Okay so lets talk about whats going on here. I like Odell and their beers, I super enjoy their IPAs and in this blog post is going to be my story of how I cloned Mycenary, their DIPA. For those of you that suck and havnt tried it yet you are missing out. Odell Myrcenary is the beer that made me like beer. Unlike most beer drinkers that start off with some sad American Lager and slowly moved into craft beer and then further toward the outer bounds of double IPAs and Russian Imperials I pretty much did the opposite. For me there was just something I Liked about bitter beer and full hop flavors, Myrcenary provided both. The best way I can describe Odell Myrcenary is green, and not green as is bad tasting young beer but green as in someone just shoved a hop garden into your mouth while you were relaxing out in the summer sun. So years later from after starting to enjoy all types of beer and learning how to make my own, Myrcenary is still my favorite. I have not been able to make a beer anywhere near its level.
My brewing processes have changed over the years from extract to all grain, I’ve picked up tons of tips and tricks, read lots of material and now I have enough confidence to say I’m a decent home brewer. Decent as in my last few batches don’t taste like plastic and band aids. I currently have a HERMS system, use temp controllers to monitor fermentation, brew with RO water and salts, monitor my mash PH and mill my own grain. I love this beer, want this beer and have decided that I can and will make this beer, and because of this I have decided to create project Thor’s Hammer.
So why Thor’s Hammer? Because the name is awesome and it makes it sound like I’m doing something super cool, cause after all I am. Furthermore Thor is a bad ass just like this beer and this beer will hit you harder than Thor’s Hammer if you are not careful. Now let’s get down to my process and progress of this Mercenary clone.
So I began doing research on Myrcenary a few weeks ago. I was able to find one thread on HBT that might be related to cloning Myrcenary but it’s just a cluster of people talking about “Pro dry hopping technique” with no one with the balls to even try cloning this beer. So I went straight to the source asking Odell for info on the beer. After several emails to them and after getting a decent amount of info they basically told me to have fun go fly solo because they were not going to hand hold me through this recipe.
Here are the emails I received from them that have info that will be helpful to my project.
Hi Sam,
I checked in with our pilot brewer and here’s what he had to say:
It is humbling to hear that our monster double IPA got you into the beer world. Thank you! As far as a recipe goes it is quite difficult for me to give any specific advice without a batch size and specific questions. We use a blend of 2-row pale malt, pilsner, caramalt, honey malt, and carafoam. Lots of different hops; We hit it lightly with Columbus early in the boil and finish heavy with blends of Cascade, Bravo, Centennial and Chinook post boil and Hop Back. We then dry hop it with over 1# per barrel (31 gallons) of Bravo, Centennial, and Chinook. That’s about all the secrets I can give out. Good luck and thanks for all the continued support.
Cheers!
Hi Sam,
Here’s the info from our pilot system manager:
Our OG is around 21-22 (1.087 – 1.092) plato and finishes at 4-5 (1.016 – 1.020) plato. Mash temp is around 151 and a fermenting temp of 67f°. We do not use any sugar. It is 100% malt.
Hi Sam,
We’ve given out all the secrets we can. Best of luck!
From their website we can get a few extra bits of information, the IBU is 70 and a nice fancy picture so we can aim the SRM and maybe help us get the malt bill.
I will be brewing up 1 – 2 gallon batches, 2 if I want to split it and try different dry hops or yeast but otherwise probably just 1 gallon batches so I can drink the full batch faster and be able to brew it many times slowly tweaking the recipe till I have cloned the beer or somehow managed to make something even better. And so the journey begins.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DctbNz5J32k[/ame]
Here is Version 0.1 that I will be brewing up on my next brew day, I will post all of these in 5 gallon recipes. I plan on making a 2 gallon batch and splitting yeast between something I can harvest from Odell and some Nottingham.
Beersmith thinks it will look like this, so I think we are somewhere in the right ballpark… maybe.
Please let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions or think I should make any tweaks to version 1 recipe before I brew.