Happy 4th of July! 

What a great time to celebrate with friends and family over some homebrew! 

In our lineup, we have three "house" recipe beers on tap that don't change often, then rotate a 4th for that creative or seasonal beer.

It's fun and challenging to dial in these house beers and we are always tweaking them slightly. To help accommodate recipe changes, we decided to set up the hop timings so that different hops can be easily substituted, even though their alpha acid levels are not the same. The timings for our house IPA, Amber, and Pale Ale recipes all begin at 60 and work their way down in 10 minute increments. While these additions mean more work on brew day (compared to typical initial and knockout additions), they let us get closer to the bitterness ratio that we want to achieve for each style, and we can scale the amount of each addition accordingly.

Today I thought I'd share our house Amber ale recipe and so far, nugget hops have been my favorite. This recipe is for 10 gallons but it should scale nicely to 5 gallons.

Cheers!

Recipe: House Amber (Nugget)
Brewer: tknice
Asst Brewer: Pleepleus
Style: American Amber Ale
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 13.46 gal
Post Boil Volume: 11.96 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 11.00 gal   
Bottling Volume: 10.42 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 15.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 32.8 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 73.2 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
18 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 75.0 %        
4 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 16.7 %        
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 4.2 %         
8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 2.1 %         
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.1 %         
0.25 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7.7 IBUs      
0.25 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 50.0 min Hop 7.2 IBUs      
0.25 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 40.0 min Hop 5.8 IBUs      
0.25 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 3.9 IBUs      
0.50 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5.2 IBUs      
2.20 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining
0.50 oz Nugget [14.30 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 3.1 IBUs
2.0 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)

Mash Schedule: BIAB, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 24 lbs
----------------------------
Saccharification Add 11.22 gal of water at 158.6 F 150.0 F 75 min        
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 7 min 168.0 F 10 min        

Sparge: Remove grains, and prepare to boil wort

Notes:
------
15 minute rest at flameout

So you made an amazing barleywine or vanilla porter and want to take it to the next level? Easy, go buy a large barrel and follow these instructions. 

If that's too much trouble, perhaps this method of oaking will work for you instead. The basic idea is to soak the chips in bourbon and suspend them in a way that can be removed later according to taste.

We are infusing two 5 gallon batches, one that will age for 6 months and another for a full year.

On brewday, we started with two clean and sanitized mason jars and combined 1 cup of Buffalo Trace Bourbon (our favorite for this) and 1oz of medium french oak chips. They sat mingling for 45 days until the beer was racked.

To begin, gather the following supplies:

• 1 or 5 gallon paint strainer bags
• Non-wax dental floss
• An item to sink the bag (we like stainless steel chains)
• An item to tie on floss end
• Jars of chips and bourbon
• Sanitizer

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-BrewGeeks