The only thing remotely close to Dirty Bastard might be the color but even that is hard to say for sure because the beer is so damned cloudy! The aroma is almost unpleasant. The flavor is nothing like Dirty Bastard or anything close to being rich an malty. The only thing it has going in its favor is that it isn't completely undrinkable. At around 8%ABV, if you can get through the first half pint then you don't notice the flaws any longer.
My first thought was that it was the recipe. And I'm still not convinced that it isn't a crap recipe. The major disappointment I had when searching for a clone is that there is basically only one recipe to be found on the interwebs.... and it can be found everywhere. I don't know where it originated but some of the earliest postings of this exact same recipe come from website forums dating back to 2005. There was even a homebrew store selling a Dirty Bastard Clone kit at about that time that used the exact same grain bill. My theory is that this single recipe went viral with brewers copying an pasting it in every website, forum and recipe discussion until, just like a virus, it eradicated every other version that my have existed.
So I decided to start from scratch with a proven, historic recipe from Ron Pattinson's book, Scotland vol. 2. I have my eye set on one called Burns Ale from Edinburgh's Drybrough brewery. It is a classic strong Scotch Ale and the ABV is close to Founders Dirty Bastard.
Problem solved right? Blame it on a rubbish recipe....but, to paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, it may be my own damned fault.
The ingredients I used were just as written in the clone recipe. The mash wasn't so far off as to have affected the outcome. However the boil might not have been vigorous enough. I discovered, and may have even mentioned in the brew day video that the Blichmann Boil Coil seems to hold a boil even with the power setting turned down to 50 percent. That may be enough to keep the wort boiling but it might not be vigorous enough to achieve volatilization to help drive off any or enough DMS.
The thing that flipped the switch was a completely random press of a button at the gym today. While on the treadmill I decided to listen to a podcast . The one I arbitrarily chose was from 2016 with Brad Smith of Beersmith podcasts talking with Dr. Charlie Bamforth on the topic of boiling home-brewed beer. And it hit me... the almost unpleasant aroma is somewhere between wet seaweed and creamed corn.
So now I have two paths to take. Either start from scratch with the Burns Ale and begin tweaking it to achieve Dirty Bastard status. Or re-brew the clone recipe I've already used but take greater care during the boil. I may just take both paths.
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