El Muerto

The first beer that I ever made that wasn't from a kit was a clone of Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. It was early on in my brewing, I had maybe 4-5 kits under my belt and was very nervous about making this recipe I found on the internet. It turned out pretty good, and I decided to name my version El Muerto and designed the label. Since then, I've made it several times, each time tweaking it in a few places because I wanted to make it my own. I decided to rewrite the recipe to be organic, and at the time I was rewriting it, I was very into amber ales, and wanted to change El Muerto to be more along the lines of that than Dead Guy or even earlier versions of El Muerto. So this time around I added a few things, and I've been very happy with the turn out. At this point it resembles nothing of the original clone recipe or really the other incarnations. While those beers were heavy on crystal malt and had a real sweetness present, I opted to go with more of a biscuity/bready flavor in this version and I think it came out nicely.
Here are my thoughts:
It pours a light copper color with two finger off white head. There is an aroma of biscuit with some faint underlying citrus. I'm really amazed by the biscuity flavor in the beer. I didn't think it would come out this much, but it is definitely there. There is some nice hop bitterness and a slight sweetness balanced against the biscuit. I think this recipe might be the version to stick. I used organic pacific gem hops, that I don't know how often I'll be able to get, so that might change some things in the future, but I like the base of the beer.
Here's the recipe:
1.5 lbs org 2-row
.75 lbs org crystal 60
1.0 lbs org munich
.50 lbs belgian biscuit
* mashed @ 145 degrees
4 lbs org light DME @ 15 min
Hops:
.70 organic pacific gem (15%AA) @ 60
.30 organic pacific gem @ 30
.25 org pacific gem @ 10
.50 org saphir (4.4%aa) @ 5 min
Dry hop @ transfer .50 Saphir
Dry hop after 1 week .55 pacific gem
Irish moss @ 15 min
Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast

* Let me explain the hop schedule quickly. I bought 2 ounces of pacific gem on sale at 7 Bridges Co-op for a really good price. In the past I haven't had good luck with saving hop pellets in the freezer once they were open. Not knowing when I was going to use such a small amount of these hops again I decided to just put them all in, which explains the .55 oz of a double dry hop (?). Not sure what it really added, but it turned out nicely.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer