Why you ask? well let me tell you. I sent an email to them hoping to get an idea on the ingredients and some info on their Racer 5 IPA. I was not expecting much as I thought the recipes are pretty close to the cuff. Well, boy was I wrong. Not only did they give me their grain bill, in percentages but also gave e the hop schedule and some suggestions if things did not work out with the hops I got vs the hops they get. It was an amazing email that I was shocked to have gotten from a company that sells beer when I am asking, basically, to get their recipe so I can copy it. They have made a fan for life in me. RR
That is awesome. I find that they’ll either give you all or nothing. Glad they gave you all.
I love their beer and I love to visit the brewery even more. Need to get back out there.
I have never had a brewery not share a recipe. They have no reason not to. A recipe is only a small part of the beer.
And as we all now know, you cannot replicate any beer just from a recipe. There is more to beer than a recipe, and beer is more than just numbers in the BJCP guidelines.
I get it, honestly I do. But, for the guy to send me what he sent me was really cool. While I know I cannot recreate the wheel, I thought what he did for somebody who he does not know, and is asking for a recipe that is his, was pretty nice. I get that I cannot recreate it, and I am not going to try. But what I am going to do, is to take what he gave me and try and make something out of it. Will it be good? Who the hell knows. But will I try it? You damned right I will. Let’s not look at what I was asking, but let’s look at what I was given. A cool recipe that may or may not end up on my list of things to brew. I am very happy with what he did, I am just going to leave it at that. RR
Exactly – they don’t have to take the time to send you sh!t. Good on 'em
Would you mind sharing with us the recipe for Racer 5? I’m interested to see it.
Sure, I will send you what he sent me. Maybe amongst the group we can come up with our own twist on it. There are a few things in his email that I was not sure about, but did not want to ask. He went out of his way to send me what he did and I was grateful for what I got. I will do it tomorrow night when I am at work. Stay tuned. And if anybody has any additions or comments to add when I post it, please feel free to jump in. I am interested to hear and read what others think. RR
As I thought about it, would posting it here be alright? I know he sent it to me, and I assume it is ok to share, but I also don’t want to start any problems. I will leave it up to the mods to tell me it is ok to post it. For clarification, it is not an exact recipe, but the list of ingredients and percentages of each. And some suggestions on alternatives to use if hops don’t exactly bring in the taste that you are looking for.
Sure. They sent it to you. It’s not proprietary.
Perfect. I will cut and pate the email I was sent to another post in a bit.
I asked 3 Floyds about one of their beers (Zombie Dust?) and got shut down. On the other hand, I asked Revolution for tips on barrel aging and got a 3 page email with tips and tricks. Both are fine, some people might feel like they’ve put in a lot of work to develop a recipe and not want to share it. Others might take a more “Stood on the shoulders of giants” viewpoint.
Ok, it is a bit long, but here is what he sent me. Anybody who wants to offer input or suggestions on process or ingredient tweeks, that would be cool. Have fun with it, and if Bear Republic is in your local store I would hope you might consider buying it. This, to me, is way above and beyond what he could have done. Without further Ado:
Thank you for the kind words, and for supporting an independent family-owned craft brewery.
Without knowing the efficiencies of your system, I’ve written up some guidelines for a homebrew clone of Racer 5 IPA. You can scale the recipe to fit your mash efficiency, post-boil kettle volume, and volume in the fermenter.
We hand select lots of each variety of hops to hit the Bear Republic flavor and aroma, and the hops you have on hand may be different in character. That is where the art of the brewer comes in.
You may consider playing with adding a touch of Chinook in the WP or DH if your Cascades and Centennial are more citrusy than piney, or adding a touch of Citra if they are more piney than citrusy.
Similarly, you may scale back the Columbus in the dry hop if they have more than a hint of diesel or onion. I find that Bravo or Apollo can punch up the pine & citrus of a dank lot of Columbus.
Best of luck!
Racer 5 IPA Homebrew Recipe – 7.5% ABV
Target OE (Plato)
17
Target TE (Plato)
3.4
Mash Temp (F)
152
Two-Row
85%
White Wheat Malt
10%
C-15
5%
Chinook
60
15 BU
Cascade
60
15 BU
Cascade
30
30 BU
Cascade
WP
.17oz/gal
Centennial
WP
.08oz/gal
Cascade
DH
.23oz/gal
Columbus
DH
.17oz/gal
Centennial
DH
0.6oz/gal
Amarillo
DH
0.6oz/gal
Funny thing, when I was looking for the Space Dust recipe, I found Zombie dust clone and thought that was the Space Dust. But as I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t. There is a clone recipe out there, but the one I printed is filed in my beer book and is under a bunch of crap right now.
Thanks for posting. Interesting the rather high final gravity, since the grain bill is pretty darn fermentable. He didn’t happen to mention the yeast, but I guess any neutral west coast ale yeast would work.
That seems to be true for a number of the Bear Republic beers I’ve talked to them about.