Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone – 2.0

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Nick Ladd

Another blog post, another Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone. The Verdict: Not Cloned.

Commercial beer on the left, homebrew on the right.

That said, we’re getting close.To start, here is the recipe that I brewed.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Cone 2.0 (Not Cloned)

Specifications:

Size: 3.25 gal
Efficiency: 68%
Attenuation: 80% (measured)

Original Gravity: 1.051
Terminal Gravity: 1.010 (measured)
Color: 10.86 SRM
Alcohol: 5.4% ABV (calculated)
Bitterness: 37.7 IBU (calculated)

Grist:

6.75 lb (94.7%) Briess 2-Row Brewers Malt
6 oz (5.3%) Briess Caramel 60L

Mash Regiment:

152 °F – Sacc Rest – 60min

Water Treatment:

Extremely Soft NYC Water
4g Gypsum (to mash)
2g Calcium Chloride (to mash)

Hopping:

9 g Magnum (12.6% AA) – 60 m
8 g Perle (8.7% AA) – 30 m
8 g Cascade (6.9% AA) – 10 m
72 g Cascade (6.9% AA) – Whirlpool 15m

Kettle Additions:

0.5 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) – 15 m
0.5 tsp Wyeast Nutrient – 10 mYeast:

Yeast:

WYeast 1056 American Ale™ Starter on stirplate to achieve 1 million cells per milliliter of wort per degree Plato. Use Mr. Malty to determine proper starter sized based on age of yeast package. Pitch into 60°F wort and allow to free rise to 64°F. As fermentation begins to slow, raise temperature to 70°F.

The Results

While there are some recipe changes in store for the next iteration, this beer primarily misses the mark on technical merits. Most noticeably my beer has a touch of honeyed oxidized malt character with perhaps a faint hint of diacetyl that is not present in the commercial beer.

I am typically very careful to limit O2 exposure, especially in fermented beer. In some ways, the oxidation of this beer is welcome as it is making me look critically at my process and think of ways I can limit O2 pickup. The biggest risk for oxidation in my process comes at two locations: the cold crash and packaging.

When I cold crash my beer, there is usually some suck-back of air into the fermenter due to a vacuum being pulled as the liquid’s volume decreases as it cools. I typically put a little CO2 head pressure on my beers as I cold crash in order to prevent this. With this beer, I got lazy and skipped this step. Nevermore!

The second biggest opportunity for O2 pickup is when I rack finished beer to my keg. I always purge the keg, but perhaps I am not always as careful as I should be in gently racking the beer and purging the racking cane or fermenter head space once it is opened up. In a perfect world, I would be doing a completely closed transfer — this is something I’m looking into and hope to implement in the future.

In terms of recipe, I believe the malt bill I am using is nearly perfect. There is a slight color difference between my beer and the commercial example, but I believe this has more to do with some yeast being suspended in the homebrew, and not a dramatic miss with the malt bill. I may bump up the crystal malt ever so slightly in the next round — perhaps only by a couple ounces.

The biggest recipe difference that I need to implement for the next round is in regard to flavor and aroma hops. The commercial beer has a substantial grapefruit pith and slightly spicy / herbal hop character. While this character is present in the homebrew, it is not nearly as intense. The homebrew’s bitterness level is spot on, but the aroma and flavor needs to be dramatically increased. For the next iteration of my recipe, I intend to boost the amount of late hopping at least by an order of 2 or 3 in order to get closer to the commercial beer.

Cloning Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Nick Ladd

Somehow, I’ve managed to never make a true attempt at cloning a commercial beer. This is somewhat regrettable as attempting to reproduce a reliably consistent commercial product is an opportunity to not only test your process controls, but also gain a true understanding of how certain ingredients and techniques can impact a final beer. Personally, no beer would be better for a clone attempt than Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Not only is this a beer that was very formative in my journey towards craft beer, it is also reliably available, fresh, and consistent.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on the left, homebrewed beer on the right.

The first step is researching the beer you’re trying to clone and establishing a set of specifications for that beer. In the case of Sierra Nevada Pale, their website provides a good starting point in terms of gravities, bitterness, and base ingredients. From there, a number of other websites and forums provide additional anecdotal stories and recipes that can inform your own formulation. With the research complete, I formulated the following recipe.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone Attempt (not Cloned)

Specifications:

Size: 3.25 gal
Efficiency: 68%
Attenuation: 75% (measured)

Original Gravity: 1.053
Terminal Gravity: 1.013 (measured)
Color: 11.79 SRM
Alcohol: 5.1% ABV (calculated)
Bitterness: 38.2 IBU (calculated)

Grist:

6.75 lb (93.1%) Briess 2-Row Brewers Malt
8 oz (6.9%) Muntons Crystal 60L

Mash Regiment:

153 °F – Sacc Rest – 30min

Water Treatment:

Extremely Soft NYC Water
4g Gypsum (to mash)
2g Calcium Chloride (to mash)

Hopping:

9 g Magnum (12.6% AA) – 60 m
8 g Perle (8.7% AA) – 30 m
8 g Cascade (6.9% AA) – 10 m
26 g Cascade (6.9% AA) – Whirlpool 15m

Kettle Additions:

0.5 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) – 15 m
0.5 tsp Wyeast Nutrient – 10 mYeast:

Yeast:

The Results

An important part of the cloning process is a critical review that involves consuming the beer side-by-side with the original, preferably blindly. This allows you to note critical differences which can be projected out to future recipe iterations. Unfortunately, my first attempt clearly did not result in a clone. This however is not a failure, as it allows me to make process and recipe changes to hopefully create a clone in future iterations. Below I’ve outlined the critical differences between my beer, and commercially available Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the changes I plan to incorporate into the next version of the beer.

Aroma:

The homebrew version of the beer has far more yeast character than the commercial beer. Specifically, my beer has a distinct floral and fruity ester (pear and berry) not present in the commercial beer. In future iterations, I plan to pitch a larger starter and provide additional oxidation of the wort to discourage the production of yeast esters.
The commercial beer has a brighter grapefruit pith and slightly herbal hop aroma. I plan to dramatically increase the whirlpool addition of cascade hops in my beer.
The homebrewed beer has a distinct dark fruit, dark caramel malt aroma. My original intention was to stick with American crystal malts, but was forced to substitute out British crystal malts due to availability. This had a huge impact on the final beer. I will stick to American maltsters in the next iteration.

Appearance

My beer appears a shade darker than the commercial beer. My beer has better head retention than the commercial beer. In the next recipe iteration, I will dial back the amount of crystal malt to lighten up the beer color.

Flavor

Again, my beer has a much richer, darker crystal malt character. This is the by-product of using British crystal malt. The choice of crystal malt made an enormous difference in the final beer. For the next version, I will stick to American maltsters.
My homebrewed version is lacking in the fresh cascade hop grapefruit pith flavor. I will dramatically increase the Cascade whirlpool addition in the next iteration of this recipe.
My homebrew is sweeter than the commercial version. The commercial beer attenuates to approximately 79% apparent attenuation. My version only attenuated to 75%. I will mash lower for the next version of the recipe to attempt to further dry out the beer.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has a slightly grainy / tannic finish. This is likely a byproduct of high levels of sugar extraction. I will attempt to boost my extract efficiency for the next version of the beer.
My homebrew is less bitter than the commercial version. Increasing my whirlpool additions should bring the beer closer in line with the commercial version.

Goose Island King Henry Clone Attempt

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Nick Ladd

For those of you not immersed in the world of commercial beer geekery, let me tell you a story. This is the tale of a noble and regal beer. King Henry as he was called began his life as a massive English Barley Wine from the Goose Island brewery. Once fermented, he was left to rest inside oak casks which began their life holding Pappy Van Winkle bourbon and later the Rare variant of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout. After an extended slumber, the sweet nectar was packaged and released to the masses for enthusiastic consumption and hoarding within dark cellars. King Henry became well-known throughout the land and developed a reputation of mythical stature.

Goose Island last released King Henry in 2011. Now that Goose Island is an AB-InBev owned and produced brand, it is pretty unlikely that it will ever be brewed again.

Beautiful viscous wort recirculating during my mash-out step. My new cobbled together recirculation diffuser worked well.

Now some bad news — I’m not going to publish the recipe for this clone.

A homebrewing friend of mine was able to obtain the precise recipe from which the commercial beer was produced. With this information in hand, I was able to accurately formulate a scaled down homebrew recipe. This information was given to me with the caveat of not sharing it with the world.

As much as I wish that I could publish the recipe, Goose Island’s website actually gives some good information which can be used to formulate a recipe. Key metrics such as ABV and IBUs are listed, as are the malts and hops used. I can verify that my recipe is very much in line with the ingredients listed on the Goose Island website. The signature malt in this beer is a seasonal product called Caracrystal from by Briess Malting — something that the recipe formulation should account for.

I built up a massive pitch of yeast with the hope of fermenting out this extremely high gravity beer. Violent fermentation ensued, which is only now tapering down a week later. Once terminal gravity is hit, I intend to rack the beer into split secondaries containing oak cubes treated with varying spirits. With some luck, this beer will be finished and packaged sometime in February or March 2014. Stay tuned for a full review then!