Lagunitas Gnarly Wine

So I just had a bottle of this last night for the first time and I loved it. I've been searching the almighty internet for about 30 min but have been unable to find any sort of clone recipe. Can anyone help me out with a recipe or point me in the right direction? Think they'll give me the recipe if I email them?
Thanks HBT!

Nobody knows how to clone Gnarly Wine??

Nope...nothing online either.

Email them....you may at least get enough info to figure it out. A lot of micro breweries are open to helping homebrewers. They may give you a percentages grain bill. They may give the the OG/FG/SRMs/IBU's and enough other clues to give you enough to use the info in the Chris Colby BYO cloning article to work your way through it in a few experimental batches.

drank one last night for the first time.. good stuff
Can't help you with the cloning, but post up if you find any info.

Yeah thats a great barley wine. To me it has always been a less citrus flavored SN Bigfoot.

Thanks Revvy. I figured that's what I would have to do eventually. I guess I've taken for granted all the clone recipes available on here and podcasts nowadays. Damn, I make my own beer and now I have to learn how to make it!

I found this year's Gnarly wine to be a little on the sweet side. More so than I liked.

I like it so much because it seems like one of the best balanced barley wines I've ever had.

I love a few of their beers but I really wasn't a fan of the Gnarly Wine. That being said, I don't have a ton of experience with the style to compare it to.

Something tells me there was a thread in here about Brown Sugga - which was supposed to be a variant of the Gnarley Wine recipe that just added some brown sugar instead of all the malt to dry it out & up the ABV.

I didn't have luck finding that thread, but I may have it bookmarked on another PC I've got. I'll take a look for it later...

I find that all Lagunitas beers have a distinctive flavor that I quite like. I've always attributed it to whatever yeast strain the us. It would be interesting to find out. I've never been disappointed trying any of their beers.

Well - here's the one bookmark I could find that I had saved on Brown Shugga:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/can-you-brew-recipe-lagunitas-brown-shugga-175374/

Doesn't look like there's much backup to it - but appears to be from the "Can you brew it" database. While it's NOT Gnarly Wine, perhaps it would give you a jumping off point to work up your own clone.

And if you look at this post- you'll see a little more discussion, along with a recipe that seems to follow the one posted in the prior link. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/brown-shugga-35741/#post1336132

Good luck with it.

I listened to the can you brew it episode for Brown Sugga yesterday, and the brewer from lagunitas said that it was born from a botched batch of Gnarlywine. I copied down the recipe they gave, omitted the brown sugar they add to the boil, and played with the recipe in beersmith to get the correct IBU, SRM, and SG that is listed for Gnarlywine. I plan to hopefully brew this over the weekend. I'll keep up with this thread regularly.

Good stuff. I didn't want to post the actual Shugga recipe here (to try to reduce confusion potential) - but perhaps you can post the recipe you're going to work off for the Gnarly Wine.

From what I've read, you should be off on a real good start. I'd be willing to brew up a variant or two based on some tasting notes along the way to see how it ends up. I've enjoyed more than few bottles of the Gnarly over the years.

My local beer place sells G.W for $3.49 a bottle - you can't beat that.

ultra-that actually why I gave the GW a shot. My local liqour store sells it for $4.49 so I picked up a bottle for the heck of it.

I agree with Ace, this year's is too sweet.

I would try for a SN Bigfoot clone, but mash at 160F (which is what Lagunitas supposedly mashes all beers at).
Actually, you might want to put it down to 154 to leave some dextrins but have enough fermentability to not be terribly sweet.

For those of you interested, I've got it down to 2 different recipes I think I'm going to try and brew. Both this weekend hopefully, just depends on the specialty malts my LHBS has available when I stop in on thurs. The first recipe is what I came up with after listening and researching this beer.


BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: GnarlyWine Clone
Brewer: Ben
Asst Brewer:
Style: English Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.92 gal
Estimated OG: 1.108 SG
Estimated Color: 14.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 75.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
14.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 71.57 %
3.50 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 17.28 %
0.94 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4.64 %
0.88 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 4.34 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 1.23 %
0.19 lb Caraaroma (130.0 SRM) Grain 0.94 %
28.30 gm Williamette [4.60 %] (90 min) Hops 9.3 IBU
28.30 gm Horizon [12.00 %] (45 min) Hops 23.2 IBU
28.30 gm Williamette [5.50 %] (45 min) Hops 9.6 IBU
28.30 gm Centennial [10.00 %] (20 min) Hops 12.8 IBU
28.30 gm Horizon [12.00 %] (20 min) Hops 15.3 IBU
28.30 gm Liberty [4.30 %] (20 min) Hops 5.5 IBU
1 Pkgs London Ale (White Labs #WLP013) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 20.26 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 25.33 qt of water at 161.4 F 150.0 F

This second is what I came up before I found much info on this beer and with the ingredients I have on hand.

BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Gnarlywine
Brewer: Ben
Asst Brewer:
Style: English Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.92 gal
Estimated OG: 1.105 SG
Estimated Color: 14.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 65.0 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
13.50 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 71.05 %
3.00 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 15.79 %
1.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 7.89 %
1.00 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 5.26 %
66.75 gm Amarillo Gold [10.70 %] (60 min) Hops 49.2 IBU
56.00 gm Williamette [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 12.9 IBU
28.30 gm Sonnet Golding [4.10 %] (10 min) Hops 2.9 IBU
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 19.00 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 23.75 qt of water at 166.4 F 154.0 F

One thing I was shocked about, listening to CYBI, is the hop complexity that the brewer gave to Jamil. It seems crazy. I am hesitant to go buy horizon, centennial, and liberty hops for the recipe when the hop bill is what seemed to prevent the show from calling the beer cloned.

EDIT. of course, the show was for Brown Sugga..... But the brewer did say the beer was a mistake and brewed like they would normally brew Gnarly Wine....

Any update on this... I tried Gnarly on tap at a pub while on vacation this past April and it has been my favorite barley wine to date. What I found most interesting was the mouth feel... I asked the bar keep if it was a NO2 push and he said it was CO2. The texture was like a NO2 push. Never tried it out of the bottle. Can't get it where I'm at

Any update on this...

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I have this beer on tap right now and it turned out close. It's a very good barley wine, just not quite Gnarly Wine. I used the 2nd recipe on the previous page and when I brew it again, I will bump up the IBU total by 10-15 IBU. At 65 calculated IBU's, its close to being cloying. I think the grain bill is great, my simplified grain bill is spot on I think. The key comes with the fermentation characteristics. I fermented @ 64F. I kind of chocked this beer up to not being cloned immediately. During the brew day, my dial thermometer was off by 15F without me realizing it until the boil. Mashing does work @ 135F. But it didn't quite yield the results I was looking for. Anyways, hope that helps.

I loved this beer. There is a recipe on brewmasterswarehouse. Under gnarlywine. Has anyone tried it? Never liked barley wine until I tried that one.

Not sure if this will help, but if I remember correctly, there was a recipe in a BYO special issue, the same one that has the Pliny the Elder recipe. I believe it was the Hop Lovers Guide.

Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Hop Lover's Guide

I'm going to be brewing the first recipe that was posted. Minor changes. 15 lb 2-row, 1 lb Munich, 1 lb caramel 60 And 3.5 white wheat. Now, a question I had was the mash. Did you mash low or high. I was thinking of maybe 155ish. How did yours turn out?

Sepanik1986 said:

I'm going to be brewing the first recipe that was posted. Minor changes. 15 lb 2-row, 1 lb Munich, 1 lb caramel 60 And 3.5 white wheat. Now, a question I had was the mash. Did you mash low or high. I was thinking of maybe 155ish. How did yours turn out?

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How'd this go?

Anyone else have a good tested recipe for Lagunitas Gnarlywine?

normonster said:

How'd this go?



Anyone else have a good tested recipe for Lagunitas Gnarlywine?

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My batch ended up not so great. Numbers were way off, mashing I got 1.092 so to cover the loss of points I added honey. 3pounds to be exact. It fermented down to I think it was 1.020 but damn was it smooth. I wish I still had some

Sepanik1986 said:

My batch ended up not so great. Numbers were way off, mashing I got 1.092 so to cover the loss of points I added honey. 3pounds to be exact. It fermented down to I think it was 1.020 but damn was it smooth. I wish I still had some

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Ok, cool. Thank you for responding. I have a buddy who works there so I'll see if he can get some good info on it.

normonster said:

Ok, cool. Thank you for responding. I have a buddy who works there so I'll see if he can get some good info on it.

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Whatever you get, if you could pm the findings that would be awesome