Fremont Brother IPA Clone?

[Evan La Marr]

Hey guys (and gals(?P))),

Fremont Brewing in Seattle has my favorite beer, and I have the luck of living in South Florida *two big thumbs down* so I can’t get it here.

It’s a giant beauty of malty goodness and hoppy wonder - I’ve never tasted another DIPA like it. It’s hop bitterness doesn’t slam your tongue like other IPAs; it’s there, but it only caresses your tongue gently enough to know you’ve got a monster on your hands. It’s malt body is heavy (it’s probably around 21 SRM, and sweeter than many IPA lovers may like), but not overbearing like a stout or brown ale - it’s just heavy enough to handle the monster that is the hop flavor. It’s just freaking the best. I’ve had Dogfish Head 90 min., but that’s only about 50% on the mark. I hope you all can have the pleasure of tasting it someday.

Anyways, I’m throwing a Hail Mary here and wondering if anyone has ever cloned it? If so, I would be eternally grateful for the recipe.

*fingers crossed*

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It's conventional with these kinds of requests to at least link to the relevant brewery page, which in this case has quite a lot of detail :

2-Row Pale, White Wheat, and Vienna malts with Centennial, Chinook, and Citra® hops with Amarillo® extract.
ABV: 8.5% IBU: 1 Billion Color: Honey red

A third-party site has a slightly different (older?) hop bill of Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, and Amarillo, and claim a plausible 5lb hops/bbl, which works out at 9.3oz per 5 US gallons, but they will get better utilisation from their hops.

Untappd claims 100IBU which is plausible.

@Fremontbrewing has posted on HBT back in 2011 saying their house yeast is derived from Wyeast Thames Valley Ale, their pale malt comes from Great Western, and they tend to add their hops at flameout. I'd interpret that as 5 minutes at homebrew scale, as wort takes longer to cool at commercial scale.

The flavour and colour you talk about sounds like it's almost all Vienna, and in the first instance I'd tend to KISS and go for 100% Vienna, but you could sub a pound or two with pale malt and white wheat.

But never having had the beer, and with no real idea of what it tastes like, I'd do something like this as a starting point :

5 US gallons, 75% brewhouse efficiency

16lb Vienna (Great Western?)

60min - 2oz Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus or Chinook
5 min - 2oz Centennial, 2oz Chinook
Whirlpool - 2oz Citra
Dry-hop - 4oz Amarillo

Yeast - Wyeast 1275

OG - 1.084
FG - 1.019
ABV - 8.49%

You're going to have to look after your yeast during the fermentation - pitch lots, add nutrients, aerate well, allow yourself to be heavily influenced by the Cloudwater DIPA v3.1 process (right hand column of this spreadsheet) although they use some ingredients like ALDC that aren't readily available to homebrewers to absolutely nail any hint of diacetyl.

See how that turns out, and then adjust accordingly.

 

[Evan La Marr]

@Northern_Brewer Oh my gosh, you’re the BEST! I had no idea such information could be found out. Thanks so much for your help, and your expertise in crafting a recipe!! I’ll definitely try this out and post back!

 

[Evan La Marr]

@Northern_Brewer also, thanks for the advice about linking to the brewery. If you can’t tell, I’m quite a noob. Appreciate it.
Also, I’ll be visiting England (more specifically London) for the first time over this Thanksgiving, so if you’ve got any out-of-the-ordinary places or brews to recommend in London, I’ll take them!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

No worries. If you are kinda new to this stuff, then it might be worth knocking grist and hops down by 15-20%, it'll make things much easier for the yeast as they can struggle a bit with gravities up at 1.084. It's just one less factor to worry about when you're doing the initial tweaking.

As for best pubs in London, there have literally been books written on that subject (although it's a little out of date, and probably best read in conjunction with the latest CAMRA Good Beer Guide), but my usual two recommendations for tourists would be Harvey's Best at the Harp just off Trafalgar Square (followed by Fuller's Porter if it's on, it's getting to that time of year) and Old Peculier at the Museum Tavern by the British Museum. There's a lot of pretty badly kept cask in London, and no shortage of Citra bombs on keg, but those two are a pretty reliable introduction to why we love cask.