Mon Feb 08, 2010 1:34 pm
Thanks all for the feedback, that was definitely a show where the consensus was mixed! I honestly thought that to my palate it was 95%+ cloned. However, Jamil and Justin were definitely picking up other fermentation flavors that were undetectable to me - especially when it came to the dryness of the beer. To make sure I wasn't just fooling myself, I went back home & re-measured the gravity of the homebrew batch with a couple different hydrometers: 1.009. Very interesting. I think that the commercial beer is either finishing lower or maybe even starting lower (all the while keeping the same IBU, and the additional alcohol might increase the perceived sweetness) Keep those things in mind if you want to clone this beer exactly 100% as Captain Lawrence is. I think the homebrew recipe we gave will get you VERY close, and you can tune your equipment & process from there.
We were definitely going in blind on this one, having not tried the commercial beer beforehand. This recipe makes a great beer, and one that I'm definitely going to re-brew just for my own enjoyment. I might re-pitch off WLP530 from a fresh batch of Belgian Single, otherwise I don't plan to change it as far as other hops, malt, yeast or process.
Hopefully the discussion was an interesting follow-up to some other ideas and techniques that have been proposed on other Brewing Network shows, and the back & forth dialogue was entertaining.. Cheers!!
-Nathan
Cheers! Kippis! Skål! Prost!
-Nathan Smith <nate@destroy.net>
Twitter: @nathanhomebrew