Sam Adams Boston Ale clone or close?

So I'm within a week or two of getting my own brewing operation off the ground, and I'm planning out my first couple of brews (leaning towards malty since I'll be doing partial boils for the first couple of months). I'm going to make an English mild first, to have something tasty and legitimately ready to drink asap, and then a porter for my wife, who sees such a beer as justification for homebrewing. After that, I'd love to make something similar to SA's Boston Ale, which is a longtime favorite "everyday beer" for me. Anyone have any good extract recipes? It doesn't need to be a clone per se, so long as it's in the same ballpark.

Here is a video of Jim Cook founder of Sam Adams showing how to do the boston ale clone. It is part of the patriot homebrew contest, but he gives the recipe and some good instruction to boot.

http://www.samueladams.com/promotions/PatriotHomebrew/video.aspx

You beat me to it.
I think most of those cans are 3 pounds.
I don't like that he measures in tablespoons but he isn't trying to give away the actual recipe I guess.

Awesome stuff. Thanks a ton! This place rocks.

Seems like Jim Cook has a pretty rough job working with beer all day

Warning - if you follow his recipe exactly you will get a version of Sam Adams Light Boston Ale. This is because the OG for a 5 gallon yield is about 1.040 when it should be 1.052 according to his video.

Here is the recipe from the video:
3.3 lbs Munton Amber Malt Extract
3.3 lbs Munton Light Malt Extract
5 Tbsp East Kent Goldings
1.5 Tbsp East Kent Fuggles
1.5 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh (dry hop)
Munton's dry brewer yeast

With 20% water in the liquid malt extract you have very little malt for a 5 gallon yield. The first time I made a bacth of it I went ahead and adjusted for the 5 gallon yield, which resulted in the OG of 1.040. The finished product was pretty good beer, we drank it right up! It fermented down to 1.010 giving it about 4% ABV - very much like a light beer!

To make the gravity 1.052 it needs another 2 pounds of DME. I am not sure if I missed something in the video or maybe he actually only made 4 gallons of beer?

1/2 LB. 10 L crystal(steeped)
6 LBS.Pale extract
60 Min:1 OZ. East kent,1/2 Oz.Fuggle
15:1/2 OZ.Fuggle
0-5 min:1 OZ.Saaz
HITE LABS EAST COAST ALE,or WYEAST AMERICAN ALE II 1272
SG 1.045 FG 1.012

jmansfield said:

5 Tbsp East Kent Goldings
1.5 Tbsp East Kent Fuggles

Click to expand...

What would be the weight of these hops? I don't see how you would get the same consistency using tablespoons as the measurement.

By my measures, 1 ounce of hops would equal 2.5 Tbsp

I agree, it was odd that he measured in Tbsp but when you are sitting in a pile of hops like Jim Koch it is easier to measure in a tablespoons than it is to get out the scale and weigh it.

I bought this prepackaged receipe from my LHBS --
Boston Stock Ale

So, does this sound about right? How long should the dry hops stay in?

2.00 lb Light DME (8.0 SRM)
3.30 lb Amber LME (12.5 SRM)
3.30 lb Light LME (3.0 SRM)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent (60 min)
0.60 oz Fuggles (60 min)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent (15 min)
1.20 oz Goldings, East Kent (5 min)
1.00 oz Hallertauer (Dry Hop ?? days)
1 Pkgs Muton's Dry Yeast

I think this recipe of yours would be interesting, wonder if it would be a bit light in color though. My recipe is similar to Mr. Clean's. Let us know how this turns out!

5-7 days dry hop.

Not really my recipe. It's the original recipe with the hops amount converted to weight. The extra 2 lbs of DME was suggested by you a few posts up to bring the OG up to 1.054.

According to BeerSmith, the SRM for Mr. Clean's recipe would be 7.5. The recipe I typed would be 8.9.

lnxusr said:

So, does this sound about right? How long should the dry hops stay in?

2.00 lb Light DME (8.0 SRM)
3.30 lb Amber LME (12.5 SRM)
3.30 lb Light LME (3.0 SRM)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent (60 min)
0.60 oz Fuggles (60 min)
0.60 oz Goldings, East Kent (15 min)
1.20 oz Goldings, East Kent (5 min)
1.00 oz Hallertauer (Dry Hop ?? days)
1 Pkgs Muton's Dry Yeast

Click to expand...

Did you ever brew that recipe? and if you did how did it turn out?.

thanks.

BWAHAHAHA! With a click of my mouse a thread that's been in the grave for five years is RESURRECTED!

I banged around HBT and found a couple of threads about Sam Adams Boston Lager/Ale clones, but this one seemed the beefiest, so I thought I'd post my results here. I did an ale version since I'm doing multiple brews/ciders in my chamber at the moment and didn't have time for a lager. I just finished my first glass from the batch and included a side by side taste test. The color on my brew is a bit too dark, but the taste is just about spot on!



The recipe I used was:

5 Gallon Batch

5# Amber DME
1# Light DME

1# American Carapils
0.5# Crystal 10L

0.5oz East Kent Goldings @60 min.
0.75oz Fuggles @60 min.
0.5oz East Kent Goldings @15 min.
1.0oz East Kent Goldings @5 min.
1 Whirfloc tablet @ 5 min.
1.0oz Domestic Hallertau (7 days dry hop)

Grains were steeped at 155* for 30 mins.

All hops were pellets other than the Hallertau which was whole leaf. I dry hopped by sprinkling the whole leaves into primary after seven days (fermentation had basically stopped) and left it for another seven days.

Yeast: US-05 @65 degrees.

OG = 1.061 @ 81.
FG = 1.015 @ 66 (6.2% ABV).

Notes: If color really matters to you, I guess you could start by swapping a pound or two of the amber DME out for light or extra light. Fermentation was pretty vigorous. I had a three-piece airlock blow off and make a mess, but there was no apparent ill effect to the beer. Go for a blowoff tube. I used the "paint strainer around the racking cane" trick to keep from sucking the loose hops into the bottles (I bottled in Tap-a-Draft bottles).
All in all, I'm really pleased. A lot of people here will poo-poo a clone of such a mass-produced brew, but it's always been one of my favorites. Especially now that Sam Adams stuff is hitting $9/sixer around here, it's going to be great to be able to brew up a batch for way less than that.

And here I am, 4 years later, thanking you for posting your results as I plan to brew this myself!

Such a great beer...I may have to try a clone myself.