Trying to nail a Sweetwater 420 Clone

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bd2xu

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For anyone who's been in the Southeast, you've likely come across Sweetwater Brewery and their #1 beer is their 420 Extra Pale Ale. This was my go-to beer for years, always had the fridge stocked with it. I'm trying to get a good clone, this would become my "house" pale ale.

I need to build my pipeline up a little so am looking to do a 10 gallon extract batch this time (due to time and my HLT and MLT not quite big enough).

Based on a couple recipes I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, I came up with this in beer smith (took a 5 gallon all grain recipe and doubled, then converted using beer smith). Would love to get some sets of eyes on this before I buy the ingredients and would like to brew this week.

12 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)
1 lbs Amber liquid extract
7 lbs Carapils/Dextrine (steep)
1 lbs Caravienne (steep)
2 oz cascade 50 minutes
2 oz cascade 25 minutes
1 oz cascade 5 minutes
1 oz cascade flameout
ferment with S-05 or 1056
dry hop with 2 oz cascade

8 Lbs seems like a lot of specialty grain to steep, even for a 10 gallon batch?
 
bd2xu said:
For anyone who's been in the Southeast, you've likely come across Sweetwater Brewery and their #1 beer is their 420 Extra Pale Ale. This was my go-to beer for years, always had the fridge stocked with it. I'm trying to get a good clone, this would become my "house" pale ale.

I need to build my pipeline up a little so am looking to do a 10 gallon extract batch this time (due to time and my HLT and MLT not quite big enough).

Based on a couple recipes I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, I came up with this in beer smith (took a 5 gallon all grain recipe and doubled, then converted using beer smith). Would love to get some sets of eyes on this before I buy the ingredients and would like to brew this week.

12 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)
1 lbs Amber liquid extract
7 lbs Carapils/Dextrine (steep)
1 lbs Caravienne (steep)
2 oz cascade 50 minutes
2 oz cascade 25 minutes
1 oz cascade 5 minutes
1 oz cascade flameout
ferment with S-05 or 1056
dry hop with 2 oz cascade

8 Lbs seems like a lot of specialty grain to steep, even for a 10 gallon batch?

Ok how in the hell did this happen? Ended up using a recipe that was 12 lbs of dme and 8 lbs of specialty grain that I steeped for 30 mins. According to beersmith it was supposed to be 1.058 OG but came out at 1.074!?! This is going to be a big pale ale.
 
Hopefully you didn't really use a recipe with 7 pounds of carapils!

If you post the actual recipe (hope that's not it!), we can help you figure it out.
 
bd2xu said:
Ok how in the hell did this happen? Ended up using a recipe that was 12 lbs of dme and 8 lbs of specialty grain that I steeped for 30 mins. According to beersmith it was supposed to be 1.058 OG but came out at 1.074!?! This is going to be a big pale ale.

Here's my reading. How is this possible with 12 lbs dme in a 10 gallon batch? I ended up putting right at 10 gallons into primaries.

image-103209380.jpg


image-663277993.jpg
 
I really hope you didn't use 7 lbs of carapils. Hopefully you meant to say 7 oz because that sounds like a good carapils addition. But 7 lbs would definitely explain your high OG. If I were you I would start planning my next attempt. Carapils is highly unfermentable and with that much in there, your beer will probably finish with a riduculously high FG. I would advise using no carapils because almost all extract already has carapils in it. Also, why not do a partial mash? If you have the ability to do all-grain why not do as much grain as you can and add extract to bring it to the correct gravity? The less extract you can use, the better.
 
peterj said:
I really hope you didn't use 7 lbs of carapils. Hopefully you meant to say 7 oz because that sounds like a good carapils addition. But 7 lbs would definitely explain your high OG. If I were you I would start planning my next attempt. Carapils is highly unfermentable and with that much in there, your beer will probably finish with a riduculously high FG. I would advise using no carapils because almost all extract already has carapils in it. Also, why not do a partial mash? If you have the ability to do all-grain why not do as much grain as you can and add extract to bring it to the correct gravity? The less extract you can use, the better.

No I took that recipe to LHBS and they said same thing about carapils. Guess you have to be careful with beersmith conversions. They set me up with their 420 clone which is 12 lbs dme and 8 lbs of a combo of carapils, Vienna, Munich and crustal. Only one lbs of carapils. I plugged in what they gave me in beersmith and it said 1.058 just like their recipe. Somehow I got 1.074. Didn't think about pm for this but just wanted to keep this one simple, my first 10 gallon batch.
 
With 8 lbs of grains you really need to do a mash. Also, Vienna and Munich both need to be mashed. Hopefully you got some conversion while you were steeping. What temperature did you steep at? and for how long?

As far as the high OG, maybe your efficiency was higher than you estimated. You could have just extracted more sugars (hopefully sugars and not starches) from the grains than your recipe calculated.
 
peterj said:
With 8 lbs of grains you really need to do a mash. Also, Vienna and Munich both need to be mashed. Hopefully you got some conversion while you were steeping. What temperature did you steep at? and for how long?

As far as the high OG, maybe your efficiency was higher than you estimated. You could have just extracted more sugars (hopefully sugars and not starches) from the grains than your recipe calculated.

The steeping started a little hot, about 170, it reduced to about 158 in 30 minutes, then removed.
 
With 8 lbs of grains you really need to do a mash. Also, Vienna and Munich both need to be mashed. Hopefully you got some conversion while you were steeping. What temperature did you steep at? and for how long?

As far as the high OG, maybe your efficiency was higher than you estimated. You could have just extracted more sugars (hopefully sugars and not starches) from the grains than your recipe calculated.

BTW I love Sweetwater 420, one of the beers that I really miss from the Southeast.

I know all grain isn't for everybody but have you seen Deathbrewers Partial Mash method on this site? I have never used it but I think for my next brew I am going to attempt his method.
 
peterj said:
With 8 lbs of grains you really need to do a mash. Also, Vienna and Munich both need to be mashed. Hopefully you got some conversion while you were steeping. What temperature did you steep at? and for how long?

As far as the high OG, maybe your efficiency was higher than you estimated. You could have just extracted more sugars (hopefully sugars and not starches) from the grains than your recipe calculated.

Not mashing, and just steeping at 160-170 for 30 mins would have yielded less sugar than mashing, right? Would my too hot steeping explain the high OG? I siphoned from boil kettle to two, 7 gallon buckets to primary, wonder if during the siphon one got more sugary? Also I didn't stir the bucket before sampling from the primary and I only sampled from one primary. Oh well hope it tastes good and does not have too many unfermentables. Both buckets are happily bubbling away at 64 degrees with S05 so nothing to do but wait.
 
This was my first brew and I am about to make it again on Sunday. It is my LHBS clone of Sweetwater 420. It was better than the 5 others I brewed after it. That's why it's gone and the rest are still here. This is for 5 gallons.

7.7 lbs Briess Pilsen Light LME
1lb Light Munich
1lb Vienna
4oz Cara Aroma
5aau Warrior 30 min (I don't actually know how much that is)
1oz Cascade 10 min
1oz Cascade 5 min

Ferment with S-05

My OG was 1.060 and FG was 1.017.

Here's another version from the same LHBS from a couple of years ago.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/coldwater-420-special-pale-ale-48353/
 
Sorry to rehash an old thread, but I am also trying to nail a SW420 recipe before football season hits. How did this recipe turn out? I brewed a Brewsmith convert of the link you listed and it turned out OKAY... Not nearly as drinkable as the original SW420. Let me know your results.

Drew

This was my first brew and I am about to make it again on Sunday. It is my LHBS clone of Sweetwater 420. It was better than the 5 others I brewed after it. That's why it's gone and the rest are still here. This is for 5 gallons.

7.7 lbs Briess Pilsen Light LME
1lb Light Munich
1lb Vienna
4oz Cara Aroma
5aau Warrior 30 min (I don't actually know how much that is)
1oz Cascade 10 min
1oz Cascade 5 min

Ferment with S-05

My OG was 1.060 and FG was 1.017.

Here's another version from the same LHBS from a couple of years ago.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/coldwater-420-special-pale-ale-48353/
 
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