Homebrew Recipe: Matty Mike Homegrown Amber Ale

Matty Mike Homegrown Amber Ale

Brewing Premise: My homegrown centennial and nugget hops needed a place to be showcased. I didn’t have very many, but what little I had, I wanted to be on display in a beer as the aroma feature. Mrs. Hacksaw’s brother had an upcoming birthday and so I crafted an amber ale that would then be a tad bit hoppy (I hoped) with the addition of my hops at the end of the boil. One  a side note – Birthdays are an incredible way to share your homebrew and bring joy to people. Anybody who halfway enjoys craft beer typically loves having a case of beer that had the recipe and label and name crafted specifically for them.

Recipe

Grain Bill

9 lb 2 row

½ lb Crystal 120L

½ lb Vienna

½ lb Victory

¼ lb Roasted barley

½ lb Crystal 20

Hop Schedule

(60) 1 oz Magnum

(15) 1 oz Saaz

(5) ~1 oz homegrown centenniel and nugget

Yeast

1 Packet  - Safeale US-05

Boil Volume – 6.5 Gallons

Fermentor Volume – 5.25 gallons

OG – 1.049

FG – 1.015

ABV – 4.5%

Procedure: Mashed @152 and sparged. Pretty low efficiency due to some poor sparging techniques, but other than that hop schedule was followed and then cooled down. Hops added at end of boil were of course whole leaf hops – they had been dried out for a week and then put in freezer for a week or so for storage.

Fermentation/ Packaging – Fermented in primary for about 2 weeks and then kegged. A large portion of this batch was then bottled from the keg to be given as a birthday present.

Tasting Notes – A solid amber ale that bordered on brown with some of the malt flavors. The hops came through just barely in the nose, but there may not have been enough of them to really make a big impact

Improvement/Tweak Ideas – Brewing this same recipe again and nixing the homegrown hops altogether would still produce a great amber ale. I would probably increase base 2 row a pound or so and hopefully get better efficiency to get the ABV above 5%. Toning down the Crystal 120 to a ¼ lb might lighten the color to more of an amber ale level, but this would be more for appearance. Sometimes people are scared by “dark” beers so if it was a gift and you wanted to present them with a lighter colored amber ale – well now you know what I’d do.