One of my 2019 goals is to develop a clone of one of my favorite beers, Dirty Bastard from Founders in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I began with two trains of thought. One was to start with a standard Scotch Ale of similar properties to Dirty Bastard. Then to tweak and modify that recipe until I reached an acceptable approximation.
The second was to find an existing clone recipe as my starting point. That is the path I chose. Hopefully someone else has already done the experimentation saving me time and money.
I had hoped to find one or two... maybe three different recipes so I could compare what was common to them all and maybe weed out the unnecessary ingredients. Homebrewers have a habit of using every type of specialty grain they see on the shelf... or leftovers they have on hand and want to get rid of.
Brew day was not without its issues. Once again I missed my mash temperature by nearly 9 degrees. One of three things is happening... maybe a combination of all of them. I either do not have my equipment profile correctly constructed in Beersmith. The temperature probes on my kettles are not calibrated properly giving me false readings. Or the system is losing more heat than I am used to between the transfer of water between the hot liquor tank and the mash tun.
Another issue is the gravity readings. I was getting varied readings from my refractometer ranging from exactly what I expected to very, very low. I chose to record the ones that I expected. Upon taking the OG just before pitching yeast however I was getting consistently low readings. Making me doubt everything else during the brew session. Nothing sucks more than not being sure you hit your targets.
The recipe: Some changes were noted during brew day... The East Kent Goldings were labeled as 6% alpha acids and the Perle 7.6%. Instead of a single package of Wyeast 1728 I used two packs in a 2.25 liter starter made the day before. Note: the measured gravity and alcohol content were not recorded. Those below are just what Beersmith thinks they are going to be.
I shot video on brew day but as I write this it is still uploading. You can watch it here with other brew day videos.
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