Heady Topper- Can you clone it?

[JOE_R]

I'm in the dry hopping stage of a heady topper(ish) DIPA. Using WLP001. As I was adding my first addition of three (@ 4 days apart) of pellet hops, I apparently had a large quantity of methane gas floating around my brain. I added the whole 1/2 oz. of Apollo instead if 1/3 of it.
Question #1. How will this change the final taste? (I don't plan to add more)

Question #2. I placed the hops in a bag. Do I use a new bag for the new hop additions or just throw the new hop pellets into the same bag?

BTW.. Purchased the Captain Crush after forgetting to ask NB to crush the Pearl. Easy to put together, sturdy and 75% + efficiency. I set the mill exactly like the instructions indicated. I was shooting for 1.074 and ended up with 1.078. My first barely crusher.

 

[brewski09]

I'm in the dry hopping stage of a heady topper(ish) DIPA. Using WLP001. As I was adding my first addition of three (@ 4 days apart) of pellet hops, I apparently had a large quantity of methane gas floating around my brain. I added the whole 1/2 oz. of Apollo instead if 1/3 of it.
Question #1. How will this change the final taste? (I don't plan to add more)

Question #2. I placed the hops in a bag. Do I use a new bag for the new hop additions or just throw the new hop pellets into the same bag?

BTW.. Purchased the Captain Crush after forgetting to ask NB to crush the Pearl. Easy to put together, sturdy and 75% + efficiency. I set the mill exactly like the instructions indicated. I was shooting for 1.074 and ended up with 1.078. My first barely crusher.

Vinnie Cilurzo of RRBC has talked a lot about dry hopping. According to him you should be fine with no out minimal differences in your dry hopping character.

I would do new bags because I don't want to risk infecting my batch retrieving the old ones.

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[JOE_R]

Thanks. Will do. Just had a taste (1 oz.) 48 hours into the first hop addition and it is awesome. I've never had Heady but this beer gets the taste buds rockin'. Coming soon!

 

[powermd]

I had a buddy say the same thing and he fermented cool like you did. He got his down to low 10s be slowly warming it up to the low-to-mid 70s. If 71.5 doesn't do the trick, go a little warmer. I always ramp my beers at the middle to end of ferment and never have issues with stuck ferment (unless I'm using DuPont strain). My HT clone finished at 1.015 using YG001 with no issues at all and no "belgiany" esters.

I'm thinking about ditching this batch at this point.

I've tried:

1) Gentle aeration by transferring to a new carboy with waterfall.
2) Escalating the temp to 72.5F
3) Pitching a packet of US-05.

Still at 1.020.

Worse, the hop flavor I'm looking for is just not there and the batch is starting to taste a little stale. Specifically the dankness common to simcoe/apollo is totally absent. I attribute this to use of a hop spider that probably didn't allow enough mixing of the wort with the hops.

Next time I'll make a large teabag out of a nylon sack with drawstring. That should allow for better infusion while providing easy separation from the wort. OTOH, maybe I want the hop dregs in the beer all the way through (as it was for my first HT clone, which was awesome).

I'm also going to ditch Conan and go back to WY 1099. I used that for my original clone and it came out great. I did a separate fermentation (same wort) with 1056 and it wasn't as good.

Thoughts?

 

[Feurhund]

Update on mine. The 6 gallon Bells yeast split fermented down to 1.014, the Conan 10 gallon split went from 1.024 to 1.019 with rousing and heating to 70F I added 1 tsp amylase enzyme and kegged with a 1/4 pack in each keg of US05 along with first half of dry hop. If I get another 4 points it will help carb and I can pour off the yeast with a cold crash later.
Both tasted awesome. No hop spider for me. Free floating with a hop stopper on kettle. I also shot for 200-250 on the sulphates and it has a a really bright firm crisp bitterness.

 

[adamc]

Hey everyone. I have been following this post for quite sometime, but can't for the life of me find the actual recipe in all 2000+ responses! Haha

Can someone point me in the right direction? I think we're at version 6 now right?

 

[mtnagel]

First post is still the official one.

 

[Feurhund]

I'm thinking about ditching this batch at this point.



I've tried:



1) Gentle aeration by transferring to a new carboy with waterfall.

2) Escalating the temp to 72.5F

3) Pitching a packet of US-05.



Still at 1.020.



Worse, the hop flavor I'm looking for is just not there and the batch is starting to taste a little stale. Specifically the dankness common to simcoe/apollo is totally absent. I attribute this to use of a hop spider that probably didn't allow enough mixing of the wort with the hops.



Next time I'll make a large teabag out of a nylon sack with drawstring. That should allow for better infusion while providing easy separation from the wort. OTOH, maybe I want the hop dregs in the beer all the way through (as it was for my first HT clone, which was awesome).



I'm also going to ditch Conan and go back to WY 1099. I used that for my original clone and it came out great. I did a separate fermentation (same wort) with 1056 and it wasn't as good.



Thoughts?

Don't scrap the batch! You could try alpha amylase if you want it to dry out and you could also add sulfate as well to brighten the bitterness and flavor. Dry hopping or adding a hop tea can liven it as well. Don't give up.

 

[adamc]

Thanks a lot. I am going to give this thing a shot in a few weeks.

 

[powermd]

Don't scrap the batch! You could try alpha amylase if you want it to dry out and you could also add sulfate as well to brighten the bitterness and flavor. Dry hopping or adding a hop tea can liven it as well. Don't give up.

Well, I have a new round of brew supplies on order from Northern already, but on your advice I put a teaspoon of AA into my 6 gallon dud. I'm also warming it up a bit, shooting for 75F to start, and once I see activity, bringing the temp down to 70F.

What would you recommend for a hop tea to add some dankness to the flavor profile? I'm not sure if dry hopping alone is going to enhance the flavor profile as much as the aroma.

 

[Adaman05]

Well, I have a new round of brew supplies on order from Northern already, but on your advice I put a teaspoon of AA into my 6 gallon dud. I'm also warming it up a bit, shooting for 75F to start, and once I see activity, bringing the temp down to 70F.

What would you recommend for a hop tea to add some dankness to the flavor profile? I'm not sure if dry hopping alone is going to enhance the flavor profile as much as the aroma.

Columbus and Apollo for sure.

 

[powermd]

Okay, well provided I get down to my target gravity, I'll make a hop tea out of one of the dry hop additions. Add that, then do the second dry hop addition as usual.

 

[powermd]

You know, thinking back on my mash, I overshot the target temp in the very beginning and it spent about 10 minutes at 155-6F. Perhaps that destroyed the natural beta amylase and created more unfermentables than expected. At the time I figured 10 minutes wouldn't hurt, but maybe it did. As I said in an earlier post, my yeast may not be the healthiest, but I did pitch a lot. About 1T cells for 6 gallons based on conservative calculations.

Here's another idea, whether I keep this batch or not, would it be unreasonable to cold crash to collect the yeast and use it again with a new batch? Remember it's now "contaminated" with 100B US-05 cells. The upshot is that there should be several trillion Conan cells in there.

 

[powermd]

Four days after adding a teaspoon of dry amylase, and no activity. Last night I tried dissolving another tsp of amylase in a sample of beer, and then adding that back to the carboy with a good long shake/swirl. I cranked the temp back to 72F, which had been lingering around 65F. This morning I saw one bubble emerge slowly from the airlock, so this might have worked. Now I'll follow the daily gravities to my target. The next step is will be a hop tea, but first I may cold crash to hopefully get as much amylase out as possible. Not sure if that's going to be technically possible as I would expect an enzyme to pretty much stay in solution.

 

[g-star]

Four days after adding a teaspoon of dry amylase, and no activity. Last night I tried dissolving another tsp of amylase in a sample of beer, and then adding that back to the carboy with a good long shake/swirl. I cranked the temp back to 72F, which had been lingering around 65F. This morning I saw one bubble emerge slowly from the airlock, so this might have worked. Now I'll follow the daily gravities to my target. The next step is will be a hop tea, but first I may cold crash to hopefully get as much amylase out as possible. Not sure if that's going to be technically possible as I would expect an enzyme to pretty much stay in solution.

I highly doubt this is a wort fermentability problem, the amylase will probably not do much to help attenuation. The bubble in your airlock was most likely CO2 escaping out of solution as you warmed it up.

This strain, especially the ECY29 variety, is notorious for crapping out at 1.020 - 1.025, irrespective of mash temp or O2 levels. There is a lengthy thread ("Conan yeast experiences") that documents several cases of this. It happened to me too, and is a reason I won't go back to this strain...the headaches just don't outweigh the perceived flavor advantages, which I always thought was a lot of hyperbole anyway from my own experiences with heady topper and using the strain in several IPA's.

 

[mtnagel]

Four days after adding a teaspoon of dry amylase, and no activity. Last night I tried dissolving another tsp of amylase in a sample of beer, and then adding that back to the carboy with a good long shake/swirl. I cranked the temp back to 72F, which had been lingering around 65F. This morning I saw one bubble emerge slowly from the airlock, so this might have worked. Now I'll follow the daily gravities to my target. The next step is will be a hop tea, but first I may cold crash to hopefully get as much amylase out as possible. Not sure if that's going to be technically possible as I would expect an enzyme to pretty much stay in solution.

Seems like you are doing an awful lot of messing around with this just to get it to drop a few points. Maybe it's just me, but I would have bottled the 1.020 beer and moved on. I bet it would still taste pretty damn good. If I really thought it was the yeast, I probably wouldn't use it again (at least not in an IPA that I wanted to finish dry). But maybe that's just me.

 

[blizzard]

Four days after adding a teaspoon of dry amylase, and no activity. Last night I tried dissolving another tsp of amylase in a sample of beer, and then adding that back to the carboy with a good long shake/swirl. I cranked the temp back to 72F, which had been lingering around 65F. This morning I saw one bubble emerge slowly from the airlock, so this might have worked. Now I'll follow the daily gravities to my target. The next step is will be a hop tea, but first I may cold crash to hopefully get as much amylase out as possible. Not sure if that's going to be technically possible as I would expect an enzyme to pretty much stay in solution.

In my (one time only) experience the AA took a long time to work and a small amount ultimately dropped the FG much farther than I expected. Unfortunately my notes don't have much detail here, but I did dry the beer out much more than I intended and then the bottles overcarbed as it continued to work.

 

[powermd]

Seems like you are doing an awful lot of messing around with this just to get it to drop a few points. Maybe it's just me, but I would have bottled the 1.020 beer and moved on. I bet it would still taste pretty damn good. If I really thought it was the yeast, I probably wouldn't use it again (at least not in an IPA that I wanted to finish dry). But maybe that's just me.

It's too sweet as it is now, I want to drop the gravity more or just start over.

I believe I mentioned earlier the first 10 minutes of my mash were 156F, so that might have created some unfermentable sugars.

EDIT -- I'm getting one bubble every 15 seconds, so it's definitely fermenting again.

 

[powermd]

We're at 1.011 now, and the taste of the beer is much improved without that cloying sweetness. So it appears this was a mash problem.

I'm about to do a hop tea using all of the scheduled dry hops, plus a little more simcoe and apollo for dankness. Total hops will be 6 oz in 1 L of just boiled water for 60 minutes, and then I'm going to put it all in the beer and let it meld for a week, then cold crash and carb!

 

[mtnagel]

Glad you got it figured out!

 

[hawgwild81]

I'm sure this has been asked, but I didn't read all 203 pages. Is there a site where you can purchase all the ingredients for this kit or is everyone buying from multiple sites?

 

[powermd]

I'm sure this has been asked, but I didn't read all 203 pages. Is there a site where you can purchase all the ingredients for this kit or is everyone buying from multiple sites?

There are kits, but it's not Vegan's recipe, and they're overpriced.

I find that Northern Brewer comes closest to being a one-stop shopping trip for all items. I'm not sure if they have the exact version of TF caramalt Vegan uses, but that's not critical. Midwest unfortunately does't have hop extracts last I checked. Brewbrothers often has better prices than NB (and they sell Hop Jizz, which is excellent), but you won't be able to get everything, which means paying more than one shipping charge.

If you really like IPAs I would recommend buying some 1 lb bags of hops to keep in the freezer. You can save a little money that way over the course of a year.

 

[BigDaddyBeard]

Brewed ten gallons of this last night and it was a brew day from Hell. There was a hole in the bottom of the grain bag and I lost a good bit on the floor, no big deal, ended up overflowing my mash tun, another mess. Now nearing the end of the boil I go to hook up my chiller, I hear water running but no water, hose bib is busted in the cellar. Great! Get a keg bucket and fill it with ice water, carry keggle full of boiling hot wort down porch steps, burn leg. Lift keggle into bucket carefully leaning it cadywampus because of the kettle valve. Wait until it cools to 180, take keggle out of bath, steep hops, put keggle back it bath. By this time it's 2 am and I go to bed. Get up at 5, check temp, great down to 80. Holy nuggets I forgot to add the sugar, boil 2 cups of water for ten minutes, dissolve sugar, cool, pour into wort. Finally I drain into my fermenters, by this time I am at 70 degrees, cool enough I pitch my yeast.

I think my final volume was about 9.75 gallons and O.G. was 1.074. Smells and tastes great I just hope everything is Kosher. Definitely the worse brew day to date and of coarse the most expensive batch as well.


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[BeerGrylls]

Brewed ten gallons of this last night and it was a brew day from Hell. There was a hole in the bottom of the grain bag and I lost a good bit on the floor, no big deal, ended up overflowing my mash tun, another mess. Now nearing the end of the boil I go to hook up my chiller, I hear water running but no water, hose bib is busted in the cellar. Great! Get a keg bucket and fill it with ice water, carry keggle full of boiling hot wort down porch steps, burn leg. Lift keggle into bucket carefully leaning it cadywampus because of the kettle valve. Wait until it cools to 180, take keggle out of bath, steep hops, put keggle back it bath. By this time it's 2 am and I go to bed. Get up at 5, check temp, great down to 80. Holy nuggets I forgot to add the sugar, boil 2 cups of water for ten minutes, dissolve sugar, cool, pour into wort. Finally I drain into my fermenters, by this time I am at 70 degrees, cool enough I pitch my yeast.

I think my final volume was about 9.75 gallons and O.G. was 1.074. Smells and tastes great I just hope everything is Kosher. Definitely the worse brew day to date and of coarse the most expensive batch as well.


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Well look on the bright side, harsh brew days are fantastic catalysts for process improvement. Use your frustration for good! Then enjoy the magical beer you just made. I recently ran out of mine, I really need to make this again. I understand now why Kimmich wants people to drink this fresh. It really changes a lot over time. It was a different beer by the time the keg was empty, and not really in a good way.

 

[ianmatth]

I understand now why Kimmich wants people to drink this fresh. It really changes a lot over time. It was a different beer by the time the keg was empty, and not really in a good way.

I disagree, I actually think my last Heady Topper (not my clone an actual Heady Topper), which was ~5 months old was better than all the fresher ones I drank. Maybe the can is what kept it so fresh. My take is that it had all the taste of the fresher ones and that maybe it was better because the yeast had settled out. With my Heady clone if I pour a bottle and make sure none of the yeast is in the beer that I drink, it tastes much better than if I pour the whole beer and it is cloudy from the yeast. Conan may give some great flavors in the beer, but actual Conan yeast in the beer detracts from the flavor. I also feel my last Heady clone is getting better as well, although I am bottling rather than kegging. A week or two of bottle conditioning is good, but 3 or 4 weeks seems to smooth it out more and it doesn't lose any hop flavor in that time. Based on the way an actual Heady Topper held up, I think if I kept it in the fridge for 4 months after 4 weeks of bottle conditioning it wouldn't lose a thing. Of course my Heady clone is never going to last for 4 months.

 

[powermd]

Glad you got it figured out!

So far so good… I have to say I'm quite surprised this was salvageable. Worried about going to far with the amylase, I put the carboy in my garage where the temp is in the 40s.

I tasted the beer again today, gravity is still 1.011. The hop tea addition provided the punch I was looking for. That dank piny flavor is definitely in there now, and the tropical elements were boosted too. I'm going to do hop teas more often! The only change I would make is doubling the volume to 2 L. 6 oz of pellet hops absorbed 1 L of water very easily forming a thick brick like sludge that was impossible to pour. The only question now is how long to leave it for in my garage. Since I'm so close to the taste I want, my inclination is to give it just a few days to cold crash slowly, then keg.

 

[paulster2626]

I disagree, I actually think my last Heady Topper (not my clone an actual Heady Topper), which was ~5 months old was better than all the fresher ones I drank. Maybe the can is what kept it so fresh. My take is that it had all the taste of the fresher ones and that maybe it was better because the yeast had settled out. With my Heady clone if I pour a bottle and make sure none of the yeast is in the beer that I drink, it tastes much better than if I pour the whole beer and it is cloudy from the yeast. Conan may give some great flavors in the beer, but actual Conan yeast in the beer detracts from the flavor. I also feel my last Heady clone is getting better as well, although I am bottling rather than kegging. A week or two of bottle conditioning is good, but 3 or 4 weeks seems to smooth it out more and it doesn't lose any hop flavor in that time. Based on the way an actual Heady Topper held up, I think if I kept it in the fridge for 4 months after 4 weeks of bottle conditioning it wouldn't lose a thing. Of course my Heady clone is never going to last for 4 months.

I live near Toronto and make it out to VT for skiing every winter. Since my supply of HT is limited, I always keep a 4-pack sitting around for a loooong time until a special occasion pops up. Well, I bought some in Feb 2013 and drank 2 of them on Christmas, 10 months later. These were the best I've had - bright and still full of flavour. I think this one gets better with time - the can for sure has a lot to do with it.

 

[kingmatt]

This may have been asked before but does anyone use any finings for clarity in this beer? I usually add gelatin to my kegs, especially with IPAs, but I don't know if this will have an adverse affect on the Heady given how important the Conan is to the flavor profile...

 

[FATC1TY]

This may have been asked before but does anyone use any finings for clarity in this beer? I usually add gelatin to my kegs, especially with IPAs, but I don't know if this will have an adverse affect on the Heady given how important the Conan is to the flavor profile...

No real reason to to use it, Conan doesn't clear all that well anyways if you are trying to clone it.

Otherwise, if you want clear beer, by all means.. toss it in there, it's your beer!

 

[jdauria]

The BYO magazine clone version calls for polyclar. You add after primary complete and 3 days before first dry hop. I am at that stage now, and dry hopping Saturday.


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[BeerGrylls]

The BYO magazine clone version calls for polyclar. You add after primary complete and 3 days before first dry hop. I am at that stage now, and dry hopping Saturday.


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I thought PVPP/polyclar required filtering?

 

[jdauria]

Researched a lot before using, many pro brewers use it and they do filter, however what I read on here and the AHA forums is that it is safe because it attaches to yeast in suspension and drops out. So as long as you don't suck up the sediment at bottom when transferring, it is ok.


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[FATC1TY]

I'd try to get the beer as cold as possible and use gelatin.

PVPP isn't something I particularly care for, as I've had it, and have heard of it stripping out some flavors. Mostly hop flavors.

 

[kingmatt]

I am planning on brewing Vegan's most recent version on Saturday since it won't be as bitterly cold here in PA. Only change I am making will be subbing out Carapils for Caramalt because my LHBS doesn't carry it. Here is a pic of my starter as of this morning that I stepped up from the dregs of one Heady can:

 

[JOE_R]

DIPA (HT) IN DA HAUS! Lowered the kegerator to 38F on Sunday. Kegged 1/2, bottled 1/2 on Sunday. I had a nice cold glass of beer when I got home from work today and it was phenomenal. I had a few sips here and there while it was dry hopping to check progress, but not at the right temp. I used Vegan's recipe on page 1 (90 min. mash), the hops recipe on page 81 (Bobbrew's) and WLP001. I'm not changing a thing. I made this clone for a family member after he read about HT. It was also a great learning experience since this is the first time that I tried dry hopping.

 

[jamursch]

Do you think a 90 min boil makes that much difference?
Reading the recipe it looks as though it's a 2 hour kettle process with 90 min boil and then 30 min steeping.
If I'm trying to squeeze it in on a Saturday can I get away with a 60 boil and then 30 steep so it's 90 total before I cool?
Thoughts?

 

[JOE_R]

I believe that if you are using Hopshot, then a 90 minute boil is required to get the correct IBU's @ a given specific gravity. Remember that you will be shooting for 120 IBU's. 10 mL of Hopshot @ 1.070 in a 60 minute boil will give 100 IBU's. I try to do simple beer math (like gravity points and/or IBU's) first before changing any clone recipe. It will usually give me a good idea of the outcome of the beer.

 

[beeber]

I just added the second dry hop addition on my attempt at this, this morning. The smell when removing the lid was something to behold! Cheers!

 

[ianmatth]

I just brewed another Heady clone and am doing a head to head comparison using Conan and WLP090. I had more boil off than I expected (only 3.2 gallons after boil off) and hit 1.073 OG on the dot, so I didn't end up adding any sugar. I have had great attenuation on my previous Heady clones so I'm sure that will be fine.

I used theveganbrewer's 4.0 recipe except I used a combination of Golden Promise and 2-row rather than Pearl malt, and I used 1.25 oz of 17.8% AA CTZ and Apollo hops instead of hop shots for the 90 minute addition. I pitched 100 billion cells of either Conan or WLP090 into each 1.6 gallon batch.

 

[GMP428]

does anybody have a slant or anything they can send me of some conan??? i had some a few months ago but it died in transit when i got relocated. if so please PM me. thanks!!!