Amarillo Amber

On Monday (Labor Day) I finally got around to brewing a beer that I’ve tried to brew the past three weekends, I was starting to get a little pissy about the whole thing. Anyway, I brewed an Amber Ale with all Amarillo hops, thus the Amarillo Amber.

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Two things really spawned the birth of this brew. First was Garrett’s Amarillo Pale Ale and second was the fact that I had 2oz of really old Amarillo hops that needed to badly be used, plus I had enough sorta fresh Amarillos to finish off the hop bill. Originally I was going to actually make this a pale ale, and it may still taste very pale ale like, but the color will probably be closer to amber, plus Amarillo Amber sounds good.

Anyway, after transfering the ABA to secondaries like two weeks ago I decided at the last minute to reserve the yeast slurry from the carboy. So knowing that the residual beer from the ABA was definetely darker than the AA I decided to try and wash the yeast slurry to try and eliminate the possibility of any color transfer. Well, it didn’t go quite as planned. The beer picked up some color, but most likely it didn’t pick up any flavor. The weird thing was this was third generation yeast so I was expecting an explosion of a fermentation with very little lag time. Instead after 12 hours no visible activity, and after 24 hours no visible activity, WTF! So I went to one of the dry packs of US-05 and threw that in and walked away, basically disgusted.

I’m sure the beer will be fine, it appears fine now, but damn-it that pisses me off! I didn’t get to brew for three weeks (planned), and got a late start on brew day but an early finish. I was actually went into the brew day with a bad attitude and finished feeling great, then the freakin’ yeast shit on me. Whatever, RDWHAHB.

One Response to “Amarillo Amber”

  1. Fool Circle - Artisanal Ales » Blog Archive » Amarillo Bottling and Stuff Says:

    […] I bottled the Amarillo Amber today, everything went as expected, so that is good. This beer was actually in its third carboy […]

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