Hay Neighbor have a Gansette (Narragansett beer clone) Looking for

[CharlaineC]

I was wondering if anyone might have cloned any of the old Narragansett brewing company beers from before they made their comeback. My grandfather was one of their brewmasters in the 70's before they shut the doors in 81 of the Cranston street brewery. When the company made its comeback the flavor was all wrong. I know that the new owner was able to get one of the last living brewmasters to help bring back a select few of their beers but Now that I'm in the PNW I cannot get it and would like to make it as close of a clone as I can. any help would be greatly thanked.

 

[BigEd]

Not to throw cold water on your project but it is extremely difficult to "clone" any of the older, American regional light lagers. For one thing specific information on hops and yeast strain are almost impossible to find as well as the exact grist bill. FWIW I drank my share of Gansett way back when and agree that the new version of the beer is a pretty good job of recreating the old one. BTW what was your grandfather's name? I did meet one of the last brewmasters, I think it was Bill Anderson, at a few local beer shows some years ago.

My suggestion would be to start with a generic reproduction of the beer style and then try and tweak it from there.
Here's a basic outline to try:

OG 1.048
IBU 18

60-65% 2-row pale malt
30% flaked maize
5-10% light crystal malt 10L

One addition Cluster hop, full boil time
One addition Hallertau hop, 20 minutes to end of boil

Wyeast Danish Lager yeast 2042 or similar from other producer

 

[CharlaineC]

They were able to gat the late living brewmaster to recreate one of the recipes but he wasn't able to recreate their porter. I know the water from the ponds near by which is a huge part of the flavor. I as for the hops I need to rewatch the documentry to see but i remember them saying where the hops came from. though the main one i want to clone isn't their lite its their full body version. the lite didn't come around till the late 60's early 70's. My grandfathers first name was George. He passed away before the comeback sadly.

 

[BigEd]

I'm not talking about "lite" beer but "light" as in the style, a North American Light Lager which is what the standard Gansett was. The old Porter, which I also drank a bit of back in the old days, was more or less the standard beer with "Porterene" added. That was a commercially used beer flavor/color extract used to make dark beers by the old breweries way before the craft beer movement brought back real porters. :You could try taking that basic recipe outline, take out the light crystal and use 5% medium (~50L) crystal instead, cut the flaked maize to 20% and add 10% chocolate malt, then switch the late Hallertau hop addition to an English variety like Goldings.