Yeast starter is always the way to go. If you listen to Palmer and Jamil, you know this...just because the Wyeast pack says it is good for 5 gal up to 1.060, thats optimal conditions. Never know what your yeast pack went thru or what the condition of that yeast was at time of pitching. Hope it continues to attenuate, post an update please.

100 Billion cells in one smack pack. According to Mr. Malty, you needed 257 Billion cells or 3 smack packs to achieve that or use a 3.5 liter starter and one smack pack.

you did underpitch. May get some fusel alcohols and esters from this one. Stressed the yeast. Any chance you fermented at a lower temp - just want to make sure your controller is working.

I am running some batches with 5 smack packs (insert WTF here), just to see if the esters I have been getting from one smack pack go away. They did, as to be expected, at quite the added cost.

Time to upgrade the brewery with a stir plate and starter equipment...........

Thanks for all the responses. I know I should have used a starter. Luckily it turned out alright. Drank it all up and it was not too bad. Didn't detect any fusels. The only thin that is confusing to me is that when I first drew a pint off the keg there was no hop aroma as there should have been. I did the hop additions as per the recipe so where the hell did all my hop aroma go?? I wound up dry hoppping it to get some of the aroma that dissapeared and it was drinkable. But WTF?? I have never had that happen before.

O2 pick up at packaging can rob your hop aroma. Maybe it was some other issue but how did you do your cold transfers and how many of them?

1 transfer from carboy to the corny.I forgot to load it with co2 first, maybe that was the culprit...?

Could be, as long as you water profile is right. After reading on the BN forum about it, on my very first keg fill with my new system, I pushed with CO2 from my carboy to a purged and sealed keg through the out port by bleeding off pressure. I know that the IPA in that keg had much more hop aroma than any I had ever made and bottled from a bucket. I've always stuck with this method and am really happy with the results. It's important that you only use 2 or 3 PSI to push this way for safey reasons.

Also, given that it's an amber ale, and an extract kit, 1.023 isn't that far off from what you probably should expect from that kit, if I had to guess. Without some simple sugar in the bill, extract plus steeping grains can make it tough, not impossible, but tough to get the FG down to where you want it.