Can you Brew It recipe for Stone Arrogant Bastard

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My version of this is in primary right now. I guess it can't be considered a clone bescause I used Maris Otter and Nottingham and it was the first runnings of a parti-gyle. I did hit the gravity dead on and used the same hop schedule.
 
I got a chance to compare my dry hopped with the Oaked Arrogant tonight. Here are some pics:

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Mine is on the left, the Oaked AB on the right

Obviously the Oaked is a completely different beer than the original AB, but it's all I had to compare to. So on with the comparison...

The Oaked is a little darker with a deep amber hue. It's also crystal clear. My clone is a little lighter and the tint is a bit more orange than dark amber. It also has a slight haze that came from the dry hopping. The hydrometer sample I took before dry hopping is almost as clear as the Oaked AB.

The aroma on the clone was mostly dominated by hops but the caramel sweetness still shines through a bit. On the Oaked, it is the opposite. The oakiness and bourbon sweetness are up front and the hop aroma is a bit subdued. Both have excellent mouthfeel and both are pretty well balanced. The clone tastes surprisingly similar to a fresh batch of original AB with the hops lingering for quite a while, while the Oaked tastes more malty and sweet and the hops only show up at the end.

In the end, it's not really fair to compare my clone, which is dry hopped, with the Oaked AB, but there are definitely some striking similarities. I'll pick up an original AB to compare my clone with later, but I'm definitely pleased. It may not be a spot on clone of AB, but it is definitely a great beer and not as difficult to brew as I would have expected. Once some space opens up in the kegerator, I'll put the non dry-hopped keg on tap and do another comparison.
 
Great post tarheel, thanks from all of us who are looking forward to brewing this beer. I'd love to see some more side-by-side photos, fellow homebrewers...
 
Brewed the Arrogant Bastard clone on Monday night. No side by side pictures yet but how about 5 gallons of Bastard wort side by side?

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If it's anything like the rest of the stone beers, they take the local San Diego water, dilute it 50/50 with RO water, and then use salts to get as close to London Water as possible.

San Diego water profile:
Ca++: 37
CO3--: 115
Cl-: 95
Mg++: 18
Na+: 83
SO4--: 160

At least, that's what I've heard.

I believe in both the podcasts, and at the brewery tour I've been on, all they do to the water is run all the water through a standard filtration system to get rid of Chlorine etc, then take half of the water and send it thru a reverse osmosis system. It bring the water they get from about 25-350 ppm to roughly 100 ppm, I don't believe they add anything to their water after this. I believe that this is in one of the "can you brew it" episodes with the interview of stones brewmaster. Hope this helps with any water issues with this AB recipe.
 
Brewed 6 gallons of this one 1/10. Smelled awesome. 90% 2-row, 10% Sp B, but changed hop schedule a bit (after listening to podcast they seemed to agree that maybe a little more flavor/ aroma was needed.)

all chinook= first wort hop (40 IBUs),45 minutes (25 IBUs), 15 minutes (18 IBUs), flame-out (an ounce)

I added hops later to increase flavor/ aroma, shooting for 83 IBUs.
Used Safale S-04.
Also added salts in order to replicate London based water profile.

My packed 6 gallons into a 6.5 gallon better bottle. Used a blow off tube that was 4 feet long and still lost 1/2-gallon. Fermentation was explosive for 2-3 days.

Smelled great in the kettle & great in the fermenter. I'll probably rack a gallon or 2 and oak it. I plan on going 10 days primary & 14 secondary (or just a total of 21 days in primary if I'm lazy). I'll post when i bottle.
 
I also went with US-04 yeast and made a slight change to the hop additions. Just felt the need to use up the remaining 1.25 oz Chinook in that half lb bag so I dumped them in along with the flameout addition.

Can't wait to get this bottled!
 
I believe in both the podcasts, and at the brewery tour I've been on, all they do to the water is run all the water through a standard filtration system to get rid of Chlorine etc, then take half of the water and send it thru a reverse osmosis system. It bring the water they get from about 25-350 ppm to roughly 100 ppm, I don't believe they add anything to their water after this. I believe that this is in one of the "can you brew it" episodes with the interview of stones brewmaster. Hope this helps with any water issues with this AB recipe.

That's what they told me when I took the tour a few months ago. Half RO and half tap.
 
Just kegged my CYBI Arrogant bastard.

OG: 1.065
FG: 1.012

ABV: 6.95%

I have not had the real thing in quite some time so I will wait til mine is fully carbed before having a side by side comparison. By memory, I think the real thing is more bitter. I may use gypsum next time.

Color may be lighter than the real thing. Tell me what you think of the color. I did my best to get natural light shot and artificial light.



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BeerPressure said:
Just kegged my CYBI Arrogant bastard.

OG: 1.065
FG: 1.012

ABV: 6.95%

I have not had the real thing in quite some time so I will wait til mine is fully carbed before having a side by side comparison. By memory, I think the real thing is more bitter. I may use gypsum next time.

Color may be lighter than the real thing. Tell me what you think of the color. I did my best to get natural light shot and artificial light.

http://img201.imageshack.us/i/20110126132032464.jpg/

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

http://img255.imageshack.us/i/20110126132752248.jpg/

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Looks lighter to me, but you really need a side by side to compare because of lighting and camera quality.

Eric
 
well mine way way off due too the gravity being off.
My hop utilization was off as well.

It was in the ball park here but not close enough for me.
I'll give this a second go next week.
 
Bottled my Arrogant last night. Tasted great right out of the bucket. Might be a touch on the light side color wise and will surely have a brighter hop aroma as I added an extra 1 oz. of Chinook at flameout but very impressed with it thus far. I'll update when I crack the first bottle.

Here are some other pictures from my Arrogant brew session.

arrogant1.jpg


arrogant2.jpg


arrogant3.jpg
 
I just popped my first bottle after 3 weeks conditioning. I noticed a slight belgian-y twang, I fermented at 68 and im wondering if the wlp007 produced some esters at that temp. Its not overpowering, and actually not unpleasant. Truthfully, its been so long since Ive had AB that I dont remember the flavor.

has anyone else noticed this flavor.. is the special B?

the bottle I drank tonight was a little undercarbed, so im hoping a couple more weeks in the pantry will increase the CO2 (bottled c DME), and im guessing the flavor may change some more.

good stuff nevertheless
 
I've read that the majority of stone brews get their bittering additionas at the beginning of their 90 minute boil. They add the rest of their hops at flame out. These aroma hops get about 90 minutes of contact time. 30 minutes during whirl pool, 30 minutes of rest, and 30 minutes of cast out. All this time the temp is held at around 200 degrees. Mitch Steele said they get a quite a bit of bittering from these additions as well.
 
I just popped my first bottle after 3 weeks conditioning. I noticed a slight belgian-y twang, I fermented at 68 and im wondering if the wlp007 produced some esters at that temp. Its not overpowering, and actually not unpleasant. Truthfully, its been so long since Ive had AB that I dont remember the flavor.

has anyone else noticed this flavor.. is the special B?

anyone have any ideas?
 
I just popped my first bottle after 3 weeks conditioning. I noticed a slight belgian-y twang, I fermented at 68 and im wondering if the wlp007 produced some esters at that temp. Its not overpowering, and actually not unpleasant. Truthfully, its been so long since Ive had AB that I dont remember the flavor.

has anyone else noticed this flavor.. is the special B?

the bottle I drank tonight was a little undercarbed, so im hoping a couple more weeks in the pantry will increase the CO2 (bottled c DME), and im guessing the flavor may change some more.

good stuff nevertheless

Probably needs to age more, like months more. High ABV high AA beers will get much better with age.
 
I think I'll try brewing this, but with Ahtanum hops instead of, or in addition to, the Chinook hops. I remember reading that the brewers at Stone have a little love affair with using these hops. Could just be complete bull-hokey though. ;)
 
Had a real one and mine side by side
Real one: hoppier, darker, better.

Next time I am gonna use a fell ounce for each addition or gypsum

Real thing seems just more RED than this. I stuck with the grainbill of 90% 2row 10% Special B
 
Probably needs to age more, like months more. High ABV high AA beers will get much better with age.


would this be considered high abv?

I would agree with the more age... at least in my case. Ive had bottles at roughly 3, 4, and now 5 weeks in the bottle.. they have progressively gotten better, with more carb, less off flavors, and actually improved hop flavor and aroma... the last one is odd to me though the previous make sense. Id figure more time would decrease hop flavor and aroma.

now i just need to buy a real AB and compare. .... man this brewing thing is hard work ;)
 
would this be considered high abv?

I would agree with the more age... at least in my case. Ive had bottles at roughly 3, 4, and now 5 weeks in the bottle.. they have progressively gotten better, with more carb, less off flavors, and actually improved hop flavor and aroma... the last one is odd to me though the previous make sense. Id figure more time would decrease hop flavor and aroma.

now i just need to buy a real AB and compare. .... man this brewing thing is hard work ;)

Maybe not high like barley wine but still high enough to need a little aging to cut down the alcohol bite. By BJCP this is considered 19A, old strong ale, which are usually well aged.

Your hop flavor is probably coming through more as the alcohol taste mellows and the carbonation increases, contributing to a perceived increase in hop flavor/bitterness.
 
Maybe not high like barley wine but still high enough to need a little aging to cut down the alcohol bite. By BJCP this is considered 19A, old strong ale, which are usually well aged.

Your hop flavor is probably coming through more as the alcohol taste mellows and the carbonation increases, contributing to a perceived increase in hop flavor/bitterness.



nice.. well its certainly gotten better. I dont know that I perceived an overwhelming alcohol flavor, but the hop flavor is definitely comming through more. I think 6 weeks is the timeline for DME to carb a bottle.
 
Cracked a 16 day old Arrogant clone yesterday. Still needs some time for carbing and aging but its coming along nicely. A little light in color and hard to say about the malt hops but i'm sure it'll meld nicely in the weeks to come.

2-1.jpg
 
So would I be correct in following the recipe tweaks on the first page if I'm going to take a shot at this?
 
So would I be correct in following the recipe tweaks on the first page if I'm going to take a shot at this?

Check post #127 for a link to the latest podcast where they voted it cloned. Post #131 has the latest cloned recipe.
 
Just kegged my SECOND attempt at this after tweaking. I added a tad bit more special B this time and the color is still not as dark as the real thing.
 
I brewed this up on 2-6 and will bottle it next week. I have a question about entering this in competition. I know it goes into category 23, but would I have to specify an "underlying beer style" and would I need to specify the "experimental nature" of it? I'm not sure what either one of these mean pertaining to this brew.

I guess what I'm asking is, has anyone ever entered this, and what other info did you provide on your entry form?

Thanks.
 
Bottled my Arrogant last night. Tasted great right out of the bucket. Might be a touch on the light side color wise and will surely have a brighter hop aroma as I added an extra 1 oz. of Chinook at flameout but very impressed with it thus far. I'll update when I crack the first bottle.

Here are some other pictures from my Arrogant brew session.

Nice refrac shot!:rockin:
 
So to those of you who have brewed the recipe as per the re-brew episode, is the consensus not enough flavor/aroma hops and the color not being dark enough? How far could we take crystal B (12%? 15%?) in the pursuit of that deep red hue before we mess up this beer? And how about the hopping compared to a good fresh bottle?
 
So to those of you who have brewed the recipe as per the re-brew episode, is the consensus not enough flavor/aroma hops and the color not being dark enough? How far could we take crystal B (12%? 15%?) in the pursuit of that deep red hue before we mess up this beer? And how about the hopping compared to a good fresh bottle?

When we brewed it we dry-hopped 5 gallons and left the other 5 alone. We tapped the dry-hopped first and it had more of the aroma and hop profile of a fresh bottle of the original. The non dry-hopped was too heavy on the malty sweetness so we ended up dry-hopping the second 5 gallons as well.

If I were to rebrew it, I would up the Special B or perhaps add a little bit of Crystal 80L-120L, just for color. Mine was definitely missing the red hue that the original has. I would also add more Chinook at flame out as others have mentioned. I don't think the original is dry-hopped but I'm not positive. Just my thoughts...
 
So to those of you who have brewed the recipe as per the re-brew episode, is the consensus not enough flavor/aroma hops and the color not being dark enough? How far could we take crystal B (12%? 15%?) in the pursuit of that deep red hue before we mess up this beer? And how about the hopping compared to a good fresh bottle?

I chatted with Tasty the other day and he is still tweaking this recipe. He still thinks it needs one more specialty malt. He did not give me the changes but is still planning on having it at the NHC for everyone to try it.

One week of fermentation tomorrow. When I brewed the Union Jack clone I did the WP hop addition and let them sit for 20-30 min before I sent it through the chiller. I let the 0m hops sit for 20 min on the AB clone, but I do not know how it turned out yet. Tried my best to keep the fermentation temp between 70-71.
 
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