So I just bottled my fourth brew, an oatmeal stout, and am kicking around the idea of a Colonial/Revolutionary War-style amber ale as my next brew. I'm not in the full-grain stage, yet, but I have gotten into brew-in-a-bag/partial mash brewing and have moved away form kits and started building my own recipes. Here's what I have so far

Grains/BIAB:
2lb pale 2 row
1lb Crystal 20L
1lb Amber malt
1lb Honey malt
12 oz Biscuit malt
8 oz Carapils

LME:
3.3lb Amber liquid

8oz Molasses
2 oz East Kent Goldings (@ 60 mins)
1.5 oz East Kent Goldings (@ 15 mins)

1pkg American Ale Wyeast #1056

I'm considering using coriander or spruce tips but I wanted to get some opinions. What do you guys think?

That recipe is super-busy and 1 lb of honey malt is way too much according to those that have tried.

What kind of flavor are you trying to accomplish?  I doubt the colonial era had all those malts...

Busy how? And okay, I'll drop the honey malt down to 1/2lb. I'm wanting a drinkable amber that would end up close in taste to something  that may have been around back then. I'm not exactly trying to brew it the same way they may have in 1775, just trying to make something somewhat close taste-taste-wise.

Busy like "threw the whole kitchen sink of specialty malts in"--that oftentimes leads to a muddled flavor.  You are only getting about 60% of your fermentables in base malt, in my experience I usually shoot for 80% or more (and a big chunk of that is "Amber" malt extract already, not pale).  I would say something more like this would be a better result:

6 lb light liquid malt extract (I liked dry better myself when I used extract because it was easier to keep fresh but if you can get liquid fresh...)
2 lb 2 Row Malt (I am assuming you want to minimash the honey and maybe Amber has diastatic power--not sure)
1 lb Amber malt
.5 lb honey malt
.5 lb molasses

I think that will help you out by drying the beer out better and having a more defined flavor.  If you prefer to use amber extract, reduce the amber malt a bunch or altogether (at least half) --personally, I would suggest to you to use lightest extract you can and get your specialty flavors from specialty malts.      Simpler recipes are often better than throwing a bunch of stuff together.  There are exceptions, of course, great beers with 8 specialty malts or something, but few and far between.  Your yeast work will make or break the beer IMO, IF you are going to use 1056, use 2 or make a 2L starter for this gravity of beer...if you don't want to do that, use Safale US05 dry yeast with a proper rehydration before pitch.

I know nothing of spuce tips, so I can't help you there-sounds gross, so I'm not volunteering one of my batches to try it out!  Goldings hops look like a good choice here. :)

Hope that helps :)

ETA: if you want to just use all the liquid malt extract in 2 cans, I think that makes 6.6 lbs and about 4 gravity points, not a big deal (I assumed this was a 5.5 gallon batch into primary, 5 gallons even into keg or bottling bucket)

Okay that helps explain things a lot. I'm still new to this so I'm eager to learn haha. I appreciate the help.

I know some beers back in those days did use coriander seed and/or spruce tips, but I've heard mixed things. I've heard that coriander is used a lot in conjunction with orange peel in Belgian Wits and such to give a citrus-y flavor, which sounds interesting but after thinking about it, I'm not sure it would fit in with this beer. And the spruce, I've heard, can easily be misused and turn your beer into Pine-Sol. So i've still got research to do, needless to say.

On a side note, I picked up a six pack of Founding Fathers Amber last night and man, it is delicious. I believe that might be something like what I want out of this recipe. It has strong honey tastes and is very sessionable.

Well, that is a lager, so you are going to be a bit different with your recipe...here is what the webpage for that one says;

A super premium American amber lager, handcrafted with a combination of two-row barley  and a blend of three classic American hops from the Pacific
Northwest. With a touch of roasted caramel malt, Founding Fathers Amber delivers a rich and robust taste with a smooth finish.


So it is likely 2 row malt with enough caramel 120 to make it amber and likely Cascade hops.  Unfortunately I would recommend you stay away from lager yeast being new and all, they take some understanding, so stick with the clean american yeast you already had.  

So maybe change your hops out and use less extract and specialty grains to drop your gravity to something like 1.050.  Drop the molasses too.

Now to compare this to ACTUAL beer made by the founding fathers, it won't be close--they would have likely used fruity british ale yeast and such.

No need for the coriander in anything but wits or maybe a specialty Belgian (once you know what you are doing).

Keep it simple and focus on sanitation and good yeast practice.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/George-Washington-Beer

George Washington's "Small Beer"

To Make Small Beer: Take a
large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran, Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3
hours then strain out 30 Gall[ons] into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons]
Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses
[sic] into the cooler & St[r]ain the Beer on it while boiling Hot.
let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a
quart of Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover it over with a
Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the
Cask -- leave the bung open till it is almost don[e] Working -- Bottle
it that day Week it was Brewed."





http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/beer


http://realhomebrew.com/2012/07/06/homebrew-recipes-of-our-founding-fathers-thomas-jefferson/


http://www.jaysbrewing.com/2012/05/30/colonial-beer-recipes/




































With this recipe it’s pretty standard for the directions.  Steep your
grains in water at 150 degrees for 30min and take them out.  Add in the
malt extract and bring it to a boil.  In the beginning of the boil add 2
ounces of your hops.  Boil for 50min then add 1.5 oz of fuggle hops.
Boil for 10 min, end the boil, cool it down, fill it up to 5 gallon and
pitch your yeast