 minutes to cool the wort to 75°. From here, I transferred the wort to my primary fermenter.
• I proofed the yeast in 1 cup of 85° degree water, and pitched it. The space where I am fermenting is about 65° ambient temperature--perfect for this yeast strain.
• I collected 5 gallons of wort, with a starting gravity of 1.053 (at 60°). Once I had adjusted the mash efficiency in BeerSmith for my system, I was exactly on the nose for o.g. This will potentially yield ~5.2% abv.