Good Old English Session Bitter

[Deebee]

with 1.5 % amber i am not too sure you'll even notice it to be honest. I made a brew with 5 5 and it was barely noticable. this was a brew at 4.2

maybe worth upping it to around 4-5%

[Fallen]

Cheers Deebee, I think I'm going to go with the suggestion from coatesg and use 5% crystal, 4% amber.

[Barley Water]

My suggestion is just to brew it. Once it is ready to drink then sit down and give it a through tasting. Hopefully you keep decent notes so if you find the beer lacking for some reason, note that down also and come up with ways to improve it. To give you ideas for improvement, get a couple of bottles of commercial stuff you enjoy and compare them to your efforts. Also, if you have friends that know good beer, feed them some and solicit opinions. Try not to give them your opinion first. Tell them to be honest, if they taste something they don't like you need to know it. Although it may feel good to have folks kiss your rear end when drinking your beer, it will not help you improve if they withhold their true opinions. That is why I enter contests, I want somebody other than myself evaluating the beer. It's been my experience that when people blind taste something, they tend to really tell you what they think since it takes the personality out of the equasion. I have been doing this hobby for a very long time and I still have a very hard time being objective about my own beer. Of course, if you get lucky and the beer is really good, then you get the thrill of actually winning something. I would have to say that most of my recipes are the result of evolution involving sometimes many iterations. I have had pretty good success in very large contests brewing weizen bier but I bet I have brewed the stuff in excess of a dozen times changing both formulation as well as process over the years. Anyhow, fire up the old kettle and enjoy.