Hopalicious clone

Ale Asylum here in Madison brews a great pale ale called Hopalicious. If you can get your hands on one, give it a try!
Hopalicious

Anyone have a clone recipe?

Man - I wish some would work on cloning ALL their beers.

I've tried so many craft brews from everywhere and find the best microbrewery I know of is 1 block from my best friends house.

I agree. To my tastes, Hopalicious is one of the most drinkable, flavorful beers.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to go about even attempting a cloning.

Resurrecting in looking for Hopalicious info - one thing making it difficult is that Ale Asylum is NOTORIOUS for being borderline dick-ish about not sharing any beer info whatsoever. In the Great Taste of the Midwest programs over the past years, they include the statement "We do not share any OG, IBU, etc. information"...

It'd be great for someone with a better palate than mine to reverse engineer this beauty.

Anyone? anyone?

+1 on the shout out to Ale Asylum. Their APA, AAA, BIPA, IPA, and DIPA are absolutely fantastic.

To clone Ambergeddon, I'd recommend Bobby M's Magnarillocent Amber Ale with dry hopping some centennial and amarillo. Farmhouse Brewing Supply in Janesville has deals on these hops right now. I brewed this last winter and was pretty much dead on.

To clone Hopalicious, I just brewed an APA with the following grain bill, and it is awesome...

12 lbs US 2 Row (Farmhouse has Breiss Organic)
7 lbs Vienna
1 lb Kiln Amber (or perhaps Aromatic or Victory???)
1 lb 10L or 15L
1 lb CaraPils

You will then have to get creative with the "11 different cascade hop additions." With the very clean bitterness, nice aftertaste and amazing aroma, I can only assume that most all of these additions are late boil and dry hopping. I would shoot for 32 to 36 IBU's with your brewing software by adding just a small amount early boil and numerous amounts late boil (60, 20, 15, 10, 7, 4, 2, 1, 0, DH, etc.). Again, John at Farmhouse has 'American Hop Pack' for good deals on Cascades.

I not a huge fan for some Belgian Pale Ales, but their Bedlam BIPA is mighty tasty! Ben at Wine and Hop Shop mentioned their Jackknife Pale Ale (centennial with some citra hops) with a Belgian yeast would get you close.

Ballistic IPA is an all-Amarillo. There are many recipes on the forum that should be similar. Not too sure about their DIPA, except that they load in the centennial hops.

I highly recommend this brewery to anyone passing through Madison! They've rocked these styles, and it's a quick detour off the interstate 90/94/39. Cheers!

DuffMantt said:

To clone Ambergeddon, I'd recommend Bobby M's Magnarillocent Amber Ale with dry hopping some centennial and amarillo. Farmhouse Brewing Supply in Janesville has deals on these hops right now. I brewed this last winter and was pretty much dead on.

Click to expand...

Totally dead on. I have an extract recipe I made using your suggestion and everyone loves it, even the medal winners in my homebrew club. Turned out near 8% but no one noticed.

I brewed a Hopalicious clone yesterday using DuffMantt's advice. I "only" did 8 hop addditions. Recipe is below. I'll report back in a few weeks and let you know how it went!

Batch Size: 5.25 gal
OG: 1.059 SG
Color: 6.6 SRM
IBU: 36.8 IBUs
ABV: 6.0%
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Mash: 152 for 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name
7.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
3.50 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 30.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 10.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 1.0 min
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) (1L starter)
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days

@swstim thanks for trying that. I hope it makes a nice, well balanced apa. Thinking about it for the last 1.5 years since I posted that, I might add a FWH addition to add a different dimension of the hop flavor, and it seems that Hopalicious is fairly light colored, so I'm not sure if Dean at Ale Asylum adds malt complexity with wheat malt or what??? With the victory and Vienna in my suggested recipe, it might be slightly darker.

@NoDoubt glad you liked the Ambergeddon clone! You made a huge ABV version - I have the ingredients for a session version: tons of centennial and Amarillo for flavor and aroma at about 4.5 abv. Looking forward to this...

And the results... (recipe in post #8 above)

Mine on the left, commercial Hopalicious on the right.

First impressions - They're very close. Closest clone I've done.

Color - Clone is slightly too dark. I did a comparo a couple days before this picture was taken and I swore the color was identical.

Aroma - Cascade is definitely right for this. Hopalicious has a nice earthy aroma that's less in mine. Next time I would try double dry hopping, or more.

Bitterness - Mine has a bit of a harsh bitterness that's not present in H. I would dial the IBU back by 5 for next time and go with FWH as DuffMantt suggests.

Malt - Very close. I wouldn't change the grain bill for a redo except to dial everything back slightly; maybe just skip the carapils. I ended up on the plus side of 6%; should be a touch less which is reflected a bit in the flavor. I like the balance however, so bringing the grain bill down a touch with the IBU should keep the ratio about the same.

Other - Lacing is better (as usual) with the homebrew. Also, Hopalicious has a ton of hop solids floating around (somewhat visible in the photo) that aren't in mine. I didn't filter, or even secondary for that matter, but I did cold condition and then keg condition for a couple weeks.

I hope someone benefits from this; please reply back if you give it a shot!

swstim, nice job doing this. Sounds like it turned out to be a decent cascade apa. I'd be curious to see how scaling back the grain bill as you mentioned would contribute.

BTW, just brewed a session Ambergeddon clone last night ~ 4.5 abv target. Smells great bubbling away in the primary...

swstim said:

And the results... (recipe in post #8 above)

Mine on the left, commercial Hopalicious on the right.

First impressions - They're very close. Closest clone I've done.

Color - Clone is slightly too dark. I did a comparo a couple days before this picture was taken and I swore the color was identical.

Aroma - Cascade is definitely right for this. Hopalicious has a nice earthy aroma that's less in mine. Next time I would try double dry hopping, or more.

Bitterness - Mine has a bit of a harsh bitterness that's not present in H. I would dial the IBU back by 5 for next time and go with FWH as DuffMantt suggests.

Malt - Very close. I wouldn't change the grain bill for a redo except to dial everything back slightly; maybe just skip the carapils. I ended up on the plus side of 6%; should be a touch less which is reflected a bit in the flavor. I like the balance however, so bringing the grain bill down a touch with the IBU should keep the ratio about the same.

Other - Lacing is better (as usual) with the homebrew. Also, Hopalicious has a ton of hop solids floating around (somewhat visible in the photo) that aren't in mine. I didn't filter, or even secondary for that matter, but I did cold condition and then keg condition for a couple weeks.

I hope someone benefits from this; please reply back if you give it a shot!

Click to expand...

I'll try your modified recipe this weekend.

swstim said:

And the results... (recipe in post #8 above)

/
I hope someone benefits from this; please reply back if you give it a shot!

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! I have been looking for a recipe and will be brewing your recipe in a couple weeks with your suggestions!

swstim said:

I brewed a Hopalicious clone yesterday using DuffMantt's advice. I "only" did 8 hop addditions. Recipe is below. I'll report back in a few weeks and let you know how it went!

Batch Size: 5.25 gal
OG: 1.059 SG
Color: 6.6 SRM
IBU: 36.8 IBUs
ABV: 6.0%
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Mash: 152 for 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name
7.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
3.50 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 30.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 10.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 1.0 min
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) (1L starter)
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days

Click to expand...

I brewed this a couple of months ago. I followed pretty much the exact same recipe. My OG was 1.052 in about 5.5 gal.

Fermented at 71 deg with 1056 but I hit a FG of 1.004 so pretty low, I always seem to go lower than the FG I want and can't figure out why.

I racked to secondary for a week to dry hop, cold crashed and added gelatin. Then bottled for 3 weeks.

Tasted the first bottle tonight and the color is very good. A slight hazy golden color, not as amber as ale asylum based on the pictures. I moved away from Madison a year ago and can't remember exactly the beer color.

Taste is a little off to me. Not bad, just not as hoppy as I remember. I don't know how, since the hop additions are crazy. But I wonder if my high attenuation is a cause of this?

Anyways, its pretty good and I'm happy with the results. I suspect I won't get hop appearance as the bottles age. So going back I might up the hops a tiny bit and maybe dry hop with 2 oz.

Thanks so much for the recipe. I think this is one I would love to try again and it brings me back to the Madison days, which ain't always bad

I've seen this bottled before. Which I suppose isn't that big of a deal since you could look at their whole operation while standing in the bar at their old location. But, I believe they also run the beer through a Randall type of device right before they bottle it to give it really fresh hop aroma.