Advice On My First Recipe

Hi,

I brew extract batches with steeped specialty grains. I normally use kits but I have brewed a couple of clone recipes as well. For my next batch, I’d like to clone a local beer that’s my wife’s favorite, but I don’t have a recipe for it (I contacted the brewery, but no luck). So I’m taking a shot at creating the recipe myself. Their website provides the following information:

Zipline Brewing Co.’s Copper Alt. is an altbier, which is a unique German hybrid between an ale and a lager. This bronzed brew is designed to be extremely drinkable, with subtle nuances of chocolate and hazelnut. A late gift of Sterling hops in this brew leaves a little hoppiness for your palate to ponder before the next sip.

Hops: Magnum, Hallertau & Sterling
Malts: Pilsner, Carahell, Special B, Caramel, & Carafa
5.2% ABV
26 IBU

I’ve used BeerSmith 2, starting with an altbier recipe. I switched out the hops and specialty grains to match the website description, and adjusted the amounts, boil time, etc. to hit their ABV and IBU. I’m not sure which way to go on the hops; I can add 0.5oz of Hallertau Magnum for the 60-minute boil and add 0.5oz of Sterling at flame-out. Or I use 0.5oz of Hallertau the 60-minute boil, add 0.5oz of Magnum for the last 20-minutes of the boil, and 0.5oz of Sterling for the last 5-minutes of boil. I’m not sure what a “late addition” of Sterling hops would be, but I assume no more than a 5-minute boil, or perhaps no boil. They don’t mention a color, so I’m just using Pilsner LME and taking what I get from that and the specialty grains.

I’ve attached my recipe to this post, as a pdf and a BeerSmith file. I’ve also included a picture of the actual Copper Alt from the Zipline site, if that’s of any use for the color profile. As this is my first attempt at creating a beer from scratch, I’d appreciate any advice you have to offer.

Thanks for your help!

View attachment Copper Alt Clone.pdf

View attachment Copper Alt Clone.bsmx

Hallertau as bittering would be a waste, theyre generally used as a late addition. Id assume the magnum are the primary bittering hop. As for the rest, I'm unsure as I've never had the beer

andrewf1985 said:

Hallertau as bittering would be a waste, theyre generally used as a late addition. Id assume the magnum are the primary bittering hop. As for the rest, I'm unsure as I've never had the beer

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Ok, I'm assuming that since this beer has a light hop aroma that they are not adding both hallertau and sterling as late additions. That could mean they are using the German Halletau Magnum hop for bittering and adding sterling late for the aroma.

But again, halletau magnum is a pretty bitter hop, so in order to hit 26 IBU, it looks like I could only use 0.5oz of it for a 30-minute boil, adding 0.5oz of sterling for the last 3-minutes. BeerSmith shows that at 26.1 IBU.

At this point, I think the hops (quantity and boil time) is going to have the biggest impact on this recipe. I have not brewed a beer that only had a 30-minute boil, and I don't think I've ever brewed one that would use such a small amount of hops.

Is this recipe even close to producing a balanced beer or am I way off here?

Thanks again for your help.

I use this site for gauging what the hop profiles are

http://www.homebrewstuff.com/hop-profiles

What is the flavour profile of the beer? What flavour are you getting from the hops? You've just spoke about aroma and bittering, sorry i'm running blind

Id use one or the other of the crystal malts. Keep with the 60 minute boil though.

As for amounts, I'm converting to grams. As long as you hit your bittering ibu's the amount doesnt matter. You have more to use on another batch. Ive had 5G batches that only use 10g to reach my desired IBU's

andrewf1985 said:

What is the flavour profile of the beer? What flavour are you getting from the hops? You've just spoke about aroma and bittering, sorry i'm running blind

Id use one or the other of the crystal malts. Keep with the 60 minute boil though.

As for amounts, I'm converting to grams. As long as you hit your bittering ibu's the amount doesnt matter. You have more to use on another batch. Ive had 5G batches that only use 10g to reach my desired IBU's

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I'm not sure how to classify the flavor profile, which I suppose is part of the problem. I'm not sure if I've had a traditional altbier; perhaps that's a good starting point. However, the Zipline ingredients don't sound too far off from the altbier recipes I've found.

I'd prefer the 60-minute boil as well. I'm curious, why do you recommend one of the other crystal malts and which would you use? BeerSmith only shows the various versions of Caramel/Crystal Malt.

As far as hop amounts, I guess I can trust BeerSmith and use the amount that seems to hit my target. If I go with the Hallertau Magnum, that would be about 0.4oz, which would be 11.34g. I wouldn't mind a hoppier beer, but my wife would.

As I keep researching altbier, I see the German Beer Institute says: "One of only a handful of traditional German ales. Altbier is Copper-colored, cool-fermented, cold-conditioned, clean-tasting, with an aromatic hop presence, a firm creamy head, a medium body, and a dry finish." That sounds pretty close to what I'm going for. Maybe I should just find a good altbier recipe and give it a try.

You definitely want the Magnum as your 60 minute bittering charge. Alts shouldn't have too much of a hops aroma, so you'll probably want to add your Hallertau & Sterling at 30m or so, or at least not after 10m

I've made Kaiser's Alt (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=49953) and it calls for a single 60 minute addition of Spalter to 27 IBUs

Now i know your talking about altbier.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2009/12/16/brewing-german-altbier-recipes/

You can cut out a few grains and up the weight of the others. With the crystal, using a darker will over power the other and as your using special b as well that will help to impart the colour and caramel flavour. Try using a grain reference and it will help to show you flavours and percentages which are used and you might expect. I use

http://www.beersmith.com/Grains/Grains/GrainList.htm

https://byo.com/resources/grains

When i get a moment, i'll put the hop numbers into my brew program. However my schedule would probably be along the lines of

Magnum - 60min
Hallertau - 30-20min
Sterling - 0-10min (late as you said)

Minimal hallertau as it seems to be more about accenting the flavour of the malt with a cold secondary.

I was only looking into brewing one of these today so yet to formulate a recipe

jtratcliff said:

You definitely want the Magnum as your 60 minute bittering charge. Alts shouldn't have too much of a hops aroma, so you'll probably want to add your Hallertau & Sterling at 30m or so, or at least not after 10m

I've made Kaiser's Alt (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=49953) and it calls for a single 60 minute addition of Spalter to 27 IBUs

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I want to make sure I'm clear on this. Magnum is a bittering hop, and as such, the longer it's boiled the more bitterness it imparts on the beer. On the other hand, Hallertau and Sterling are aroma hops, so the shorter the boil time, the more aroma imparted on the beer. Is that correct?

If Sterling is used as the main aroma hop, is there any reason not to use the Hallertau Magnum hop for bittering? Obviously the German's created that hybrid for a reason. Or am I better off sticking to the two individual hops?

Thanks!

Are you meaning hallertau mittlefruh? I've never heard of hallertau magnum

In short yes, the longer the boil, the acids are utilised more and the aroma is driven off so the later the addition the less volitiles are boiled off

I'm using what comes loaded in BeerSmith 2, but here's a link from this site on Hallertau Magnum. Based on that, it appears that they are Magnum hops grown in the Hallertau region of Bavaria Germany. BeerSmith calls U.S. grown version simply Magnum. As I look through the list of hops again, I see BeerSmith does have Hallertauer Mittelfrueh as well. They show it as an aroma hop.

http://homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Hallertauer_Magnum

Thanks to everyone for their help. The more I dig into this, the more it sounds like they are pretty much brewing an altbier with a few tweaks. I'll see what I can come up with. Perhaps something to post if it turns out well!

Thanks again!

Hi,

I'm still messing around with this recipe, mainly because I'm not sure what I'm doing. I have a keg that's about to run dry, and the temperatures are finally going to start cooling off, so I'm looking forward to trying this beer.

I'd still appreciate any help I can get, especially with the specialty grains. Again, the Zipline site says they use Pilsner, Carahell, Special B, Caramel, & Carafa. I don't know if that's a random order, or from most used to least in the grain bill.

Since I'm brewing extract, I've been going back and forth with using 6lb Pilsner LME (which would seem to fit their grains), 6lb of Amber LME (which I see in a lot of altbier recipes), or perhaps 3lb of each.

I was asked earlier what flavor profile I'm going for, and I didn't know how to answer that. I came across some ratings for this beer on the Beer Advocate site. Here is the link to the full page, and some of the comments as well. http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30980/97538/

Bready and filled with cereal grain maltiness and a light herbal hoppiness. Malt is by far the dominant note. There is a littel dash of fruity yeast esters but no alcohol. Great alt flavor, a little grainier than I like but nonetheless delicious with cereal grain maltiness and breadiness, mild herbal, earthy hoppiness and a clean malty finish.

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Carmel malt and biscuity malt in the nose. The taste is very smooth and balanced with subtle hops. Alts were never hoppy and this beer isn't overly hoppy. Still true to its German roots.

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The aroma is like a typical brown ale which is sweet malts and spice. The taste was very pleasant with hints of caramel with a very light hint of chocolate.

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The aroma was rich and sweet which went with the taste...adding a hint of chocolate on the backside. Mouthfeel was medium and very nice, clean but with just enough lingering bitter sweet to remind you what you're drinking.

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So again, any help you can give me, especially with the grains, would be greatly appreciated. I'll probably be using Caramel/Crystal Malt as one of the specialty grains, but I really have no idea on what Lovibond to go with there.

Thanks again!

J2W2 said:

Hi,

I'm still messing around with this recipe, mainly because I'm not sure what I'm doing. I have a keg that's about to run dry, and the temperatures are finally going to start cooling off, so I'm looking forward to trying this beer.

I'd still appreciate any help I can get, especially with the specialty grains. Again, the Zipline site says they use Pilsner, Carahell, Special B, Caramel, & Carafa. I don't know if that's a random order, or from most used to least in the grain bill.

Since I'm brewing extract, I've been going back and forth with using 6lb Pilsner LME (which would seem to fit their grains), 6lb of Amber LME (which I see in a lot of altbier recipes), or perhaps 3lb of each.

I was asked earlier what flavor profile I'm going for, and I didn't know how to answer that. I came across some ratings for this beer on the Beer Advocate site. Here is the link to the full page, and some of the comments as well. http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30980/97538/









So again, any help you can give me, especially with the grains, would be greatly appreciated. I'll probably be using Caramel/Crystal Malt as one of the specialty grains, but I really have no idea on what Lovibond to go with there.

Thanks again!

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as far as the recipe goes, it's distinguishing between magnum and hallertau. most people just refer to it as US magnum or german magnum, not hallertau magnum. it's likely that they are using all american hops there, but i would personally choose the german magnum, and hallertau miltefrueh though. if you wanted to go real traditional you could substitute the saaz with the sterling, but if the sterling is used late, you may want to stick with that because of the specific characteristics it's imparting. so if it were me i would go with:

pilsner LME - 84%
carahell - 5%
crystal 60L - 5%
special b - 4%
carafa I - 2%

(you could up some of those specialty malts, but i wouldn't go much more than that or you'll end with a very sweet beer. i said crystal 60 to give it a balance because carahell is around 25 ebc, crystal 60 around 120 ebc, and special b around 355 ebc. all crystal/caramel malts, so i would think you would want a wide range from those crystal/caramel flavors. carafa is simply for coloring, so the easiest way to up the color if you want it would be to up that by 1 or 2%. but with this percentage range i've given you it's right about the middle for the style)

magnum .5 oz 60 min
hallertau .5 oz 15 min
sterling .5 oz 5 min

Thank you very much for your help. I've attached my updated recipe. I took your advice on everything, except I reduced the hops to 0.4oz for the magnum and the hallertau. It's showing a little over on the IBUs and ABV, but not much. My wife is not a big hop fan (I'm working on it) so I'm trying to hit their IBU as close as I can.

Thanks again!

View attachment Copper Alt.pdf

J2W2 said:

Thank you very much for your help. I've attached my updated recipe. I took your advice on everything, except I reduced the hops to 0.4oz for the magnum and the hallertau. It's showing a little over on the IBUs and ABV, but not much. My wife is not a big hop fan (I'm working on it) so I'm trying to hit their IBU as close as I can.

Thanks again!

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yeah, i was thinking it might be too much for the IBUs, especially if you're wanting it on the less hoppy side. i just usually try to simplify the brew day, so made it .5oz across the board. by all means, don't be afraid to take them even a little lower.