Way, way, way over the top Sam Adams Utopia clone

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Ok guys, a friend and I have agreed that we're going to try to brew a Utopia Clone just after Christmas. We've both had it before so we at least have tasted what we're trying to replicate. From information gathered from a ton of sources we've cobbled together this recipie. We're going to aim for 20 gallons going into the pots, boiled down to ten gallons of final product. Tell me what you think of the recipie. It's not a perfect clone, I know Sam has a starting point of 48*Plato and we're only around 42. We've talked about adding some malt extract to boost ours up, we're still negotiating on that, I want to keep it all grain. We'll also be adding either sherry or champagne yeast (if we can't get sherry which according to our local guy is hard to get) and we'll be aging it on oak chips for probably a year. I'm thinking about how to replicate the taste profiles they get from the time SA keeps the beer in old whiskey and sherry barrels

I know Pummba and Landhoney were both talking about taking a shot at this some time ago, dows anyone know how that turned out?


Anyways, heres our recipie

Recipe Type All Grain
Batch Size 10 gal. Boiled down from 20 gallons at start of boil

Predicted Original Gravity 1.188 @ 60 °F

Predicted Terminal Gravity 1.034 @ 60 °F

Mash Efficiency 80 %

Total Grain/Extract 70.00 lbs.

Calories (12 fl. oz.) 782.1



40 lbs. American 2-row
15 lbs. American 6-row Pale
3 lbs. American Caramel 60°L
3 lbs. Toasted Pale Malt
1 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
4 lbs. Munich Malt
1.5 lbs. German Smoked

2.5 lbs. Maple Syrup added with 15 minutes left in boil

2 oz. Tettnanger (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 60 min.
2 oz. Spalt Spalter (Whole, 4.75 %AA) boiled 60 min.
2 oz. Hallertau (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 30 min.
2 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 10 min.

Yeast : White Labs WLP099 Super High Gravity Ale

Original 41.75 °Plato
Attenuation 79.6 % 63.1 %
Extract 8.53 °Plato
Alcohol 21.1 % ABV


PTN

YEGADS man. This is going to sound wierd, but 700+ calories per 12 fl oz? Sweet Jesus... it sounds lovely.
 
YEGADS man. This is going to sound wierd, but 700+ calories per 12 fl oz? Sweet Jesus... it sounds lovely.

I don't think I could drink 12 ounces of this stuff without having to get my stomach pumped. :) It is best served in a brandy snifter with about 1.5-2 ounces at a time. :)
 
Flat it is. Carbonation wafting 20+% alcohol up into you nostrils would be detrimental, I think. And since that is how the original is served that's what we went with.

I agree with Chris, a little goes a long way. Part of the reason we bottled in 375's. I've had a full bottle since it was bottled, took SWMBO and I two weeks to finish it. A nice port glass serving after dinner is ideal. This is in no way a session beer.

And don't go knockin' the man boobs. The ladies get a lesbian homo-erotic thrill from motorboatin' a set of 48DD's, just before climbing on for the A-ticket ride, Paul's Love Hammer.

It's all good.

PTN
 
I read this whole thread again for inspiration last week. I decided to have another crack at a super high gravity brew. I've recently upgraded my capacity and pulled off a 60 pound mash on Friday. Add to this 16 pounds of sugar and I'm looking at an OG of 1.158. So far it is fermenting nicely... all 13 gallons :)
 
And once again, I bow down before you!



I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy.







OTOH, I make pretty damned good beer too. PM me your address and I'll drop a bottle
off at your house when I go up to the folks next week.

PTN

ps

Wal Mart

Lives

$9.99

A much better use of time than rereading this thread.

PTN
 
Hmmm... After this past weekend at Masstoberfest and sampling U1, I am pretty sure I'm gonna take the plunge and make this beer. It's too good to only get a sip here or there from PTN.

I just hope i can come close to painting this "Sistine Chapel" with my "crayons" for brewing ability.

Yeager... lemme know if you wanna swing through and take a share. I would invite Paul but he has too many problems with his rig.
 
Yeah I think we are going to brew it again in January, but with the agreed understanding that PTN takes his portion home with him that night. :) I agree this was a great batch. I like it better than U2, though U2 is damn good and a year younger and the one we tried was not oaked. :) I am willing to give this a go again, and I think I want to go back to the original recipe scaled up by about 2-3 gallons. If you want in we can do a bigger batch. :)
 
I'm still amazed at how good that beer was. The newer one seemed to be coming along as well, unfortunately I was too preoccupied with my brewing to REALLY pay close enough attention to it but it seemed to be very much in the same vein but with a bit more bitterness (which may just be because of its youth). Tasted like it wanted to mellow out for a while still.
 
U2 was great but U1 was fantastic (and we talked about this at Masstoberfest).

I don't disagree with the theory behind upping the IBUs in U2 but I didn't care for the end result as much as the first one. Yeah, I hear ya that they'll probably mellow but i don't see them mellowing out THAT much more. The hops were fairly pronounced. I was looking at the recipes and U1 had calced IBUs of 43 vs 59 in U2... I would almost say you don't wanna go higher than like 47.. somewhere in the middle but I would much rather err on the light side.

I also don't think the malt is a problem in U1 so I'm not sure how much it really needs to be offset.

Maybe the oak will make the U2 even better but like I was saying, I just don't see the maltiness of U1 as being a problem that needs to be fixed.

I dunno... not sure I wanna hop in and be a third in your little love-fest. I might fly solo on this one. I've brewed with Paul before and have learned my lesson.

I gotta figure out what kinda weight I can toss in my tun. I THINK I top out around 75-80 lbs... not that I would do a full 13 gallon batch of this any way. Boil down is no prob at all... just worried about how much weight I can fit the tun.

I wonder how a little Marris Otter would play with this instead of some of the 2-row.
 
There was definitely a lot of hop character in U2 that was not in U1... but cripes, when did you guys brew that? Wasn't it this spring? First thought that came to mind when I drank it was "this is going to be very good in maybe a year's time." It certainly was more beer-like than either U1 or the "real" Utopias. Wasn't as true to the original, but again, I bet that beer is damn, damn good in a year or two.
 
when did you guys brew that? .

don't look at me... I haven't brewed any part of either. I have only showed up to take on my making-fun-of-Paul responsibilities... but I've never been part of the actual brewing.

yeah, I hear on U2 but like I keep saying... I don't think U1 was broken. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If anything I would just experiment with very small adjustments to the grain bill or maybe up the IBUs like I was saying... just a hair.
 
In a really weird and awkward way talking about these two beers is almost like comparing your children. They are two different beers. One is 21 months old, the other is 9. We expressly made the U2 with a higher hop bill because we felt, at the time, that the U1 needed a bit more hop bitterness to offset some perceived 'syrupy' characteristic. In the meantime the U1 has smoothed out tremendously and the syrupy-ness has gone totally away. As you said, it is a damned fine brew just as is. I think the U2 will get there. We're tasting it at an awfully young stage. It this stage in the U1's growth it wasn't terribly good either. It had a boatload of potential. I remember bringing a bottle of it to the Capes pig roast last year. That was the first time Alice (who has the best palette of anyone I know) got to sample it. She described it as a collection of really good parts that were in no way bound together, and that description nailed it. I've got high hopes for the U2. I think that time will do the same magic for this as it's done for it's bigger brother. I think the barrel aging will help tremendously. I had a taste of the fake whiskey that Yeager was making in the third barrel and the taste of the vanilla and the caramel we fantastic. They are going to add a great complexity to the brew. Remember, the bottle we sampled the other day was just stored in glass.

(BTW, Chris, why don't you take out an equal amount from both barrels and replace it with the stuff in the glass?)

PTN
 
yeah... don't get me wrong... I am not saying U2 is BAD in any way. It's really nice.... and sure, maybe I'm putting a little too much of an opinion into a beer that isn't really close to being done yet.

I just think U1 is really amazing right now and that's where I would focus efforts.
 
That's entirely up to you and Yeager regarding what YOU GUYS wanna brew.

I think I'm gonna take a shot at U1 with MAYBE...some minor changes.... just to make it even more awesomer.
 
Evening gents,

I'm looking into making a 2.5g batch of this and want to know if you did anything special to help fermentation or if you just pitched like normal.

Also, I have heard bad things about WLP099 as a first-pitch yeast and some suggestions to use a basic ale yeast like WLP001 or WLP051 and when fermentation slows to then pitch WLP099 or champagne yeast. Is there any merit in that?

Also any other tips I should know about before attempting this monstrosity.

PS. What did you use to measure the SG? My hydrometer only reads up to 1.170.
 
Well I attempted this monstrosity on 1/26.

It started around 1.215 and I pitched a huge starter of 001.

Now on 2/19 it's 1.170

Not sure what to do with it.:(
 
Wow that was a long thread... Now I'm thirsty. Impressive good sirs! Impressive!
 
I would have opened my bottle for the pig roast but... oh... that's right... I don't have a bottle... you made me take my one bottle out to the NHC and give some to freakin' Az_IPA and olllllo and the rest of 'em.

bastid.

Speaking of that... I still have a bottle of Sach's Cuvee de Tomme clone from that trip that he wanted us to taste. We should probably dust that bad larry off.
 
So I added the second starter (non barley wine starter this time) along with 2.25lbs of maple syrup. I took pictures I will be posting of the starter, syrup, mixed starter and syrup, and krausen. Note that this krausen is after 5 days and its still going and I have regularly agitated the yeast (usually by saying that the yeast looks like PTN, that would agitate anything). I will try and post the pics tomorrow when I get home from work.

It was around 1.049 at this point. Was this the champagne yeast?
 
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