American Amber (19A) Recipe advice

[pob]

A few thoughts:

Your mash efficiency looks quite low for your system, only 65%?

Lots of different malts in there. Would you even taste/distinguish the 20g Choc malt in that bill?

Maybe just stick with the Pale  malt, Pilsner might be too clean?

The Crystal Light is down as 50SRM? That's equivalent to approx 100 (98.5) EBC, more a medium Crystal.

The Crystal 120L would be closer to 160SRM.
(https://www.brewtoad.com/tools/color-converter)

Mash temp should be fine at 67-68°C for body, should only be Med to Med-Full bodied. When did you calibrate your thermometer? How long was mash?

Remember only make small changes each time to see how it effects it (different yeast or mash temp or malt bill, etc); multiple changes & you won't be able to identity  which one contributed to it.

[molc]

A few thoughts:

Your mash efficiency looks quite low for your system, only 65%?

Lots of different malts in there. Would you even taste/distinguish the 20g Choc malt in that bill?

Maybe just stick with the Pale  malt, Pilsner might be too clean?

The Crystal Light is down as 50SRM? That's equivalent to approx 100 (98.5) EBC, more a medium Crystal.

The Crystal 120L would be closer to 160SRM.
(https://www.brewtoad.com/tools/color-converter)

Mash temp should be fine at 67-68°C for body, should only be Med to Med-Full bodied. When did you calibrate your thermometer? How long was mash?

Remember only make small changes each time to see how it effects it (different yeast or mash temp or malt bill, etc); multiple changes & you won't be able to identity  which one contributed to it.

* Efficiency will start going up now that I'd pretty much finished the mash tun. I don't chase it and try to stay close to 70%, so I get as much of the malt flavour as possible. Grain is cheap at the level I use it

* Not sure about the chocolate either. It was 50g in the original recipe, but that made things too dark. I keep taking it out as  I think the same thing.

* Using the Castle Belgian Pale and Pilsner malt. The Pils has the same EBC as a normal pale ale malt; the pale is almost like a vienna at 10 EBC!

* Crystal light is from Bairds and rated at 90-110 EBC. They're names are really screwy.

* Hmm, Beersmith lists crystal 120L at 236.4 EBC. I was just using it's figure. Looks like it treats all the SRM values the same as L...

* Usual overkill, I have 5 one wire thermometers running, all reading within 0.5C and checked against an ice bath. I really need to get some logging to see how my temperatures hold in a mash though...

You tasted the beer, so in as good a position to tell if it's overkill or just needed a little more sweetness. To me, it's missing any sort of fruit in the malt flavours. Also the colour felt a bit light for an amber. It's a tasty amber; just missing anything special to push it over the edge in a competition.

[Bubbles]

Maybe just stick with the Pale  malt, Pilsner might be too clean?

I spotted that too, and forgot to mention it!

@molc
There's no point in trying to make an amber beer and starting with a large percentage of pilsner malt in the base. I'd use all pale malt.

Another way to go would be to replace that pilsner malt with Munich. Then you wouldn't need all that crystal and dark malts. Do you remember craiclad's SMaSH American Amber with all Munich. I was surprised by how much colour Munch contributes.

[molc]

Yeah fair point. I was going off the colour on the Chateau website, but just went down a rabbit hole. I'll go back to pale and maybe 1kg of vienna, which will give some extra maltiness and keep the colours in check. I don't think I could put munich in with this much crystal; you'd end up with treacle at the end

For reference, my ambers upto now have been 80% pale, 10% munich, 5% crystal 40, 3% crystal 120 and 2% Biscuit. That's pretty much what I handed upto the judges the last night as well.

Edit: I think I'll go with individual changes as suggested, but after the nationals.

[Qs]

I've an amber at the moment that I'm really happy with that only used 3.4% C120 for crystal. I used 25% Vienna and it finished at 1.012. 10g of roast barley for colour. It still has plenty of maltiness but its not cloyingly sweet in the way I find far too many ambers to be.