Alaskan Amber is the brewery's flagship beer. It's based on an historic recipe; the original version dates to the Gold Rush days of the 1880s, when a thirsty immigrant supposedly fermented his beer in the mine tunnels.

The beer was first brewed commercially by Douglas City Brewing in the late 1800s. It was resurrected almost a century later by Geoff Larson, who in 1986 founded his Alaskan Brewing Company in the coastal town of Juneau. His amber has won a slew of awards since then, including several Great American Beer Festival medals and a first-place finish at the 1996 World Beer Championships.

Alaskan Amber is an altbier, more in the Münster tradition than the Düsseldorfer (in other words, it's sweeter, richer, less bitter and less dry). An easy-drinking "session" beer with lots of malt character, it has just enough German hop profile to keep the maltiness from getting out of hand. It's a nice beer and easy to approximate, if you use the right ingredients and yeast.

Alaskan Amber

(5 gallons, extract with grains)

OG = 1.054 FG = 1.015 Bitterness = 20 IBUs

Ingredients

• 1 lb. two-row pale malt
• 1/2 lb. medium crystal malt
• 1/2 lb. light crystal malt
• 5 lbs. Munton's unhopped light dried malt extract (DME)
• 4 AAU Cascade hops (1 oz. of 4% alpha acid)
• 4 AAU Saaz hops (1 oz. of 4% alpha acid)
• 1 tsp. Irish moss (last 15 minutes of the boil)
• German ale yeast slurry (Wyeast 1007, White Labs WLP-029 or equivalent)
• 7/8 cups light DME for priming

Step by Step

Crush pale and crystal malts. Steep in 2.5 gallons water at 150° F for 45 minutes. Remove grains, add DME and stir well. Bring to a boil, add Cascade hops. Boil 45 minutes, add Saaz hops, boil additional 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, cool. Add to fermenter along with enough chilled, pre-boiled water to make up 5.25 gallons.

When cooled to 68° F or so, aerate well and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68° F for ten days. Rack to secondary, condition cold (40° F) for fifteen days. Prime with DME. Bottle and condition at a cool cellar temperature (50° F) for two weeks. Serve at 50° F in a straight-sided altbier glass.

All-grain option: Omit the dried malt extract and mash 8 lbs. pale malt plus the crystals (as above) in 12 quarts water at 152° F. Sparge with 15 quarts at 168° F. Proceed as above from boiling and reduce wort volume to 5.25 gallons.