How do you "double" a beer recipe (and I don't mean the quantity)?

[BrewBoyd]

How do you create a "double" beer recipe from the recipe of a "single"? That is, how do I take a recipe for a beer such as a Bell’s Best Brown Ale clone and turn it into a Double Brown. Bell’s had a Double Brown Ale recently at their café (maybe they still do) and it is wonderful. I would like to make it but find no recipe for the double. There are clone recipes for the single, but how do I turn it into a double? Would just increasing the base malt do the trick?

 

[treebeerd]

I would think increasing the amount of base malt would get you where you want to go, if you're just trying to increase the ABV. If you're trying to "double" the amount of malt flavor in the beer as well, you would want to increase the specialty malts as well. Do you have any stats for the Double Brown you're trying to recreate?

 

[max384]

Are you asking specifically if anyone knows the recipe for Bell's Double Brown Ale? Or are you asking how to make a brown ale a double brown ale?

It looks as though Bell's double brown is a completely different beer than their best brown ale, rather than a "double version" of it.

 

[Lefou]

There's a lot implied in a name.
Are you looking at doubling the ABV level ... or the darkness of the brew?
You can increase ABV by adjusting sugar content with fermentables (honey, candy sugar etc.) or increase color/sugar/alcohol content by adding specialty malts. I'm assuming you might get a good idea by checking out how Belgian single, double, tripel, and quad recipes are arranged to suit your taste.

 

[treebeerd]

i'm assuming you might get a good idea by checking out how belgian single, double, tripel, and quad recipes are arranged to suit your taste.

+1

 

[JimRausch]

I agree, you need to do some research.
I have an Altbier and a DoubleAlt that originally intended to replicate LongTrail's LT Ale and LT Doublebag. I checked out all the info I could get from their website (ABV,IBU, and they did have some on the grains and hops they used). Plugged the numbers into my recipe creator, played around with it, and brewed each multiple times until I got them where I wanted. Also, take a look at Daniel's 'Designing Great Beers'. That'll help with typical grainbills and hop schedules for different styles.
Good Luck, if you want to do it, you can do it.

 

[JKaranka]

Lots of ways to do it. British breweries would traditionally partygile all the singles, doubles, triples, etc, from a single mash and a couple of boils.

The way I personally tend to do it is to increase the base malt more than the speciality malts; increase the bitterness linearly; and when I go over an OG of 1.070 or so, I start increasing simpler fermentables like maize or sugar to keep it from becoming too thick or malty. Horses for courses, though.

 

[TAK]

To take any given recipe from a baseline to a double/imperial, a good starting point is to:

- Increase the base malt to the gravity you want.
- Increase the bitterness. How much, that'll take some judgement.

Specialty grains may or may not need upward adjustment. Best thing to do is research similar recipes, make a decision, brew, taste, evaluate, adjust, repeat.