Deschutes Cinder Cone Red Ale Clone help

The link I followed from the brewery's website shows all the ingredients needed. However they will not tell you the mash temp, weights/amounts for the ingredients, etc... After trying several times to adjust the grain bill and hop schedule, I think I may have gotten near where I want to be for the recipe. Here it is as follows:
All-grain
5 gallon batch
Original gravity: 1.053...needs to be in the 1.052-1.056 range
Final gravity: 1.014-1.018 range
Target IBU: 55
Alc. %: 5.4%

Ingredients:
9 pounds NW 2 row pale
4 oz. 40*L caramel
8 oz. 60*L caramel
4 oz. 80*L caramel
4 oz. CaraPils
2 oz. Black barley

Hop Schedule:
1 oz. Simcoe whole leaf 13% (60 minutes)
1 oz Amarillo whole leaf 8% (10 minutes)
1 oz. Cascade whole leaf 6% (10 minutes)
1 oz. Tettnanger whole leaf 4% (flameout)
*puts me at 55 IBU

Yeast:
Wyeast 1098 British Ale

Process:
60 minute conversion at 155*F
Strike with 3.2 gallons at 169*F to hit 155*F. Begin 60 minute mash checking temp./stirring every 15 minutes to ensure uniform conversion. Vorlauf and drain. Batch sparge with 6 gallons at 175*F. Stir and rest 10-15 minutes to convert any remaining sugars. Vorlauf, drain and collect 6.5 gallons wort. Boil and follow hop schedule. Cool and pitch yeast. Ferment at 65*F for 3-4 weeks. Bottle and age 2 months.

Here is the link for those of you interested......
http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/CEDocuments/Downloads_GetFile.aspx?id=370461&fd=0

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone...happy brewing!!!

Honestly, try emailing them, you'd be surprised what kind of feedback you get from Pro Brewers.

So you think this is close? I have been looking for a clone for a while now. I moved to Montreal from Oregon and have been missing this beer!!!

Why the British Ale yeast when it calls for English Ale yeast? BTW that beer sounds tasty.

Aren't they similar? The British ale yeast won't leave as much residual sweetness as the English. Wouldn't that make the beer more balanced? I may still go to the LHBS and get WLP002 English. I haven't used either of these strains so I don't know from experience (only 40 gallons under my belt).

I also got Maris Otter instead of 2 row pale. The crystal 40 and 80 were increased from 4 oz. to 8 oz. too....

You can also check out the Brewing Network's Can You Brew It show (http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show). They have done mirror pond, obsidian, and black butte all with interviews with the brewer. There might be some discussion in there about general mash temps for all their beers.

Good luck, Cinder Cone is one of my favorite at Deschutes!

englebrau9 said:

I also got Maris Otter instead of 2 row pale. The crystal 40 and 80 were increased from 4 oz. to 8 oz. too....

Click to expand...

nice sub with the marris otter. I am thinking of trying your recipe. and I was gonna do something similar (add some Vienna) You think it is pretty close???

no dry hop???

I haven't tried making this one yet...still waiting on my hops to arrive. Decided to mash at 152*F instead of 155. You could try some Vienna but I am only using ingredients that were listed by the brewery. In the commercial description of the beer it says 4 types of caramel malt and I only have 3. Maybe I will try a couple ounces of some 120 lovibond caramel....

At the recommendation of a friend I tried brewing this recipe as an extract. I substituted 7lbs of Amber Malt Extract for the two row and the crystal malts.

So the final gravity when I pitched yeast was at around 1.045 which is low according to the recipe. I just moved it into secondary after primary was done and the krausen had fallen back into the beer. The gravity is now around 1.010 and the beer is lacking in body. Is there anything I can do to the beer at this point like adding dextrose that might have been missing from the Amber Malt Extract?

It is has a nice clean hop flavor like I was looking for, but it seems unbalanced. Any ideas you have are welcome.

dextrose is just corn sugar, maybe you mean maltodextrin? I think that your amber extract didn't have enough specialty character (this OP had a pound of crystal as well as black patent and carapils) so what you have is a red color beer, but not a red flavor similar to Cinder Cone.

Anything you add to a finished beer will be a quick fix and may have undersireable consequences such as infection or dilution. You could add maltodextrin powder or add a concentrated steeped crystal malt water, but I wouldn't do either of those.

Best would be to just enjoy this beer for what it is and try again. Next time, use pale LME and steep the specialty grains listed in the recipe in the OP. And try to get some brewing software or calculations (http://beercalculus.hopville.com/ it's online and free) to make sure that you can match the OG in the recipe to match the hopping schedule. That will result in a more balanced beer.

Good luck!

Anyone have any luck with this recipe? Deschutes has discontinued Cinder Cone and it was one of my favs!! I have emailed them and am waiting for a resonse....

Resurrecting an old thread for sure here, but it is appropro as Cinder Cone is BACK! Had another bomber last night and it is even better than I remembered. So balanced with firm bitterness, subtle but solid hop flavor, and not too much caramel sweetness, unlike the Red Chair which just tastes like a crystal malt bomb to me. It's a classic west coast Red Ale, not an IRA, Red IPA, etc. Highly recommend picking some up if you have access.

And updated info on the Deschutes website, although still leaves some variables up to the brewer, gives the following:

SPECIFICS
Recipe type: All grain
Batch size: 5 U.S. gallons
Original gravity: 1.050-1.060
Final gravity: 1.010-1.020
Boil time: 90 minutes
Fermentation temp: 65° F
Yeast type: English Ale

MALT
Pale
Crystal - 150
Crystal - 60
Black Barley
Wheat

HOPS
Bravo
Cascade
Tettnang
Amarillo

**Note: Temps, times and weights are the challenge. Happy Brewing!

I'd love to see a revival of this thread. I want a solid clone of this but have not been able to perfect it. Has anyone made something that get really close?:rockin: