Flying Horses - American Amber Ale - BrewZilla Brew Day

Here's the run down from our latest brew day - our Flying Horses American Amber Ale. You can check out the link to the recipe at the bottom of this page.

We started out gathering our water. 23L in the BrewZilla and 12L in the Digiboil for sparging

Next, we added our brewing salts - calcium chloride, magnesium sulphate and calcium sulphate to reach our target water profile.

Next step was to acidify both the mash and sparge water using phosphoric acid. Interestingly, we acidifed our sparge water the night before we actually brewed, and noticed the pH had risen back a couple of tenths during that time, so we're going to leave our acidification until we're about to brew in the future.

Sparge water pH at 5.33 - right in the desired 5.2 - 5.6 range

Our pre-milled grains with a separate smaller bag of 100g light chocolate malt. We can only order in 100g increments, and we only need 50g of the light chocolate malt so we weigh it out separately

An uneventful mash in, with a little bit of extra water (recipe called for 22.2L, we used 23L)

If you haven't got one of these mash stirring paddles you can attach to your drill, do yourself a favour and get one. We've used ours for quite a few brews now and love how quick and efficient it makes stirring the grain through and importantly breaking up those clumps and dough balls to ensure maximum efficiency!

After mashing in we left the grain bed to settle for 10 minutes before taking our first pH reading. 5.44 was a bit higher than the expected 5.3, so we added another 0.5mL (or 1.0mL) of phosphoric acid to the mash to try and get it a little lower.

We took another reading approx 10 minutes later which showed a slightly reduced 5.4 pH now. Obviously with all the grains the buffering capacity of the mash is higher so more acid is required to drop the pH. We're always worried about overshooting and getting the pH too low so we err on the side of caution here.

We then began recirculating the mash using the built in BrewZilla pump and sergeant sparge head attachment

Mash temperature a little lower than the 67°C we were aiming for.

Yet another pH reading and we're a bit lower again, now in the 5.3x range so we're happy with this now

Managed to eventually hit our target mash temperature of 67°C - slightly higher than the "standard" 65°C to try and get a slightly less fermentable wort for a slightly higher FG for a little more residual sweetness which is what is expected in a style like amber ale.

Some more recirculation photos and you can see the wort is starting to clear up a little now

After the 60 minute mash we lifted the grain basket and began sparging.

Towards the end of the mash the recirculation really began to slow down, and this also meant the sparge flow was quite slow. Plenty of stirring was required to coax the sparge water down through the grain bed but we got there eventually

We hit our pre-boil volume of 26.5L so now time to wait for the boil to begin

Pre-boil gravity reading and it's bang on expected at 1.048

Pre-boil pH reading and we're at 5.36 - tiny bit lower than our last reading. Interesting that the pH variation is not as drastic as we had been lead to believe through the mash process

Whilst waiting for the BrewZilla to reach a boil, we began measuring out our hop additions. First one, 12g of CTZ for our main 30 minute bittering addition

Boil time and plenty of foam and hot break on top

First hop addition of CTZ being added

Rolling boil underway, but look at the temperature of our thermometer probe. The probe was right in the middle of the kettle but was only reading 96°C!

As far as we're aware there isn't an option to calibrate these, and last time we used it, it was reading perfectly fine (ie. showing 100°C during the boil). Anyway, after disconnecting and reconnecting the probe, it started reading again correctly. Weird, but hopefully this doesn't mean our mash temperature was off by a few degrees!?

Moving on, it was time to weigh out the hops for the rest of our boil additions

Yeast nutrient also weighed out to be added with 10 minutes left in the boil

Plus a half whirlfloc tablet to be added at the same time as the yeast nutrient

Temperature probe now showing 100°C during the boil after disconnect and reconnecting the temperature probe from the main unit.

Now weighing out our whirlpool hop additions for a 10 minute whirlpool at 80°C at the conclusion of the 30 minute boil

Whirlpool temperature started a bit higher than desired but eventually fell pretty close to the target 80°C

Post-boil gravity and we're a couple of points higher than expected, but also a bit dubious of this as this number doesn't really correlate based on the pre-boil gravity. We'll take a trusty floating hydrometer reading to double check this.

Wort settling nicely after the whirlpool

Wort chilled as much as possible with town water, so time to transfer to our Apollo Titan fermenter

Floating hydrometer reading shows actual original gravity of around 1.052 - more in line with what was expected and pretty much what was expected from the recipe.

After pitching the single packet of US-05 yeast, it took at least 24 hours for things to get underway, but once they did it chewed through the wort pretty fast.

After approximately 1 week we dropped the temperature to around 12°C for a soft crash prior to dry hopping

Related Articles

 

Flying Horses - American Amber Ale - All Grain Recipe

Foreword

Although it's the end of winter and spring just sprung, we're definitely in the mood for something hoppy and malty whilst the nights are still quite cool, so an amber ale seems to be in order. Our first attempt at an amber ale, dubbed Headspace, turned out great, so our next iteration of an American Amber Ale is quite similar but with a slightly adjusted grain bill and hop schedule, since we like to continuously change things up and keep it interesting.

This one was dubbed "Flying Horses", simply because when messing around with some AI generation for names and images for this beer, ChatGPT threw out the image you can see above. It was generated with minimal AI prompts and makes absolutely no sense, but we're homebrewing so it doesn't need to, and we felt it was just too good to pass up, so "Flying Horses" it is!

Vitals

Batch Volume: 23L 
Boil Time: 30 minutes
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%

Original Gravity: 1.051
Final Gravity: 1.010
IBU (Tinseth): 35
BU/GU: 0.70
Colour: 24 EBC
Expected ABV: 5.4%

Mash

Mash In: 67°C - 60 minutes
Mash Out: 75°C - 10 minutes

Fermentables

4.2kg - Gladfield American Ale Malt
0.4kg - Gladfield Medium Crystal Malt
0.4kg - Gladfield Munich Malt
0.1kg - Gladfield Biscuit Malt
0.05kg - Gladfield Light Chocolate Malt

Hops

30 mins - CTZ - 12g - 15 IBU
10 mins - Cascade - 20g - 5 IBU
10 mins - Chinook - 12g - 7 IBU

Hopstand/Whirlpool 10 mins @ 85°C - Cascade - 30g - 2 IBU
Hopstand/Whirlpool 10 mins @ 85°C - Chinook - 19g - 3 IBU
Hopstand/Whirlpool 10 mins @ 85°C - CTZ - 16g - 3 IBU

Dry Hop - Cascade - 30g - 3 Days
Dry Hop - Chinook - 30g - 3 Days
Dry Hop - CTZ - 15g - 3 Days

Yeast

Fermentis Safale US-05 - 1 packet (dry)

Fermentation

20°C - 12 days

Carbonation

2.4 CO2-vol

Water Profile 

"Balanced" water profile

Ca2+ (Calcium): 34
Mg2+ (Magnesium): 10
Na+ (Sodium): 29
Cl- (Chloride): 70
SO42- (Sulfate): 70
HCO3- (Bicarbonate): 37

Flying Horses American Amber Ale

Want to see how it went? Check out the link to the Brew Day post below.

Related Articles

High Sulfate Levels in Beer - How Much is Too Much? (feat. Adam Makes Beer)

In a previous blog post, we shared our anecdotal experience with excessive sulfate levels in beer, particularly in hop forward styles like IPA's. You view the article here, but in summary, we found that a number of our beers, all of which featured loads of hops added late in the boil and at dry hop, were completely lacking in hop aroma and flavour. On top of this, they had a harsh, astringent bitterness that overpowered everything else, and a strong malty sweetness. In short, these beers just weren't any good, and we ended up dumping a couple of them.

Although many of these symptoms can be attributed to oxidation, we're confident in our cold side processes, so we're ruling this out as a cause. After some further reflection on what may be the cause here, we became suspicions of the Brewfather "Hoppy" water profile, that calls for a relatively high level of sulfate - at 275ppm.

We're quite perplexed at why this Brewfather hoppy water profile even exists - as the name is totally misleading. You'd expect a "hoppy" profile to accentuate hop character, not mute it. We wanted to get a second opinion on this from someone who knows far more about brewing beer than we do, so we reached out to Adam Mills from Adam Makes Beer on YouTube who featured our question on his latest Q&A livestream.

Our full email to Adam was a bit longer than this, so we'll just include the question at hand here, though he does read our full email out in his YouTube video which is included further below.

Excessive sulfate levels and their impact on hop aroma/flavour and bitterness

I use Brewfather for recipe design/creation as well as water adjustments. I've attempted a number of hop forward batches like West Coast IPA and simple pale ales that have used Brewfather's "hoppy" water profile which contains 110ppm calcium, 50ppm chloride, 275ppm sulfate. These beers have all had a significantly reduced hop flavour and aroma, and in the case of the West Coast IPA's, I'd say all hop aroma (and flavour) was stripped out, leaving an aggressively bitter beer with a cloying (malt) sweetness that I ended up dumping. I'm confident in my cold-side processes (using CO2 pressure transfers) and am certain it's not oxidation, and further testing has lead me to believe the somewhat high sulfate level (and sulfate to chloride ratio) may be to blame here. Do you have any thoughts/experience on this? There are a number of recipes out there that suggest elevated levels of sulfate - 275ppm or even over 300 in some cases - am I missing something here? What levels of sulfate (and chloride) do you typically use in hop-forward styles like IPA?

After changing things up and using a water profile with 75ppm calcium, 50ppm chloride and 150ppm I've had a wildly different outcome, with awesome hop flavour, even when using far less hops than I have in my previous IPA's with the "hoppy" water profile.

Straight off the bat, Adam suggests the Brewfather hoppy water profile is "crazy", and those sorts of levels just aren't needed. He goes on to recommend sulfate levels of around 125-150ppm are adequate, along with anywhere between 50-100ppm of calcium.

Adam also explains how he has done aggressively bitter IPA's, leaning exclusively on chloride, and getting all the calcium inclusions from calcium chloride only. We know that chloride heavy water profiles, and more specifically a chloride to sulfate ratio that is high in favour of chloride is popular for hazy beer styles like NEIPA or Hazy IPA, but it's not something we've really heard done for bitter styles like "regular" IPA's. Perhaps something for us to consider testing out in the future.

Ultimately, Adam suggests the sulfate levels in this profile are "too much" and of course, making sure that we understand our source/base water prior to adjusting it - something we failed to mention we are already doing in our message to him, but it makes sense that you need to know what the mineral content of your brewing source water is before making any adjustments in order to be able to do so with any level of accuracy.

Adam also quotes John H Palmer, the unofficial Godfather of homebrewing and author of  "How to Brew", that water chemistry is like the seasoning, or salt and pepper in cooking. "You can make a dish amazing with it, or you can ruin it". We've certainly experienced both sides of the coin here, but it's certainly a reminder to err on the side of caution and use less minerals in the water - as ultimately they should help accentuate an already good beer to make it great.

Wrapping up, Adam does agree that sulfate levels this high could potentially be stripping out hop character from the beer, and to dial it back, emphasizing that the sulfate level in the Brewfather hoppy water profile is "really really high".

It was certainly great to have our full email to Adam read out and answered on his live Q&A, so a big thankyou to Adam for taking the time to give such a thorough and detailed answer to our question. We'll certainly be reaching out to him again next time we have a brewing related question that we struggle to find an answer to ourselves.

You can check out the full Q&A video here or watch it using the embedded video below. Adam begins reading our email at 1:20:29.

Related Articles