My First Extract Brew - advice please.

[Alex NG]

Fermentable - Colour - Grams - Ratio
Dried Malt Extract Pale - 10 EBC - 1300 grams - 95.8%
Amber Malt - 60 EBC - 100 grams - 4.2%

Hop Variety - Alpha - Time - grams - EBU Ratio
Columbus (Tomahawk) - Whole - 16 % - 60 mins - 8 grams - 59.5%
Amarillo - Whole - 9.5 % - 20 mins - 10 grams - 27.2%
Amarillo - Whole - 9.5 % - 5 mins - 15 grams - 13.3%
Amarillo - Whole - 9.5 % - 0 mins - 10 grams - 0%

(And I might dry-hop with Amarillo too?)

Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Bitterness: 45. EBU
Colour: 15 EBC

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Any thoughts / criticism / advice?

Thanks

[Spikesdad]

looks ok to me Good luck

[Ingieuk]

Sounds tasty! In fact I wouldn't mind a pint of something similar at the minute!
Note to self: have a beer conditioning for when you run out of current tipple

[Halite]

Three small suggestions. Would probably up the fermentables a bit as that ABV would be very low for this style of beer, also I would be careful of dry hopping with more amarillo, I really like this hop but you already have quite a bit of it in there and dry hopping with more amarillo might be overkill. lastly I would move your 20 min hop to 15 minutes.

Looks like a really good beer though, good luck.

[Alex NG]

Three small suggestions. Would probably up the fermentables a bit as that ABV would be very low for this style of beer, also I would be careful of dry hopping with more amarillo, I really like this hop but you already have quite a bit of it in there and dry hopping with more amarillo might be overkill. lastly I would move your 20 min hop to 15 minutes.

Looks like a really good beer though, good luck.

Thanks!

I'll probably increase the fermentables to get an ABV of nearer 4.5%.... I wanted to brew a beer that wasn't too powerful, but I think I have been a little bit too cautious with that initial recipe.

And I'll take heed of your hop advice too, cheers.

[Befuddler]

I'm pretty sure amber malt needs to be mashed.. and it has no diastatic power so it needs to be mashed with a base malt.

[Alex NG]

I'm pretty sure amber malt needs to be mashed.. and it has no diastatic power so it needs to be mashed with a base malt.

Oh. I thought I'd seen amber malt used in other extract recipes like this. I'll figure out an alternative recipe using crystal malt or something instead.

Thanks for posting though, I was due to buy my ingredients tomorrow!

[Befuddler]

I think you can still steep it for flavour and colour, but it won't contribute any fermentable sugar unless it's mashed.

I'm not 100% on this so you might want to wait for a couple more replies before you take my word as gospel.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Amber Malt is classed as a secondary malt not a steep-able malt. Steeping it might extract a little bit of flavour but I can't see it being worth the effort of trying.

[Alex NG]

Okay, cheers for the info.

Back to the Beer Engine for me, then.