Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Beers to be Cloned or Bettered!

Last week I picked up the current edition of Brew Your Own magazine as something to read while chilling out by the pool and enjoying the Virginia evening sunshine. On a side note, we have had fantastic weather here since arriving from South Carolina, temperatures in the mid 80s (high 20s for my European readers), and almost wall to wall sunshine. Ideal for sitting by the pool and reading.

Anyway, back to beer, this edition has a selection of clone brews for both the all grain and extract with grains brewer, which got me thinking about the beers in this world I would love to eventually learn to "clone". So far in my homebrewing ventures I have mainly messed around with established styles, such as the smoked chocolate porter I did last time round.

Even so, here are a few of the beers I would love to clone - on that basis that I can't buy the original here in Virginia:

  • Wrassler's XXXX from the Porterhouse in Dublin, a simply magnificent stout which I could happily spend a rainy afternoon pouring down my throat, while watching the rugby.
  • Samurai IPA from Kocour back in the Czech Republic - what a flavourful and drinkable beer that was, and a great beer to drink almost daily in my last month in Prague.
  • Kout na Šumavě's entire range, in particular the 10˚.
  • Schumacher Alt - had it in Berlin at an arts festival, love at first sip.

One beer I either want to emulate or better is the English Pale Ale from Primátor, which was Mrs Velkyal's favourite beer when back in Prague, so to have something of that merit would be a cap in the feather!

7 comments:

  1. I picked up a compendium of clone recipes a while back, which I'm pretty sure BYO produced. Lots of good stuff in there.

    Which sets up my next topic quite nicely: how about a we collaborate on a giant batch of Timothy Taylor Landlord?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oo-er missus!!! Timothy Taylor Landlord would be a grand beer to clone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wrasslers? Dead easy: take a bucket of Galena, stick your head in it, and you're done.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What are your plans for a lagering facility? We've made delicious lagers, but they're rough round the edges (we flatter ourselves that they're authentically Franconian...) because we don't have decent temperature control.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think the lagers are something I will have to consider for later in the year when the storage room is cooler.

    When I start doing lagers I want to do a proper triple decoction mash, and of course use Saaz hops in an attempt to recreate a good Czech pilsner.

    ReplyDelete
  6. For Pilsner's or Lagers and if doing small batches. Buy an old refrigerator and a thermometer. Work to get it so it hold the steady temp you need and temp is no longer a problem. Used this when I was in the states and unless your power goes out you have no fluctuation of temp. You also need the space to run this though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am planning to get a fridge for lagering when I start to make them, as well as for cold conditioned ales like Alt and Kolsch. Also planning on using polypins for dispense to cut down on the number of bottles floating around the place.

    ReplyDelete

Homebrew - Cheaper than the Pub?

The price of beer has been on my mind a fair bit lately. At the weekend I kicked my first keg of homebrew for the 2024, a 5.1% amber kellerb...