{"id":741,"date":"2014-04-13T20:51:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T20:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebottlefarm.com\/ProjetsThoughts2\/?p=741"},"modified":"2014-04-27T15:10:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T15:10:04","slug":"brewing-daisy-cutter-clone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/brewing-daisy-cutter-clone\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewing Daisy Cutter pale ale Clone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMGThis is the story of how I decided to brew a clone of daisy cutter pale ale, and my plans hone the recipe. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve brewed at home and it feels longer since I\u2019ve brewed a good hoppy beer. I\u2019ve felt either rushed, distracted, or otherwise I screwed up my last few batches. Coincidence or not, I also haven\u2019t brewed a really hoppy pale ale in some time. I won\u2019t go into the details here, I\u2019ve already shared one failure on Facebook<\/a>. Lets just say I could really use a win. Early this year I decided I was going to try to dial in my brewing, calling it the year of calibration. I am trying to both harden my brewing process, and add process controls. That way I can know how specifically I brewed a beer, which will allow me to reproduce success, and improve upon the beer in future batches. I haven\u2019t been terribly consistent with either process or equipment in my last few batches. I think I\u2019ve made my last major changes for a while, and my hope is that I can take this beer, evaluate it, \u00a0access the recipe and brewing process, then brew it again making only slight changes to the process.<\/p>\n

What better way to brew a good beer than with an unproven recipe. I first had Daisy Cutter from Half Acre Brewing company on a business trip in the fall of 2010. It was very enjoyable, but only available in the greater Chicago area. So, I decided to ask the head brewer Matt Gallagher for some tips on brewing a clone and he was very gracious to share recipe details with me.<\/p>\n

\n
5.2 ABV, OG 11.5 Plato<\/div>\n
Malt<\/div>\n
2-row<\/div>\n
Briess Victory (~3%)<\/div>\n
Briess Special Roast\u00a0(~3%)<\/div>\n
Castle Ambre (aromatic)\u00a0(~3%)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
hops,\u00a0~\u00a060\u00a0IBU<\/div>\n
Bitter\u00a0with\u00a0warrior<\/div>\n
centennial\u00a0@\u00a030<\/div>\n
Centennial\u00a0+\u00a0amarillo\u00a0@\u00a015<\/div>\n
Amarillo\u00a0+\u00a0Columbus\u00a0+\u00a0Simcoe\u00a0@\u00a0end\u00a0of\u00a0boil<\/div>\n
Dry\u00a0hop\u00a0with\u00a0Amarillo,\u00a0Simcoe,\u00a0Centennial,\u00a0and\u00a0Columbus<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With those details in mind, I was able to design this recipe. I used\u00a0brewers friend<\/a>\u00a0to predict and adjust mash ph with acid malt.\u00a0I wrote a big brew plan down with all of the details, what to bring up, times and temps, volumes, etc. I double checked my recipe.\u00a0I checked my mash schedule and temps, I checked my water volumes, and hop additions.<\/p>\n

One of the goals brewing this batch was to not be rushed into a mistake. I frequently try to squeeze in a brew night when I don\u2019t have the time. It causes me to make mistakes, like forgetting to include 1\/2 my grain bill, rushing sparging, and skipping important measurements. This time I gave myself enough lead time to make it work. \u00a0I measured my grains, and hops. I set the gap on my grain mill. I brought up a majority of my brewing gear. I made my yeast starter. I calibrated my beer bug<\/a>. I filtered my water. I calibrated my thermometers. I measured the ph of my filtered water. I ran an issue when trying to mill my grain. I loaded the hopper before turning it on, jamming it, and it spun one of the pulleys. My attempts to clear it failed, and I had to disassemble the mill and adjust my rollers. Eventually I was able to mill all my grain for this recipe. I was able to accomplish all of this well before brew time, and I was as ready to brew as I could be.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

My brew night got off to a good, but late start at around 9:15 pm. I took a final milled grain temp and mash tun temp and plugged them into BeerSmith to get my target strike temp.\u00a0I set the chef alarm<\/a> to warn me when strike water got to temp while I finished my final preperations. Just as my friend showed up to supervise \/ distract \/ chat it was time to mash in. As I added the grain he stirred vigorously. A few readings later and I was reading 153\/154. A little higher than I intended, but shouldn\u2019t be too bad. I took mash ph, about 20 minutes too late. The strips read between 4.6\/5.0, which is to be expected according to Kai\u2019s summary<\/a>, which puts mash ph around 5.1 ish. I took a conversion test at about 50 minutes and it looked fully converted. I added a half gallon of 170* water for the first batch, and cracked the handle on the ball valve to gather my first runnings and nothing came out. I tried blowing out the line, I tried adding extra hot water and nothing was working. I thought about adding rice hulls, but I didn\u2019t have any. I had to resort to transferring the mash to my polarware boil kettle with false bottom to lauter the mash. Before transferring the mash, I added the rest of the mash water, then added the mash. I was hoping to float some of the mash to prevent the grain from being forced into the false bottom. After transferring, I let the it settle for 20 minutes before trying to run off. It ran fine, and I managed to collect a bit more than my desired run off, and I was slightly under my expected pre boil gravity (1.038). Not terrible, but, could have been better.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

Once ran off and on the heat, it was getting quite late, my friend called it a night, boil finally arrived at 12:47am. Boil was uneventful. I chilled to somewhere near 190, and added my whirlpool hops in a hop bag. I once again had a chef alarm probe failure, and I\u2019m unsure exactly how low the temp got before I realized the probe was acting flaky. I did let it set 15\/20 minutes at the slightly chilled temperature. Then removed the hops and chilled well beyond pitching temp to 54. I pulled a sample and took gravity 1.048. This matched my refractometer at the end of boil. I removed my immersion chiller, whirl pooled the kettle with my spoon, then allowed it to settle another 20 minutes. At that point I transferred a full 3 gallons to my carboy. It was too much actually and I needed to dump a little bit to make room for my yeast starter. I then hit it with 15 seconds of pure 02. I put my carboy into a water bath set at 64, and put my beer bug on the carboy, leveled the beer bug<\/a>, then called it a brew night. When all was said and done it was 3am.<\/p>\n

When I checked the beer\u2019s logging progress<\/a> the next morning, I saw some erratic logging. When I checked on the carboy in the basement, it was already bubbling away. It was nearing blow off so had to swap to a blow off tube. Over the course of fermentation, using the\u00a0beer bug<\/a>\u00a0I watched my gravity. \u00a0When it was stable for a two days at 1.013 I transferred to dry hop.\u00a0I was able to transfer the beer under gas, using a carboy cap, a male mfl, and my co2 tank. This is something new I tried, so I can avoid exposing the beer to oxygen. I\u2019m planning on dry hopping the beer for at least 4, but no more than 5 days. I expect to be able to pour this beer in about 15 days, and I can\u2019t wait to see how it is. The fermenter sample was a lacking in hop flavor that I was really hoping to see.
\nRecipe:
\nhttp:\/\/beersmithrecipes.com\/viewrecipe\/404166\/sb-daisy-cutter-clone-all-grain
\nDiscussion about the Recipe:
\nhttp:\/\/www.homebrewtalk.com\/f12\/daisy-cutter-pale-ale-134814\/<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

While I don\u2019t have a glass of this in my hand yet, these are my initial plans for next time.<\/p>\n

Send off my ward labs water test.
\nIdentify water additions to make my hop flavor pop.
\nGap my grain mill.
\nStart the mill first, then add grains.
\nUse a BIAB bag in the mash tun.
\nAvoid submerging the chefalarm probe into the mash tun \/ boil kettle.
\nUse the blow off tube from the start.
\nGet a thermowell for the beer bug\u2019s external probe thermometer<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any recipe changes planned yet, It will depend on the feed back I\u2019m able to solicit from my peers.<\/p>\n

What worked and I want to make sure to do next time:
\nPrinting my recipe, check list, and brewing plan, and using a clipboard.
\nUse the chef alarm to warn me when strike water is approaching temp.
\nEstimating mash ph using brewers friend.
\nUsing a bag for whirlpool hops made cleaning up \/ running off much easier.
\nMonitoring fermentation using the Beer Bug.<\/p>\n

Updated 4\/26 to include recipe, and recipe notes from brewer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve brewed at home and it feels longer since I\u2019ve brewed a good beer. I\u2019ve felt either rushed, distracted, or otherwise I screwed up my last few batches. Coincidence or not, I also haven\u2019t brewed a really hoppy pale ale in some time. I won\u2019t go into the details here, I\u2019ve already shared one failure on Facebook. Lets just say I could really use a win. Early this year I decided I was going to try to dial in my brewing, calling it the year of calibration. I am trying to both harden my brewing process, and add process controls. That way I can know how specifically I brewed a beer, which will allow me to reproduce success, and improve upon the beer in future batches. I haven\u2019t been terribly consistent with either process or equipment in my last few batches. I think I\u2019ve made my last major changes for a while, and my hope is that I can take this beer, evaluate it, access the recipe and brewing process, then brew it again making only slight changes to the process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[117,36,37,6,12,139,140],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects-and-thoughts","tag-117","tag-all-grain","tag-american-pale-ale","tag-brew-log","tag-clone","tag-daisy-cutter","tag-the-beer-bug"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}