Oskar Blues Old Chub clone from BYO

This clone recipe comes directly from the March-April BYO magazine
I'm not claiming this as my own in any way.

Old Chub
5 gallon batch
OG 1.078
FG 1.020
IBU 35
SRM 32
ABV 7.4%

13lb 10 oz north american 2-row
18 oz English dark Crystal
12 oz Munish
3.5 oz English chocolate malt
6 oz Special B
4.5 oz Weyermann smoked malt

9.6 AAU Nugget hops 60 min (0.8 oz 12%AA)

Wyeast 1056 American Ale 69F

Mash @ 155 1 hour
90 minute boil

Well thats about it, I plan on brewing this sometime soon, Ive scoured this site for a recipe since the first time that I had Old Chub and now im happy to say there is a Clone strait from BYO

I was wondering when someone would post this. I would've posted it, but I wasn't sure how happy BYO would be about someone posting their recipes on here. Anyway, I plan on brewing it soon too.

We may use this recipe for our next barrel aging.

Yeahman99 said:

We may use this recipe for our next barrel aging.

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What are you guys carbing this at ? .75 to 1.3 ?

Thanks for the link! My son and I will be making this in the next few months! I'll let you know how it works out!

I brewed this and it turned out great.

Thanks for the link!

Thank you.,

Does this have a lot of smokey flavor from the smoked malt? I didn't think old chub had much smokey flavor to it. Any comments in regards to this from anyone who brewed it?

Matteo57 said:

Does this have a lot of smokey flavor from the smoked malt? I didn't think old chub had much smokey flavor to it. Any comments in regards to this from anyone who brewed it?

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I would say no. Little to no smoke.

So, if I upped the base grain to make this around 10% beer, how much IBUs would you think you would want to shoot for to keep it fairly balanced? Anyone have thoughts?

Thanks!

Wingfan13 said:

I would say no. Little to no smoke.

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I'd disagree. I'm drinking from my keg of this one now, and there's a subtle but definite bacon-y note to it.

Absolutely fantastic recipe. I've made a couple of beers I'm proud of, but this one really tends to make people go "wow."

Definitely age it well: I primaried this one for a month, and secondaried for three additional weeks in keg, and chilled for a solid week after speed-carbing in the kegerator. It's still improving, and may do so for yet another month.

-Rich

Echoloc8 said:

I'd disagree. I'm drinking from my keg of this one now, and there's a subtle but definite bacon-y note to it.

Absolutely fantastic recipe. I've made a couple of beers I'm proud of, but this one really tends to make people go "wow."

Definitely age it well: I primaried this one for a month, and secondaried for three additional weeks in keg, and chilled for a solid week after speed-carbing in the kegerator. It's still improving, and may do so for yet another month.

-Rich

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I actually agree now. At the time it was young and there definitely is a smokey character in this beer.

Matteo57 said:

Does this have a lot of smokey flavor from the smoked malt? I didn't think old chub had much smokey flavor to it. Any comments in regards to this from anyone who brewed it?

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I'd just try to keep the IBU to gravity ratio the same to keep the bittering somewhat equivalent. In this case you have 35/78 = .49 is the ratio you need to keep.

I just tried an Old Chub and loved it so thanks for posting that clone!

I thought this was an amazing recipe! I thought the old chub mouth feel was a bit more creamy for sure than mine. I hit mash temps and everything. Wondering if they have a small amount of oats or something to make it a bit creamier.. Anyone else experience this or just me?
Awesome recipe though! Oaked half and kept the other half unoaked. Both are fantastic beers!

For those that have brewed this, how does it compare? I thought there was some that is supposed to be boiled down and added back in to the main boil....

No decoction when I did it, and several people commented that it was just like the original.

-Rich

Interesting that it just calls for american ale yeast. I guess I have yet to brew any scottish styles, but assumed that there was something more to the yeast. Now even more incentive to clone an amazing beer when I have some washed US-05 on hand at all times!

Thanks, I had the pleasure of tasting this and thought it was great.

dabeers said:

Interesting that it just calls for american ale yeast. I guess I have yet to brew any scottish styles, but assumed that there was something more to the yeast. Now even more incentive to clone an amazing beer when I have some washed US-05 on hand at all times!

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Yeah, my LHBS owner was surprised at that himself. Turned out fantastic, though.

-Rich

Matteo57 said:

I thought this was an amazing recipe! I thought the old chub mouth feel was a bit more creamy for sure than mine. I hit mash temps and everything. Wondering if they have a small amount of oats or something to make it a bit creamier.. Anyone else experience this or just me?
Awesome recipe though! Oaked half and kept the other half unoaked. Both are fantastic beers!

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Maybe it's the result of using American Ale instead of Scottish yeast. I'm debating on that in my head right now

dabeers said:

Interesting that it just calls for american ale yeast. I guess I have yet to brew any scottish styles, but assumed that there was something more to the yeast. Now even more incentive to clone an amazing beer when I have some washed US-05 on hand at all times!

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OFF TOPIC
I have to ask though. Why go through the process of washing US-05 when it is cheap enough and readily available to simply purchase a new packet? Not knocking you was just surprised you usually don't see people bothering with washing a common yeast strain.

GilSwillBasementBrews said:

OFF TOPIC
I have to ask though. Why go through the process of washing US-05 when it is cheap enough and readily available to simply purchase a new packet? Not knocking you was just surprised you usually don't see people bothering with washing a common yeast strain.

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Isnt all yeast better in there second and third generation? When properly taken care of plus theres nothin wrong with savin $5

I don't know if it gets better, but saving $3 per brew is worth it for me.

Sleepyemt said:

For those that have brewed this, how does it compare? I thought there was some that is supposed to be boiled down and added back in to the main boil....

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I did this. I did this with about 1.5-2 gallons and boiled it down to around 1/4-1/3 gallon. Worked great!

Isn't using that technique supposed to replace the use of crystal malt?

tennesseean_87 said:

Isn't using that technique supposed to replace the use of crystal malt?

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Melanoidin malt, actually, but there's a lot of debate on that point.

-Rich

Big fan of Scottish ales, my #1 has been Founder's DB, but I had my first Old Chubb last night and loved it. I see this is an AG recipe from BYO. I'm not against buying back copies of the mag - they offer that feature on their site. That said, does anyone know if they offer a partial mash (preferably) or extract plus grains version of this? I am not advanced enough to make such conversions on my own. TIA!

It's really not that hard to do. Use brewing software (BrewTarget is free). Input all the info from this recipe, making sure your efficiency and batch volume are correct and give the recipe stats indicated (OG and IBUs). Then, replace some of the base malt with extract. Take out about half the base grains and then adjust the amount of light extract you add until the same OG results. Nothing complicated about it!

Thanks tennesseean 87 - I'll have to give it a shot

Just brewed this yesterday, as a 10gal batch. Went pretty nicely, though we have some doubt as to our mash temps - the nice Blichmann thermo in there didn't seem to line up well with a thermocouple... so we were having trouble determining if we were over or under mash temp. Gonna have to do another round of calibration on those, it seems...

Looking forward to seeing how this turned out in a coupla weeks; efficiency was excellent, 'round 80%... not exactly certain, as we were having some trouble with our volume measurements... but looking very good so far.

I even scored some Old Chub, the original, to introduce to the rest of the brew team, who'd never had it before - "here's what we're brewing today, hope you like it!" LOL

As much as I do like the original... I'm thinking next time 'round we'll play with things, swap in some peated malt instead of the smoked malt - we had excellent results with the peated malt in our last Wee Heavy beer...

Update - here's a coupla pics of the brew... wait for the shake!

Yeah, I remember that color!

-Rich

So after all that work to clone this puppy two weeks back... I swing by the beer aisle in the local supermarket, only to find a whole pallet worth of Oskar Blues beer staring me in the face! :cross:

Apparently they ship to Michigan now.

Of course, it's also still $10/6-pack. So the cloning effort is worthy - not to mention I have my own ideas of how to tweak the recipe further, so I'd like it even more...

Anyway, so I grabbed a 6, and we will now have a fresh sample for benchmarking our clone when we bottle Friday! Will be sure to post the review...

924RACR said:

So after all that work to clone this puppy two weeks back... I swing by the beer aisle in the local supermarket, only to find a whole pallet worth of Oskar Blues beer staring me in the face! :cross:

Apparently they ship to Michigan now.

Of course, it's also still $10/6-pack. So the cloning effort is worthy - not to mention I have my own ideas of how to tweak the recipe further, so I'd like it even more...

Anyway, so I grabbed a 6, and we will now have a fresh sample for benchmarking our clone when we bottle Friday! Will be sure to post the review...

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1 - I used to live in Ferndale (3 years ago).

2 - I made this beer and aged it on bourbon soaked oak chips and vanilla bean and it turned out amazing. I would like to hear how you end up tweaking it.

Well, I'll spill the beans now... we made a Wee Heavy back in Jan that used some peated malt, and really loved the way it turned out. Was 8oz in a 5-gal batch. I haven't decided for sure how I'd bleed it in, but either substitute for the smoked malt (likely for the first try) or split it 50/50 smoked and peated.

Not sure I'd want to try vanilla in there, but I could certainly see putting some on oak... Though I suspect it'll be tasty enough to go as-is!

Bottled today, while brewing the next batch, our IPA. Tasted back-to-back with the original (though admittedly not carbonated) - boy, is that ever a good match! Good enough that I can't much tell the difference, given age and carbonation influences! Count me sold on the clone...

Tasted a sample today and it was pretty good. A bit thin though. What is everyone carbing this to?

We're all bottled, so can't comment there...

924RACR said:

We're all bottled, so can't comment there...

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Yea, I'm bottling. What volume of CO2 did you shoot for? 2.3?