Looking for recipe suggestions a dark amber bitter type beer

Hi guys,

Just looking for some recommendations for an all grain recipe. So far I have tried several kits and kits with partial grain additions and I have not been able to make something to my tastes.

I’m looking to go all grain on the recipe as I have now perfected my all grain process and I am getting a nice 72-73% efficiency on most of my brews.

I’m not going to ask you for any specific beer styles as I feel like the beer which I am trying to create could fall into several different beer styles.

To sum it up I am looking for an all grain recipe which will give me this..

A 5-5.5% amber beer with a strong malty taste with biscuit undertones but it needs to finish with a strong bitterness.. I’m talking 80 to 90 IBU.

First I tried Muntons Old English beer kit and all I can honestly say is Jesus.. why so sweet? It tastes like alcoholic caramel syrup!

Next I tried a Dark Rock Brewing Hoppy Days IPA kit and I done a 68c mash for 60 minutes with the following grains, 500g medium caramalt and 100g roasted barley malt. This actually turned out pretty nice but it’s definitely not got the strong maltiness nor does it have the bitterness which I desire. This comes in at maybe 40IBU which was surprising for a hoppy days IPA kit! A fairly nice drink but again just not what I am trying to create here.

To give you an idea of the kind of bitterness that I enjoy in a beer this is the hop boil on my favourite IPA

Hop boil
28g bravo @ 60
15g Cascade @ 60
50g Amarillo @ 40
28g citra @ 40
28g citra @ 10
28g bravo @ 0

Anyone have any suggestions for beer recipes which I can try? Again open to trying different styles providing it falls within the profile for what I want to create. Thank you in advance!!

I’d say you’ve got most of the information there to come up with something…

Something like an American amber ale which you can then adjust to your desired bitterness with hops you like. High alpha US hops should be up your street

There’s a recipe on here (can’t remember whose it was) for a centennial Amber / dark ale that I’ve always fancied trying. Reviews were very good…

Found it…
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/centennial-brown-ale.53514/

Not sure you’ll get biscuit notes but someone who has brewed it can no doubt advise!

Do you do any water treatment? You need to decide the beer style you want and then find the water profile for that style. Brewing software will show you that profile, however you need to understand your tap water profile.

You've talked about the hop additions, but it's quite easy to throw in enough hops to give you the required IBUs. The tricky bit is to build the Malt profile without those hops clashing with the malty flavours.
I brew a beer with OG 1060 using 80% pale, 10% caramalt or light crystal malt up to about 110 ebc max, and 10% Special B (or W or X or Simpsons Double Roasted). That gives a good malty background that needs decent IBUs behind it for balance, but that muddle of US hops you suggest is likely to leave you with a bit of a mess, I'd certainly not use the Citra. Perhaps bitter with bravo and add late bravo and amarillo. And use a yeast that's not going to leave it sweet.

Search for the riggwelter clone on brewers friend - it has a fabulous malt forward flavour and then just up the boil hops to suit your ibu requirements.
Personally I'd suggest 50+ ibu on a regular strength dark ale would totally knock it's balance,
But I suppose if it was like an 7-8% and it would happily coexist - thinking Belgian beers. But 80-90 ibu is just a bit strange and can't see how that would gel with a malty dark beer style