First Attempt at Reverse Engineering

I am trying to come up with an extract recipe that will produce something similar to one of my favorite beers, Thomas Hooker Blonde Ale (http://hookerbeer.com/beers/#blonde-ale). As you can see, their website gives you the ingredients but not the recipe.

Now that you've all had a moment to come up with your own "blond hooker" jokes, here is what I've got so far:

1 lb. Caramel/Crystal 10L
8 oz. Flaked Wheat
4 oz. Carapils
4 lb. Extra Light DME
1 lb. Wheat DME
.5 oz. Saaz leaf hops @ 60 min.
.5 oz. Saaz leaf hops @ 20 min.
.5 oz. Cascade leaf hops @ 20 min.
.5 oz. Cascade leaf hops @ 5 min.
Safale US 05 dry ale yeast.

I put all this into BeerSmith, and it's giving me an OG estimate of 1.046 (vs. Thomas Hooker's 1.048) and 10.8 IBU (vs. Hooker's 11).

I've never attempted to assemble my own "clone" recipe from scratch before, so thoughts and suggestions from those who've been down this road would be greatly appreciated.

You don't want to use flaked wheat for an extract beer. Flaked wheat must be mashed with a base malt for starch conversion. And carapils is not needed for an extract beer either since there is already carapils inherent in DME.

Simply use light DME, wheat DME, and perhaps some crystal 10 malt if you deem necessary. I like the Muntons DME products myself. I find they have more character than Briess. A word of warning... It may prove tough to reach 1.010 FG via the extract route. It will still be tasty, but for this reason, I would shoot for more around 1.054 OG so your abv % isn't sacrificed. You could also shoot for 15-20 IBUs without a problem.

Hop schedule is nice. I would personally do 60/15/0 with 3 oz. total hops.

Good advice on OG/FG, I hadn't thought about extracts being slightly less fermentable than all grain.

So, what would you recommend for the preboil tea?

You have to do the math for your boil/batch size(s). I would personally shoot for 1.054 OG despite the all grain target of 1.048, and add 40-50% of the DME late in the boil, 17-18 IBUs, and only use about 4-7% crystal malt.

What is the advantage of adding the DME later in the boil?

Also, what grains should I use for the preboil tea?

Also, are you sure flaked wheat needs to be mashed? Midwest includes (a lot of) it in their blonde ale kit: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/blonde-ale.html

OMGTheyKilkenny said:

Also, are you sure flaked wheat needs to be mashed? Midwest includes (a lot of) it in their blonde ale kit: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/blonde-ale.html

Click to expand...

Yes, must be mashed with a base grain if you are to pull any sugars out of it.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-2.html
Simply steeping flaked wheat (or oats) will add unconverted starch that will not be fermented and will probably make the beer cloudy (similar to carapils).
I would guess that Midwest will not include carapils and faked wheat in the same kit.

It will be very difficult to get to 1.010 with that grain bill.
Some things that will help:
Caramel + Carapills + Flaked wheat < 1lb
Mix in DME at flameout, mix well while cooling.

Interesting read. It almost looks like I should be using malted wheat rather than flaked wheat, since that will give up more sugars when steeped.

OMGTheyKilkenny said:

Interesting read. It almost looks like I should be using malted wheat rather than flaked wheat, since that will give up more sugars when steeped.

Click to expand...

In either case, you need to mash those two options... not steep them.