Send me a pm to remind me
You don’t have to imagine the recipe for this one… a complete description of the process and ingredients is well known. You’re just going to have to spend a lot of time doing a turbid mash and splashing bottles of Cantillon all over your attic rafters (or, just dumping the dregs in your wort if you’re lazy).
I found getting the balance between bitterness and malt sweetness quite tricky to get exactly right. If you miss the target you get a quite different beer.
Done
This is certain. Their yeast is a little different from what we can get (culture from a bottle?). The water and how they treat it, and adding brewing salts to the kettle is a little different. They also pick Cascade from the growers, buying the best they smell on the table, we don’t have that Cascade, do we?
You can get pretty close.
I will say that when I tasted a fresh bottle at Mills River, before the tour, I was taken aback on how vibrant this beer was.
I wasn’t surprised by the rest. I hadn’t heard this, though. So maybe their Chico has mutated over generations, most likely?
To me, getting a pro’s recipe for a beer is like getting sheet music for a song. I could play all of “Iron Man” note for note, but it’s still going to sound like me playing it on my gear, rather than an exact replica of the album. But it will certainly be close enough for everyone to know what I’m shooting for.
For me, I have no desire to produce an exact replica of a production beer. I do like seeing recipes from pro brewers, and more importantly, I like hearing them discuss them. There is always a piece I can learn and add to my toolbox, and that’s the real value for me.
A good example of this was when Mitch Steele had discussed Red Wolf on his blog a while ago. I admit to drinking my fair share of it back when I was in college, and have wanted to brew something similar for nostalgia’s sake. I proposed a basic recipe to him that included a small amount of C80 for color, and he said he’d actually use about 20% C80. I would never considered using that much Crystal malt in an mass-market style lager, and so I’d never be close in my own recipe. Even though I’m not shooting for an exact clone, this kind of “missing piece” is what I’m look for from a “clone” recipe.
Old Speckled Hen ESB.
It could be that, or the isolates selected by the yeast labs is a little different. If you followed C.S. (Mark), he stated that isolates will have differences, I.e. 34/70 vs 34/78.
Due South in Boynton Beach, FL makes an espresso and vanilla flavored porter called Café Ole. The flavoring additions are barely noticeable and just round out the roasted and caramel malts. If its on tap. Its all I’m drinking.
I’d love to know how they add the coffee, and what the grist looks like. Dark beers to me are the hardest to figure out. There are so many varieties of roasted malts, and so much variety between maltsters. One purveyors roasted malt is another’s chocolate. They mention roasted barley and flaked oats in their description. But I’ve seen sacks of mild malt, victory, biscuit, and you name it around the brewery. I guess I should just ask.
If you have the chance to try this beer check it out.
not argueing here… I get what you’re sayin: a clone would be an exact replica. …but somebody needs to tell the American Homebrewers Association: The front page of the website shows a Dale’s Pale Ale Clone recipe.
They have a right to be wrong…
;) good answer! LOL
The reason I attempt to “clone” a beer I’ve read about and probably will never taste is to get an idea of what that beer is… Clone is probably the wrong term…regions of this country do not have access to a lot of these great beers we are reading about…
I think that they word you are looking for is “replicate”
That is a cool aspect of where the hobby is now. If you have the guidelines, Google, maybe a book like BCS, or better yet a book written for the style in question, if you have decent equipment and skills, I think you can brew any style you want. Even those you haven’t or can’t taste in person.
I agree: I brewed an alt this winter even though I’ve never tasted one and couldn’t track down a dusty imported bottle of one–even went to a German restaurant and couldn’t find an example.
Likewise, I’d never tasted a saison until I brewed one. I wasn’t trying to clone anything - just following a recipe. I had no particular expectations about the outcome and made some subtle changes to suit my taste .
Because most brewers like to add their own creative twist rather than following recipes verbatim, beer styles mutate and evolve in the homebrew world. Most homebrew saisons are probably quite different from the original style. Another curiosity is ESB, which is perceived as a British style, though there’s no such style over here - only one particular beer by Fullers (calling ESB a style is like saying SNPA is an example of an NPA). Now there’s a huge range of ESB recipes online, almost none of which are clones. All that diversity is great IMO. Authenticity is an overrated virtue.
You don’t have to follow styles all the time. Or ever. But you can learn a lot from the classics. They have lasted for a reason.
Exactly!