Heady Topper

A friend asked, me being from vermont and all, if I can get someone back east to ship some of this out here to cali. Well, not being willing to ask anyone to wait in line to get this beer, and ship it out here so it will not be in optimal condition I suggested she might just as well split the cost of a 5 gallon batch with me and get 2.5 gallons for 35 bucks instead of 1 or 2 cans.

Don’t know if she is going to take me up on it but I am not intrigued. been looking up recipes and the grian bill seems pretty straight forward being pearl, maybe a little light crystal, maybe some wheat, and maybe some sugar. The hop bill is overwhelming and differs a lot from recipe to recipe.

so let’s hear what y’all have to say.

jonathan - I recently made 10gal batch, half given to a couple of friends.  its one of the “bear flavored” guy’s clone attempts and it is pretty good, although I think the dryhop needs some work.  i can post what I made later if you want.

I still have a gallon probably left - made it at the beginning of february and its maybe a slight bit better now that when first tapped, albeit a lot of the bitterness has faded and its a little sweet.

Cool that would be great! I’m still kind of absorbing the info that’s out there and waiting for the synthesis.

FYI…The CBC in Waterbury is getting a ton of Heady this Saturday.  The Alchemist is doing their monthly truck load sale of their other beer.  So if you have some friends in or near Waterbury, they may be able to get some relatively easy.

Hmm. well I’ll have to hit up facebook.

Jonathan,

Here is a link for a pretty good version of Heady Topper IMO.

The Owner of the Alchemist has stated that he no longer uses wheat in his recipe. The biggest key to heady is Conan.  Id suggest ordering a few Vials from http://www.theyeastbay.com/  Conan is a noteriously fickle yeast, so id suggest starting fermentation in the 66F range and raising it up to 72F after 2-3 days.

Good Luck!
Jeff

I seem to recall that BYO had a Heady clone several months ago.

[quote]Recipe: Heady Topper
Brewer: Blatz
Asst Brewer:
Style: Imperial IPA
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications

Boil Size: 15.92 gal
Post Boil Volume: 13.52 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 13.00 gal 
Bottling Volume: 13.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.073 SG
Estimated Color: 6.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 138.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 80.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:

Amt                  Name                                    Type          #        %/IBU       
27 lbs 8.0 oz        Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (2.4 SRM)          Grain        1        84.6 %       
1 lbs 14.0 oz        Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)    Grain        2        5.8 %       
1 lbs 14.0 oz        White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)              Grain        3        5.8 %       
1 lbs 4.0 oz          Turbinado (10.0 SRM)                    Sugar        4        3.8 %       
5.00 oz              Apollo - 2012 [18.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min  Hop          5        123.1 IBUs   
2.50 oz              Simcoe - 2012 [13.10 %] - Boil 5.0 min  Hop          6        8.7 IBUs     
1.25 oz              Apollo - 2012 [18.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min  Hop          7        6.1 IBUs     
4.75 oz              Simcoe - 2012 [11.90 %] - Boil 0.0 min  Hop          8        0.0 IBUs     
2.50 oz              Amarillo Gold - 2012 [9.50 %] - Aroma St Hop          9        0.0 IBUs     
2.50 oz              Columbus (Tomahawk) - 2012 [15.20 %] - A Hop          10      0.0 IBUs     
2.50 oz              Columbus (Tomahawk) - 2012 [15.20 %] - B Hop          11      0.0 IBUs     
2.50 oz              Simcoe - 2012 [13.10 %] - Aroma Steep 30 Hop          12      0.0 IBUs     
1.25 oz              Apollo - 2012 [18.50 %] - Aroma Steep 30 Hop          13      0.0 IBUs     
1.25 oz              Centennial - 2012 [9.90 %] - Aroma Steep Hop          14      0.0 IBUs     
1.0 pkg              California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35. Yeast        15      -           
4.00 oz              Simcoe - 2012 [13.10 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 D Hop          16      0.0 IBUs     
2.00 oz              Amarillo Gold - 2012 [9.50 %] - Dry Hop  Hop          17      0.0 IBUs     
2.00 oz              Centennial - 2012 [9.90 %] - Dry Hop 10. Hop          18      0.0 IBUs     
1.00 oz              Apollo - 2012 [18.50 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 D Hop          19      0.0 IBUs     
2.00 oz              Columbus (Tomahawk) - 2012 [15.20 %] - D Hop          20      0.0 IBUs

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 32 lbs 8.0 oz

Name              Description                            Step Temperat Step Time   
Mash In          Add 40.00 qt of water at 161.1 F        150.0 F      75 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 9.67 gal water at 168.0 F
Notes:

10gms gypsum, 3.5gm epsom, 2.5 gm CaCl,
9.3gms gypsum, 2.3gm CaCl to sparge, 3.2 epsom

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com

[/quote]

here’s the one I used.  i did order the Pearl malt, FYI

blatz - how much did you spend in hops for this one?

lol yeah it was about $150 or so, all-in, for the brew - half of that being hops.

OMG, that’s about $125 too much for me  :-\

Keep in mind that’s a 13 gallon batch, which equates to maybe ~ $60 for 5 gallons.

EDIT -Not unusual AT ALL for my IPAs  :smiley:

yup. looks like, with shipping on the hop shots (Morebeer doesn’t have them in stock but northern brewer does) it’s gonna hit ~ 70-80 for 5 gallons.

So what do people think about the hopshots? use them? use a high alpha hop instead?

I can’t speak to this recipe in particular, but my feeling is that you don’t need them - especially at the homebrew scale. Even for a high-gravity wort, you don’t need more than an ounce or two of high alpha hops to max out your IBU threshold. Compared to the amount of hops you’ll be using for your flavor and aroma additions, that’s nothing.

Personally, I’d prefer to have a bit more control over the sharpness/smoothness of my bittering addition (Magnum vs. Chinook, for example) by taking control of the hop variety selection.

Having said that, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using Hop Shot. There is kind of a “cool factor” in adding your bittering addition of murky resin using a syringe. If you like to brew big IPA’s you should at least try it out once and see what you think. The results are just fine. Bittering is a smooth-to-moderate in quality (sharper than Magnum, smoother than Nugget) in my experience.

Hop Extract gives a nice smooth bitterness without the sideeffect of green flavors at this amounts.  Id suggest using the extract.  You can buy a 100g tin at Yakima for 20 bucks, and buy some Leur Lock syringes and make about 20 hopshots yourself for a fraction of the price.  There are quite a few hard to find beers that use the hopshots, including both Pliny Recipes.

http://www.yakimavalleyhops.com/product_p/extractco2cans.htm

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=leur+lock&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aleur+lock

Cheers,
Jeff

I agree. Like Eric said, an oz or two of high AA hops for bittering as compared to the volume of late hops is pretty inconsequential IMO. Nothing wrong with giving the hop shot a try though.

I did some beta testing fro NB when they were bein g developed.  I used them maybe 5 times and was kinda underwhelmed.  Maybe they’ve improved them since then.