Which goes back to my point. Say their acceptable range is 1.011 to 1.013.
Now lets say someone was reading the beer at 1.010 when it's actually 1.011. Say a recent batch was actually 1.013, and got read as 1.014; it's often pretty hard to discern 1SG point on hydrometer. See how that can happen?
Most breweries have a 1/2 Plato margin in FG. The tricky part is figuring out the range.
Now for my two cents, and what I've learned cloning beers.
A. Nail the malt bill. This is critical. It's hard to clone a beer without having the percentages right. You can miss the OG, but you need the right grist for it to taste the same.
B. Get the fermentation character correct. You guys have the right yeast, now it's just getting the temperature schedule correct.
C. Strong ferment. You need to get close to your target FG, or if not, the sugars you leave behind must match the beer you're cloning. Hoptimum is a great example. FG is like 1.018. It doesn't taste the slightest bit sweet though; just has a full mouthfeel. So if one were to clone that beer, they would have to mash warmer, and ferment strong. A lower mash temp, and a weaker ferment would yield a sweeter beer. Make sense?
D. Nail the dry hop. The boil hops are important, but the dry hops are much more critical. In a beer as hop forward as I hear Heady is, the boil hops are much less important. Assume 4-6oz dry hopped for a 6gal batch, and focus your time on getting it right. Probably multiple additions.
Finally: the pictures I've seen of HT are really cloudy. I mean, really cloudy. Not that it helps with the clone process, but their yeast is either SUPER dusty, or they need to add more kettle finings to their wort.
That's all I have to add at the moment. I'm really itching to help you guys, but I've never had HT, so I can only offer knowledge from my past experience cloning IPAs.
This current step is 500ml with 1.75oz, so 4 is clearly too high.
