My buddy and I are setting out to clone this, unless CYBI comes along and is able to get North Coast Brewery to give up its secrets. This post will be our notes for reverse engineering the beer, as well as notes as to how we're doing. My calculations are done using an old Excel spreadsheet, so if my accuracy sucks, I'm sure someone will tell me.
This is my first attempt to clone a beer, so I'm sure that accuracy will be suspect. To test our brews, we will purchase some BT and conduct a blind tasting.
If anyone has a suitable clone for this, you're welcome to chime in.
Some of this will be based on the Jamil show "Belgian Strong Dark" and "Belgian Dubbel", because I have the feeling that BT falls somewhere between the two in style.
As an initial check, I degassed a sample and measured the FG, which came in at 1.019. It broke my heart, but such is the sacrifice to clone something.
The bottle says ABV is 9.4%, so that leaves us with a OG of about 1.090.
Color is probably SRM of 22. I don't have a color card handy to check against.
IBU is given on the website at 32 IBU. Based on style, I'm figuring that's all Hallertau, at the beginning of the boil.
I'm figuring the grain bill will be primarily continental pilsner, the specialty malts will be the real trick, TBD.
