Clone brews not for AG??

Alright, I need to get this out and see of anyone else has experienced this too...

I've now brewed about ten batches of AG recipes so I'm by now means a pro, but do have a little experience.

I have brewed several all grain recipes from people here and hit everything on target (temps, volumes, og, fg, all of it,) as well as created my own on beersmith and hit all of my volumes and gravities etc all on point.

However, tonight I brewed my third batch of an AG recipe from the clone brews book and for the third time my og was extremely low. I mean off by at least 20 points. I always end up adding any extra Dme I have left over from making starters. It's almost as if I should have mashed with my total water and used only the first runnings to use as the wort (tonight's og was supposed to be 1.083 including an 8oz maple syrup addition at 90 minute of the boil, my first runnings were 1.068 which would have put me close with adding the syrup. After the spare water my gravity was 1.045.... Way too low)


Just want to see if anyone else has the clone brew woes or if it's just me... I'll likely avoid recipes from this book in the future...seems great for extracts, not so for those all grain brewer types

So no one else has ever brewed an all grain recipe out of clone brews?

Well, their recipes suck actually. I've done a couple in the past, but never been happy so I put the book somewhere on the shelf and ignore it.

I've done their gulden draak which is still conditioning, their unearthly which actually turnd out pretty good, and last nights was their niagara maple wheat..

I've used clonebrews and the second book for a number of recipes. I'd disagree with yooper; the beers I get out are generally quite good, although the clone-ness of them is questionable (you'll be in the ball-park, but it'll not pass a side-by-side).

I'm in Canada and we tend to brew bigger beers here (our gallons are bigger), so I'm always using promash or beersmith to scale-up. But that said, the scaling is usually quite close to what you'd get if you simly multiplied by the fractional increase in volume (meaning the gravities I get are usually close to what the book calls for, with the grain bill they outline).

Do you know what your efficiency is? I think they assume 75% efficiency; if you're below that you'll consistently get a low OG.

Bryan

EDIT: I just noticed your OG expectations. You're brewing a big beer there! How big is your pot & how much run-off are you collecting? High gravity batches like that usually need a lot of sparge water to collect the sugars, and a long boil (plus, big pot) to being the volume down and OG up to where you want to be.

Have you tried a lower-OG recipe from the book?

Bryan

Warthaug said:

although the clone-ness of them is questionable (you'll be in the ball-park, but it'll not pass a side-by-side).

Bryan

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maybe this is what she means by them sucking ... If they say it is a clone of something it should be damn near impossible to tell the two appart!

Warthaug said:

EDIT: I just noticed your OG expectations. You're brewing a big beer there! How big is your pot & how much run-off are you collecting? High gravity batches like that usually need a lot of sparge water to collect the sugars, and a long boil (plus, big pot) to being the volume down and OG up to where you want to be.

Have you tried a lower-OG recipe from the book?

Bryan

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Using a ten gallon cooler mash tun and a 1/2 barrel keggle. The boil called for a 90 minute boil and when I calculated out my mash and sparge waters I was given a mash of 5 and a sparge of 5.1 to get a preboil volume of 7.5 gallons, ending up with about 5.5 at the end of the boil

ArcticBear said:

Using a ten gallon cooler mash tun and a 1/2 barrel keggle. The boil called for a 90 minute boil and when I calculated out my mash and sparge waters I was given a mash of 5 and a sparge of 5.1 to get a preboil volume of 7.5 gallons, ending up with about 5.5 at the end of the boil

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Sounds like you did it right - I've not done a big beer in a very long time, but in the past I've always needed 90min to reduce, and collected about 1/3 more than the final volume.

Re-reading your first post, it looks like you're sparge isn't picking up sugars very well. Are you batch or fly-sparging? And have you checked the mill on your grain? Maybe an issue in either the sparge or the grind is causing the low OG?

If you do try it again, keep track of your gravity as you sparge (i.e. if fly sparging check it a few times during the sparge; if batch sparging measure it mid-way through each draining of the MLT). This might give a bit of insight into what is going wrong.

Also, have you compared the clonebrews grain-bill to the grain-bill of a similar style posted here on the forums? If there is a big difference, and both recipes call for a similar OG, you may have uncovered a legitimate flaw in the book.

Bryan

res291que said:

maybe this is what she means by them sucking ... If they say it is a clone of something it should be damn near impossible to tell the two appart!

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I always assumed the lack of clone-ness was due to my errors, rather than the book. Our small batches are subject to a lot more environmental influences that the big-batches brewed by large breweries, using their state-of-the-art environmental controls...I think the chances of perfectly replicating any commercial brew (consistently) is pretty low.

I like clonebrews as I know ahead of time roughly what I'll make. Its often a good basis for developing the recipe into something I like even better.

Bryan

Warthaug said:

Sounds like you did it right - I've not done a big beer in a very long time, but in the past I've always needed 90min to reduce, and collected about 1/3 more than the final volume.

Re-reading your first post, it looks like you're sparge isn't picking up sugars very well. Are you batch or fly-sparging? And have you checked the mill on your grain? Maybe an issue in either the sparge or the grind is causing the low OG?

If you do try it again, keep track of your gravity as you sparge (i.e. if fly sparging check it a few times during the sparge; if batch sparging measure it mid-way through each draining of the MLT). This might give a bit of insight into what is going wrong.

Also, have you compared the clonebrews grain-bill to the grain-bill of a similar style posted here on the forums? If there is a big difference, and both recipes call for a similar OG, you may have uncovered a legitimate flaw in the book.

Bryan

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I always buy my grains from the same lhbs and have them crushed there. I don't think they've changed their methods and like I said any other recipe not from the clonebrews book turns out just fine in respect to gravities. If I was off by a couple points I wouldn't be complaining but every time I use this recipe book I'm off by at least 20 points if not more... I don't get it. It makes me loathe trying new recipes put of the book

ArcticBear said:

I always buy my grains from the same lhbs and have them crushed there. I don't think they've changed their methods and like I said any other recipe not from the clonebrews book turns out just fine in respect to gravities. If I was off by a couple points I wouldn't be complaining but every time I use this recipe book I'm off by at least 20 points if not more... I don't get it. It makes me loathe trying new recipes put of the book

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Have you done a similar recipe from clonebrews verses one of your others? If so, were the grain bills similar?

Bryan

Has anyone plugged the recipe into their brewing software to see if the recipe is even correct?

jkendal said:

Has anyone plugged the recipe into their brewing software to see if the recipe is even correct?

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Good idea, although the OP stated it was his third from the book that was off. I've used the recipes several times in the past, and aside from scaling for volume, found the numbers to be correct.

Bryan

Warthaug said:

Have you done a similar recipe from clonebrews verses one of your others? If so, were the grain bills similar?

Bryan

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I haven't, only because I've been trying to brew a ton of different styles.

jkendal said:

Has anyone plugged the recipe into their brewing software to see if the recipe is even correct?

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I have beer smith I should try this and see. It won't be easy to do for this recipe however because I don't think maple syrup is one of the additions you can put into beersmith without knowing the exact sugar contents etc.. ( say if I used aunt jemimas vs. some form of grade A amber maple syrup)

ArcticBear said:

I haven't, only because I've been trying to brew a ton of different styles.

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I've been brewing since 1996, and I'm STILL in the same boat. Why make something old, when you can make something new!

ArcticBear said:

I have beer smith I should try this and see. It won't be easy to do for this recipe however because I don't think maple syrup is one of the additions you can put into beersmith without knowing the exact sugar contents etc.. ( say if I used aunt jemimas vs. some form of grade A amber maple syrup)

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What about one of the older ones you did?

I'm going to check my own notes later tonight; last week I brewed a pale ale out of clonebrews, but scaled upto my size (which included tweaking 2-row to get the right OG). I'm going to double-check the numbers, to see if the amounts are overly different from what I would have got had I simply scaled by volume.

Bryan

So I compared the beer I brewed last weekend (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, pg 157), to what I worked out in beersmith, to a linear scaling from 19L (5US gal) to 23L (5 Imp Gal).

Original Recipe calls for 10.33lb pale malt, .5lb dextrin malt, 4oz 60L crystal
Beersmith scaled: 11.75lbs, .9lb, 6oz
Linear scaled: 12.5lb, 0.6lb, 4.8oz

My recipe didn't match exactly to a linear scaling, but mine actually called for less fermentable grain to hit the desired (theoretical) OG. Moreover, I ended up hitting an OG higher than expected.

I also entered a 19L recipe straight into beersmith (Jenlain Biere de Gaede, pg 75). Entered exactly as in the book gave an estimated OG of 1.067; dead-center on the 1.056-1.068 range stated in the book. That was assuming a 72% total efficiency.

I guess what I'm saying is you either found a recipe that had a glaring error, or something happened during your process.

Out of curiosity, have you brewed any non-clonebrew recipes in between the 3 clonebrew recipes you have done?

Bryan

I may be misunderstanding your post, but it appears you were using your preboil SG and comparing it to their postboil OG. If it was 7.5 gallons preboil at 1.045, that would put it around 1.061 OG at 5.5 gallons postboil. Considering you are adding maple syrup, you might be in the right ballpark.

drive45 said:

I may be misunderstanding your post, but it appears you were using your preboil SG and comparing it to their postboil OG. If it was 7.5 gallons preboil at 1.045, that would put it around 1.061 OG at 5.5 gallons postboil. Considering you are adding maple syrup, you might be in the right ballpark.

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the maple syrup was added at 90 minutes of the boil... i checked my "preboil gravity" right at the start of the boil (maybe a few minutes after adding the syrup) which should have put me to around the 1.070ish range, leaving me with an initial SG of 1.083-1.085

but instead my preboil gravity (a few minutes in with the syrup addition) at 1.045... which would have left me with a SG of 1.055-1.060. i pitched with my SG ending up with 1.065 because i dumped in about 0.65 of a lbs of DME with about 20 minutes left in the boil to try and jack up the gravity