Maui Brewing Big Swell IPA

Anyone have a clone for this beer? It has been a favorite of mine for the past year or so. I've tried one shot at it with 85 percent two row, 10 percent munich, 5 percent Crystal 40. Hopped with Northern Brewer for bitterness, and Cascade and Amarillo for both flavor and aroma. It came out good, but isn't exactly the same beer. It is missing the BOLD, Flavorful hop flavor. Anyone tried it and or can improve on these ideas?

Thanks,

Greg

You can try to use more "C" hops at knockout, or even dry hop.

Did you try their website? http://www.mauibrewingco.com/mbc/MBCCannedBeer.html

I've only had a couple cans but remember the bitterness being rather mild and the hop aroma vivid but not too grapefruity. Here is my stab at the hop schedule:

1.00 oz Columbus [15.20 %] (60 min) (FWH) 50.1 IBU
0.50 oz Centennial [7.80 %] (60 min) (FWH) 12.9 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo [9.60 %] (Dry Hop 14 days)
1.00 oz Centennial [7.80 %] (Dry Hop 14 days)
1.00 oz Cascade [7.00 %] (Dry Hop 14 days)

Big Swell is a frigging fantastic IPA. I go through a case of the stuff every year at the timeshare. I'll definitely be trying any recipes you guys come up with.

Cone and Poo, thanks for the hop advice. I have looked at their website, but never found the page you linked me to. Thanks! I see I got the cascade and amarillo, and was missing the centennial and the CTZ. I've never used columbus, but I can get it here in Hawaii, not sure about T or Z. I'm brewing single gallon test batches for the time being, so maybe I'll skip the high alpha CTZ and do a bigger bittering addition with a mix of Centennial, Cascade, and Amarillo. That oughta taste great.

CTZ means columbus, zeus, tomahawk which are the same hop with different marketing names.

Have not had the beer but are you sure they are not using CTZ late or dry? Lots of modern IPAs do. Poobah says not too grapefruity and I used to do centennial, cascade and amarillo together in an IPA and it was a grapefruit bomb.

Remilard: I am not sure when Maui Brewing is adding their hops... They just say online what they are using. After just tasting another of my first attempt, I really got it all wrong. It is a good IPA, but just not a good clone of Big Swell.

To revise my recipe I will use the standard malt bill from Zainascheff/Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles for American IPA.

85% Two Row
5% Munich
9% Crystal 15
2% Crystal 40

Single infusion @ 149 for 90 minutes.

I'm going to give it a go with Poobah's suggestion, because really, why not?! It is only a gallon batch, and I'll have plenty of hops left over to experiment with this clone...

BTW, to those interested, I am going to contact Maui Brewing this week and see if they will give me some info... Can't hurt!

HIbrew

Let us know what they say!

HIbrew said:

Remilard:

BTW, to those interested, I am going to contact Maui Brewing this week and see if they will give me some info... Can't hurt!

HIbrew

Click to expand...

Any luck with cloning the Big Swell IPA?

I'm brewing a 5 gallon batch of this beer using Zainascheff/Palmer's malt bill and Poobah's hop schedule. I'll report how it turns out.

AHA! I finally got home from sea and contacted the Brewmaster. I got a great run down of the hopping schedule, though no exact amounts. They included several hops that were not on the original list we had here.


Bittering: Columbus (90min)
Flavor/Bittering: Centennial/Chinook (30 min)
Flavor/Aroma: Chinook/Simcoe (10 min)
Flavor/Aroma: Citra/Amarillo/Cascade (steep after boil)
Dry Hop: Citra/Amarillo/Cascade

So. I'm going to brew a two row based mild IPA with Munich, Crystal 15L and Carapils, and scale these hops to hopefully get something similar.

Oh, and they said English Ale yeast... Anyone else find that surprising?

"Oh, and they said English Ale yeast... Anyone else find that surprising?"

Nope, I'm finding I like the English Ale yeasts a lot in American IPAs lately. That Big Swell is nice. I was also shocked by their Blonde when I was in Honolulu recently. I spent a lot of time over at the Kona pub too and liked their beers.

I had a Kona Coffee, Macadamia, Coconut Porter this past July in Maui which is a Maui Brewery/Stone collaboration that was absolutely phenominal. A rich porter with just a hint of Kona coffee. Highly recommended if you can find it.

http://www.stonebrew.com/collab/default.asp

http://www.examiner.com/craft-beer-...macadamia-coconut-porter-seductive-and-exotic

Its been a while since this post was active, but maybe someone had any luck with this clone? And what yeast to use?