BEAR-ly Getting Started 8.3 - American Amber Ale

The flag still flies as we travel across the country of American beer styles. We start with where the amber ale essentially falls in the family tree. This is the episode where you learn about every aspect of the relation, taste, look, and smell. We finish the episode by touching on the Florida beer scene. Featuring Antique Alley from 3 Sons Brewing Company in Dania, FL.

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Transcript

The Buffalo Brews podcast. We are continuing to say cheers to American beers. Cheers to American beers. 

We're going to be answering the question here is if you're not afraid to experiment and pushing the boundaries of traditional brewing, I think we're going to be answering that question this week as we talk about some amber ales like we let up on the last episode. So this has been fun so far because we've kind of tinkered all over the place and locations and styles and brought some pretty good information to the table that people didn't know about such as you didn't know that you could reuse yeast to make another batch of beer. And you know when we were off the microphone, we were talking a little bit and one of the things, I don't think people realize when we were talking about Bells and I talked about some of those big American breweries that were open in the late 80s, early 90s. 

You know if you've just gotten into craft beer in the last five years or some people even shorter than that, you know something like an Oberon Ale or some of these old school tried and true beers, I mean they were huge at the time they came out and you were big in the beer. You're just like, oh man, I can't wait to get more of it because you were just, you know from the 50s until basically the 70s, you were getting mass-produced lagers and that was it. And you know I didn't mention to talk about a big part of American culture is you would have the big boys move in with their macro lagers and they would undercut you. 

And they would either sell at a loss for a little bit until they put you out of business and took your market share and then they were able to make it at a cheaper amount of money so they weren't losing a ton of money doing this. But they were just you know literally doing trench warfare, getting into your town and saying all right well now that your breweries have closed you're going to need us and now we're in your grocery store and all that stuff and you know that homebrew and the craft industry getting bigger with you know 1978 into the 80s and then that rise in the 90s a little you know teetering off. You know getting those local ingredients and artisanal brewed beers back again, it was exciting. 

It was exciting for people and that's what creates a boom you know excitement creates a boom and you know we have been going through you know we think cheers to American beers. To me honestly one of the biggest American beers that like swept was the New England IPA and we did plenty of talking about that during IPAs for days. So you know I always you know teach and host this class and this series is more meant to be about the foundations of the American brewing culture and kind of what put America on the map as hey we have our own brewing style now because we've adapted what we like and we're using local ingredients and we are putting that house character whether it be yeast or the brewing technique to you know certain traditional kind of styles and what we're really doing here is taking a trip both historically you know talking about cremales and prohibition to you know now we have craft breweries opening up in the 90s to you know we'll get to a point where you know something a little bit more recent with our final beer. 

But what we want to you know kind of do is show you the variety of American styles. So you know to kind of recap people are brewing beer from pumpkins and whatever they can in the beginning and you know they've got some barley and some wheat but life's a little bit more about survival and you know making sure that you're adapting to America without perishing on the Oregon Trail like let's go let's survive and then we'll make our beer a little bit better. You know so now you're now you've got you know vast immigration you got you know other countries immigrating so the Germans are bringing their lager traditions with them and that's the 1800s into the early 19s and that's kind of what gave way into the mass-produced lagers then prohibition shut us all down we come out now we got cremales which are just a fast way of getting that easy drinking lager into people's hands again. 

But then you start to get those craft breweries going you know we've gotten past the macro brewing and people are back into drinking beer and they're interested in trying some more flavorful beer and then craft breweries are opening up and they're like all right well how do we get that mass-produced beer consumer into our brewery and then you know not just into our brewery because you know brewing lagers and stuff for them but we want them to try a variety of what we have to offer so that you can move the product and sell it and get it to other people and you know get everybody enjoying and cheersing the American beers. So that's you know kind of why we talked about the American wheat that's like the gateway that along with that golden blonde that I talked about that brings us to kind of one of the most enduring styles and I'm just going to talk about it because we're going to skip over it and drinking because I'd love to drink 100 beers with you but you know 99 beers on the wall that never ends that story that song never ends because you know and that shout for shout series almost never ended for us either it's one of those you know you got to be you got to be careful what you got playing for the rest of the day that's right but the American pale ale okay if you take like the English style bitters and we talked about UK in the day we talked about bitters and how once it was bottled it kind of just was called pale ale and it had its own character well American pale ale okay it's not dark it's not a lager it's a pale colored ale not all lagers are ales and but ah I missed it again not all lagers are ales but some ales are lagers you're more talking about the let's talk lagers and we were talking like sub-styles so lagers and ales do not mix they're the two so no lager is an ale and no ale is a lager but you can treat a lager like an ale you can treat it an ale like a lager like an ale and an ale like a lager and that's where we got the cream ale because that was a lager yeast and it was brewed like a lager or sorry ale yeast but brewed like a lager same thing with Kolsch and Altbier from Germany even golden ale sometimes in America use lager yeast Baltic porter sometimes use lager yeast but you can use a certain type of yeast brew it in a certain type of way but you know on the base level it's either an ale or a lager based on the yeast that's used and then you know more commercially you can just bypass all that nerdy stuff but it's one of those things where I think you're more thinking that you know all pilsners are lagers but not all lagers are pilsners and certain stuff where you know all that it's just that family tree where all I mean everything's beer unless you're talking Germany and they're just like well no if you're not using barley it's we call it ale and if you use barley then it's beer but I think we look at the beverage here in America as it's beer okay and then is it a lager or is it an ale not to be people like well it's an ale so it's not beer it's like well no it's beer it's in the beer shelf then you could just ask yourself if it's a lager or an ale so now we have pale ale some of the quintessential ones and you know we'll back it up even further after I talk about pale ale to the California common also known as steam beer but trademarked as steam beer by Inker who's actually coming back they closed down for a couple years but they've been revitalized with the new ownership I like like what I'm hearing there yeah you've got American pale ale basically here's an ale not a lager so it's gonna have a little bit of yeast profile but again we're not going crazy like you know definite clove and baking spices phenolics and fruity esters it's just hey it's not going to be purposefully tried to limit the the amount of yeast production as possible like you do with a true a lager so what do they do they're using local ingredients right it's a little bit you know it's called pale but it almost looks amber you know it's a darker beer compared to light yellow and light golden you've definitely crossed into dark gold and amber and that's like your sheer Nevada pale ale that's like the quintessential to me but then a lot of them are using northwestern hops and you know stuff from the Willamette Valley in Oregon or the Yakima Valley in Washington and these are your your traditional kind of pine dank resinous marijuana like and heavy grapefruit pith so now you've got you know here's a beer with a lot of flavor to it okay we went from a pilsner or a lager to something like a cream ale it's like okay this is like my lager but a little bit more and then you had a wheat beer it's like okay this is easy drinking but definitely some flavor now you're like okay here's a pale ale it's got some bitterness to it and that's what makes it American pale ale it's distinctive in the fact that you know it's malty like an English pale ale but it's got those American hops so much so that if you gave me an American pale ale and an English pale ale I should be able to say this is an American an APA versus an English pale ale and then the IPA is kind of just the big brother and it's like hey we're going to hop it a little bit more a little bit more ABV you know change a little bit in the grain bill but it's taking that American pale ale and bringing it to the next level you know the other beers that kind of came out you know I talked about that California common that's the name of the actual style because anchor brewing would make what's called steam beer and then they trademarked it so you can't call it steam beer that is trademarked by anchor basically what anchor was doing was they were using a lager yeast and they were actually cooling it in a cool ship kind of like lambics and open fermented beers on like the rooftop of their brewery and to cool it down you'd see the steam and that's that's where the steam beer came from so they I think we were using a lager yeast with ale or an ale yeast with lager techniques so you know it it would have you try to refine some of those yeast production notes but still you know kind of making it a little bit quicker and it was definitely maltier and then I think it was called northern brewer where like the quintessential hops used for it so just had this a little bit malty touch of yeast notes but then definitely the hop profile would come out at you and that was a very just Americanized beer and you know very very similar to the pale ale so if you haven't had like an American pale ale I do say get a get a nice Sierra Nevada pale ale and if a bar or a brewery says it's an American pale ale ask to look you know ask for a sample it should be a little closer to an amber than it is you know like a hazy you know a lot of places are making pale ales and they're just kind of like lighter lighter hazy IPAs lighter than New England's like so a true American pale ale that was very enduring and I think like the most entered category of like the Great American Beer Festival and and that was kind of like your flagship pale ale then the IPA came out and well you know we're barely getting started with this episode if you want to learn about IPAs listen to the IPAs for days it's worth it yeah I mean that nice little six-parter oh yeah that was fun time so that took over and then obviously led to the hazy American IPA the New England the NEPA so all that kind of lineage so we have for us to hear to try today is an amber ale okay we talked a little bit about history and pale ales and California commons but we're kind of all of these are in that amber category so let's think about what we tried a cream ale okay basically a lager but more American in in its development and had a little bit more going on with it than just a straight lager then we had our transition beer now we have a beer like I said we're just going to add a little bit more of these caramel malts okay I'm not going to actually talk too much about base malts in beer you basically have your base malts you know the lighter ones are what's called two row malt or usually like a pale ale malt and then lagers and pilsner usually use a pilsner malt but then you've got some munich malt vienna malt those are the ones that will add a little bit of red and some darker colors but not a ton they have like a little bit of a nuttiness that's a good way of putting it yeah yeah but without like a ton of caramel flavors then the roasting drum you've got now specialty malts which are kind of broken into two categories you got your your caramelized malts and then you've got your like roasted dark malts and you use very little of those in your recipe in your grain bill it's like the vast majority is a pale ale malt or a pilsner malt and if you want it to be a little bit red I mean you know if something just on a small scale something's got five pounds I mean you might just use a few ounces of a couple of different caramel malts and that will add a slight sweetness a slight caramelness so that kind of what makes the difference between an amber ale with a pale ale is there's a little bit more of a caramel note nothing roasty but just a little bit more caramel it gets past nutty but the hop profiles can be very similar the colors can be very similar it's really that caramel note that's going to separate the two and you know if you talk about American IPA not a hazy IPA you know you have beers that are classified as amber ales that are darker than IPA and IPA that you know there's this cross-section of an amber ale could be lighter than an IPA and the IPA is darker than certain amber ales and that really comes down to what the brewer is intending with their final product but if you are being sold or looking at a package that says amber ale if it's an American amber ale assume that it's going to have some bitterness to it now if they go and say you know we've used a lot of language like west coast or you know traditional American that means it's going to be pretty bitter I would say assume that it's going to have some bitterness to it and it's going to be malt forward and then the amber ale just a little bit of caramel but you are drinking a bitter beer now it's no longer going to be light and refreshing like your wheat beers like we said that was a transition for something with a little bit more taste now we're getting into quite a bit of taste not quite that IPA but we're in that California common amber ale pale ale category where it's hey if we go you know that California common is literally it's kind of like Australia where it's a country within a continent you know it's its own style as well as um you know the only style so it's it's basically you can make a California common but you can't make a steam beer and not many people make a California common we do have one I think Breyer Brothers and Fercrantum just came out with uncommon a common California it was good that's good yeah and what you can expect is it to just be not as caramelized as an amber ale but definitely a little maltier than your pale ale so again we're definitely splitting hairs on the profile of things but we are going to enjoy an amber ale from a Florida brewing company from Dania Beach Florida it is Three Sons Brewing Company called Antique Alley Amber Ale Dania Beach is a suburb a southern suburb of Fort Lauderdale there you go yeah I had to look that up because I never heard of it yeah it's and I do think there's some connection one of the brewers is originally like a western New Yorker and so they come back a lot and you'll see this beer every now and then not a ton of it they make a lot of good hazy IPAs it's a couple of times now that I've gotten this antique amber because there's not a ton of ambers out there you know we just had the Bell's Oberon they make a fantastic Bell's Amber Ale and I think that was one of the comparisons on the list I was looking at earlier yeah and you know the whole Cicerone program and a lot of like BJCP which is the Beer Judge Certification Program they're using actually Cicerone uses the BJCP styles they always kind of give you like exemplars like this is what you know you should be hoping to get close to obviously at you know the house character in the brewers interpretation sure but as we take a look you know definitely not gold anymore we're back to being opaque I mean a little bit of light gets through reddish brown yeah this is one of the ones where now we're dark enough where I want to hold it to the light to see the undertones definitely some red in there that's you know quintessential of amber you know if we're on the SRM scale we went from our dark golds of you know light straws like a two three gold is around four or five getting into like dark gold around six and then you know you're really in the amber territory when you get just under 10 on the SRM and the SRM goes you know pretty much I think you know most beers max out around 40 50 but you know we go from light to dark pretty quickly and this one is definitely brown you know it's got some amber chestnut looking undertones or you know shades to it I think the amber kind of comes from you know when you pull it to the light you see the red and it's a reddish brown and what's reddish brown reddish brown but kind of an amber right so by the look of it you know I would definitely think I'm going to have a beer with you know it's not dark brown by any means so I don't I'm not looking for roast here I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little touch of rose coming from the fact that this is a very amber light brown almost just brownish color but I would think caramel I'm looking more caramel yeah that's that's that's before sipping it yep now you take a sniff of the nose and you get kind of that caramel kind of smell vibe to me I get this a lot in Belgian beers like the double and your quad you know we start to get a little darker but it's got that kind of like not quite raisin but you know maybe raisin bread or maybe like you know a darker bread crust now now we're we're kind of getting into like rye bread territory where it's got a little bit more going on and you know it's definitely not that bread dough floury American wheat and it's it's not like that bread or bread crust that we get with some of our pilsners but you know it definitely got that all right there's a there's a little bit more caramel and to me caramel plus a little bitterness sometimes that comes across on my nose it's like light light raisin so little little cheers so yeah and thou's not cheers the last episode so so it's cheers to American beer so cheers for Oberon as well there we go double cheers for beers from US of A well that's very nice simple now they do have this packaged as an amber ale um very close to amber ales like an Irish red sure you know this definitely doesn't have um Irish reds are a little sweeter kind of come across creamier to me beers that are sweet um sweet from the malt right no additional uh like additives uh they come across as creamy think of like your milk stout as well your oatmeal stouts that's definitely not the case here yeah this one this this guy is not like an amber or an Irish red but it's not as bitter as I thought it was going to be no and it does have a bite though yeah I mean it's got it's got a nice balance yeah but like an American amber ale actually I think I had one a unicorn blood on the shelf they were calling it a California red ale or you know sometimes amber ales they call red ales I actually had a red IPA and you know that's just using different malts but once you hear the words west or California what you usually should start anticipating is pine grapefruit you know a little bit higher IBU yeah um so I'm pleasantly surprised by that because this has got a little bit more drinkability to me um but definitely a lot more bitter than the first two beers we had I mean almost no bitterness in that cream ale nor I honestly that wheat ale you got a nice linger of the malt on the back of this yeah this is this is a good dinner beer it's good outdoor beer um you know it almost tastes like um red and brown leaves might it tastes like what I think those guys smell and taste like it's just almost as like fall foliage in a glass you got you've got this slight earth tone to it like when you were talking about those hay-like notes I have more of like like leaves and kind of stuff that would be crinkly crunchy things that have kind of been baked in the sun a little bit okay same same concept goes for the grain that's in here it's been roasted a little bit longer I can get a little bit toasty yeah but it just hit that caramelized level right not that I'm out there you know chewing on leaves and you know just making a meal out of I forgot what I watched but I remember this guy who just made a bark sandwich he's leaves with bark and comedy and it's just I don't know why that popped in my head but talking about you know eating leaves that's what I was picturing and you're definitely off in the woods there so yeah you know you're barely getting started I think I drank a little too quick there but you know it has this caramel yet earthy note to it yeah I think the earthy is what comes from those hops so I'm not getting a ton of oh that's a bit of beer I'm getting this earthy caramel so it is a very nice interpretation of an amber ale and I'm glad they didn't put you know American amber ale on the because there's not really many other amber ales so you see amber ale you're assuming it's an American amber ale if not it would be an Irish red or it would be like a Vienna lager or it would you know if it's another American beer it would be a California common or it might be you know a pale ale or an American pale ale like you were talking about with Bell's Amber a couple of the other examples was Fat Tire Amber oh yeah and then Trogue's Nugget Nectar oh yeah Nugget Nectar easy for me to say been doing this for four years yes follow us like subscribe yeah tell your friends we uh you know I think this is my third or fourth take at the beer now small sips swishing it around you're starting to get a little bit of the residual bitterness like I'm getting some of that bitterness I think my palate's adjusting now and I'm getting it it's it fell off after the second sip for me so it's you know now it's really nicely balanced now for it for me yeah and it but it the flavors I guess are kind of coming through for me a little bit where the original take it's it's very heavy caramel um and the the flavors that I were getting were more earthy kind of you know those not the bitterness of pine but the earthiness of pine and you know kind of like like I was saying like those leaves and just kind of crunchy uh you know if you took hay and it just got even darker and it's it's nice and dried out nice and dried out you've got kind of this uh you know that that's what the vibe I'm getting here yeah but then as I let it sit and you know the that bitterness the flavor to the bitterness kind of develops because bitterness is kind of like almost reactionary I mean that's a base flavor so now when we add the mouthfeel and the aroma and kind of get the overall flavor and not just uh you know a straight bitter taste it opened up to a bit to a little bit to me and is a little bit more pine and kind of resinous a little bit of citrus but mainly you know mainly that kind of just earthy pine uh but very very subtle and that's what I like about it some of them could be right in your face you know fantastic uh you know beer outside you know by the campfire whether it's a morning campfire afternoon or evening but also just this week something that's great with food you know that slight caramelization same thing when you start grilling burgers or you're even uh you know searing a steak and then even you know I mean you're getting caramelization when you're cooking chicken wings you're deep frying something you know you're just getting this you know this golden kind of crisp flavor and it goes really well um with this and then the carbonation the slight bitterness and Amber Ale is just one of those hey I'm a full flavored beer with some some hot bitterness some caramel-like notes but what I don't really have is roast bitterness I don't have like caramel notes and tones no and you even said that at the beginning that you didn't expect that it was going to be more of a caramel thing which it ended up being um and you're right and one of the things I think it contributes to because we said at the very beginning of the episode about pushing boundaries and and experimenting it looks like according to their website that Three Sons Brewing Company uh is really they really push the boundaries as far as experimentation and making things their own so this Amber is they make this year-round it's a it's a staple on their a staple on their menu but they're talking about how they kind of meticulously handpick everything to do these uh these batches so I think it makes it unique for them which to your point is why it's not you said why why it's not listed as an American Amber Ale it's a little bit different than what you would expect from a traditional Amber because me again I would I would I think it was just a little bit of roastiness to it I don't get that at all so I think you've hit the head the nail on the head and I think that's what it has to do with they they say that they dare to be different and I think they've done that yeah and it's it's one of those where the caramel is definite you know and that's that's what sets this different from a pale ale is those caramel malts and notes that you get from those because you can have some nice toasty lagers that have and the toastiness brings about like a nuttiness you know the type of breads that just have a little like nutty flavor to them and I don't get a ton of nut nuttiness in this I mean it's got slight toast note but it just finishes so nicely with that caramel that you know it's it's definitely that would be the first note I would say is this is a caramel that has some balancing bitterness and you know if there was any type of roast to it it'd be more of a nutty nutty on their tone than like a roasted or you know there's there's no sort of like coffee or acrid kind of like dark or burnt flavor to it there's no there's no scraping off of this bread okay this isn't mom's burnt toast that she's scraping over the sink or the garbage and saying just eat it it definitely is just one of those pops out of the toaster and it is you know just under brown and it's got like that caramel toasted note and the butter just melts perfectly on it and some people might think it's gone a little bit too far and that's where you're like all right well that's where you want your lightly toasted and you're more of a pilsner or a pale ale that's right some people are warm bread yeah some people just find some people just want to eat it out of the bag and uh this one here this is one of the ones where there's been a time for that caramel malt there was that perfect amount of time that it got roasted where it just you know got that uh caramelized flavor and is now imparting it on our beer yeah uh you know one of the things i wanted to close out with because i i think we've kind of put a put a bow on this i and i enjoyed this much more i'm sitting like yeah how many times you say caramel right now if you're drinking this podcast or listening to this right now you're trashed but go back and take a sip every time i said caramel there like uh one of the things that um because i listened to a few other podcasts out there and i try to get a feel for the florida beer scene um so again we're talking about uh dania beach florida that's just just outside of fort lauderdale um so when we're thinking of florida breweries the most common i mean we did uh angry chair last last season earlier last series uh i know uh stumbling monkey's a a pretty popular one is that or am i missing that one that's not florida well there's a stumbling monkey like in victor new york um so maybe there's oh maybe i'm thinking of a different monkey i thought that there was i'm trying to think i mean the other big ones tampa bay's got a huge scene so i mean yeah you've got your cigar city's a big one um i used to really like punky buddha then there was um what was the hot bullet from there was i did a lot of work down in fort lauderdale so i used to see a lot of that stuff but angry chair was you know there's three sons now you gotta you gotta find your monkey uh yeah i know now that's and now i wonder where i got that from um yeah but funky buddha definitely super popular it's a destination yeah to to go to and you know a lot of uh what i've been to kind of circles around the uh fort lauderdale because i spent so much time but when i was in tampa bay i made sure to check up some uh like scar city is one of those like you know well-renowned oh tripping animals tripping i was way off over here hey man tripping stumbling stumbling all the animals just not the monkey i brief famously calls um uh it's uh she calls us oh my gosh now i'm even forgetting it's um right next to what happens when we start here it goes here it goes yeah it's right next to 

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