Recipe Thoughts

Hi everyone! It’s been a while mostly because it’s been HOT in Florida which means less brewing for me. Anyways, the last few 1-2 gallon extract batches I tried were not very good. Not sure if it’s because smaller batches leads to less room for error or these just aren’t great recipes. FWIW, these were all listed in Beersmith as decent recipes, which I either converted from All Grain and/or scaled down. I’ve posted them below, sorry for the long posting. Cheers and hope to be brewing again soon.

Modern Times Fortunate Island Clone (2 Gallon)
0.5 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 1 1.2 %
2 lbs 13.1 oz Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM) Extract 2 98.8 %
0.42 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 3 25.6 IBUs
0.40 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 4 -
0.14 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 5 5.0 IBUs
0.28 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min Hop 6 5.0 IBUs
0.14 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min Hop 7 4.5 IBUs
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 ml] Yeast 8 -
1.40 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 9 0.0 IBUs
0.36 oz Amarillo [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 10 0.0 IBUs

Two Hearted Clone (One Gallon)
1.3 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 1 5.1 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM) Dry Extract 2 94.9 %
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 3 49.7 IBUs
0.75 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min Hop 4 0.0 IBUs
0.5 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 5 -
2.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 6 0.0 IBUs

Three Floyds Gumballhead Clone (2 Gallon)
5.3 oz Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 1 8.2 %
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - First Wort 20.0 min Hop 2 27.8 IBUs
2 lbs Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 3 50.0 %
1 lbs 10.7 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 4 41.8 %
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min Hop 5 0.0 IBUs
0.4 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35.49 ml] Yeast 6 -
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 7 0.0 IBUs

What are you using for water? You might want to use a good filtered drinking water versus tap. Deer park/crystal geyser/ozarka/whatever is in your area.

Howdy Steve! I’m using distilled water at this point.

What are ya doing for fermentation temp control?

The Gumballhead recipe is off - Gumballhead is an American Wheat beer (and a really good one). So I’m assuming the ‘extra light DME’ should actually be wheat DME.

I’ve kept it very close using a big cooler with cool water and ice surrounding the glass fermenters. Generally staying within ±3 degrees of target temps.

Fixed, not sure why it didn’t paste earlier.

Looks more like some of the clone recipes out there now.

All you said was they didn’t taste very good.  What was wrong with them specifically?

That’s hard for me to express. They were simply not pleasant to drink. No off-flavors specifically like dactyl or cider, etc. I just assumed they were lackluster because of the simply malt and hop bills associated.

Try adding a few grams of gypsum and see if it brightens them up a bit. When you say lackluster thats what comes to mind.

I’m not familiar with the Modern Times beer, but have consumed plenty of the the Bells and 3F beers.  Both of them are single hop beers with uncomplicated malt bills.  Some of the best beers in the world have simple recipes.

The only time I brew a small batch is for weird experimental recipe beers.  The recipes you posted aren’t making complete sense to me since I think in terms of 5 gallon batches.

Let’s focus on Two Hearted.

Look at this recipe provided by a Bells employee:

Imgur

As you can see, a recipe some random guy uploads to the Beersmith cloud isn’t always a good clone recipe.

I agree that you have to be careful about trusting alleged clone recipes floating around the internet. Sometimes they are replicated from published clone recipes that come from the brewery through BYO or Zymurgy but other times it’s just some guy’s attempt at a recipe that got posted to a website.

So I took the above scanned Bell’s Two Hearted recipe and scaled down to one gallon attempting to see the differences in that recipe and mine. Looks like I added an absurd amount of hops (1.25 ounces vs. .25 ounces and 2 ounces dry hop vs. .67 ounces) and used a little less total malt. That might explain what I was tasting! I’ll give this one a try, thank you again!

hmmmmm … common clone theme I have always seen has 2 Hearted using some Light Munich in base malt… interesting/

If someone posted the same recipe looking for advice at any beer forum, the 45 min and 30 min hop additions would be panned and the hop schedule would be rearranged to 60/15/5/0 using more hops.  Someone would also question the need for Caramel malt and someone would question using pale malt to compliment the 2row.

Confused. Are you saying that there is no right way?

I think he is just commenting that the recipe doesn’t conform to standard ideals of IPA formulation. I’m not sure I agree. but your takeaway is just as good. there is no right way to achieve the beer YOU want to make. but if you want to make a clone of a particular beer there are ways that are more right than others.

The wisdom of the internet!

I know David and Ryan from Bells - they were at NHC - and both are good Homebrewers. The recipe has always looked good to me. Bells uses Briess as their primary maltster, so no surprise on the grain bill. Hops look good. One thing on dry hopping is to do it on the cool side, as I hear that is what they do. They also use special fermenters with very shallow cones, which I speculate give good contact area for the pellet hops that fall out, Bells uses pellets.

Edit, and you can follow John Mallets advice from the article on growing up a pitch of the house yeast from a bottle.

No.  There are many right ways to make a beer that is similar to Two Hearted.

My point is the recipe provided by Bells is their recipe.  It’s hard to get better than that if you want a clone, but since the hop schedule and malt bill is unusual compared to what many homebrewers use, you would likely get advice to change the hop schedule and malt bill, especially if you didn’t say the recipe was a Two Hearted clone.

If you posted the recipe elsewhere and said hey guys I’m getting ready to brew my first IPA, what do you think of this recipe?  The aforementioned suggestions would be made.  Not here, though.  :wink: