Sierra Nevada Tumbler Clone - Critique

Evening all!

I tried Sierra Nevada's seasonal brown ale last night for the first time and was completely blown away. I've tried my hand at a clone recipe based on the information on Sierra Nevada's WEB SITE and was looking for a little feedback.

Type: All Grain
Date: 9/21/2010
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Size: 7.35 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00
Est Original Gravity: 1.056 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.013
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.66 %
Bitterness: 37.3 IBU
Est Color: 21.0 SRM


Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU

10.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 80.00 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 8.00 %
1.00 lb Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 8.00 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4.00 %

1.00 oz Challenger [7.50 %] (60 min) Hops 28.0 IBU
0.75 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (15 min) Hops 3.7 IBU
0.75 oz Challenger [7.50 %] (15 min) Hops 5.6 IBU
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast-Ale

Any thoughts or concerns would be greatly appreciated!

That looks almost dead on to what people were coming up with in our brainstorm for a clone thread! Delicious!

You know, I rarely post on here because I use the search engine to find almost everything. The one time I don't, there's already a thread on the subject! :cross:

Sorry for the additional thread....any mods coming across this are welcome to delete it...

Thanks for the imput Germelli1

I just referenced the other thread to say that your recipe looks great!
The main difference is yours has a bit more more 2 row so you will get some nice

This is the only beer (so far) that I have enjoyed smoked malt in. if you want to see other people's take on recipes for it: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/clone-sn-tumbler-help-192070/

Please please please keep me updated on this! I havn't nailed down a recipe yet and am waiting on some feedback with others experiences.

I referenced your thread immediately after your post

The clone is about 3 batches out in my queue, but I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out!

how did this turn out? I've never had the original, but the recipe looks great!

NB doesnt have challenger hops, what could i use as a replacement?

Sorry if this thread is old but this is the next beer I will be brewing on Monday so I thought it might be a good time to revive it.

To answer your question, the substitutes for Challenger are usually Perle and Northern Brewer. However, I find Perle to be a very clean hop with a nice mintyness and almost noble hop qualities. Northern brewer is much more coarse with notes of dark chocolate. Given that I've never tried Challenger and that Perle and NB are both so different, I'm not sure which one is closer.

I kinda designed my own recipe for Tumbler without knowledge of this thread. But I guess I can give you my version of the recipe and some feedback on it once I brew it. Here goes...

Grains:
10.0 lbs Domestic 2-row Pale
0.75 lbs Crystal 80L
0.5 lbs Chocolate Malt (not sure on the Lovibond rating but I'd guess about 350L)
0.5 lbs Smoked Malt

Hops:

1.00 Perle (8.2%) 60mins
1.00 Kent Goldings (7.2% I know it's rather high) 15mins
0.50 Perle (8.2%) 15mins
1.00 Kent Goldings (7.2%) flameout
0.50 Perle (8.2%) flameout

I will also brew it with Whitbread 1099 as that is my house strain but I will mash lower and ferment cooler to get a cleaner dryer profile similar to Cal Ale yeast. I'll report back in a month or so on the results.

I ended up ordering some challenger from midwest, payed out the ass with shipping. Im going to brew this week, probly on wed. Cant wait to try one of mine next to the real thing.

Brewed this 3 nights ago, my OG was higher than estimated in first post, 1.065. I followed exact recipe, wort was around 70 when i measured. First AG that went smooth, thanks to a screen in my tun, opposed to the false bottom i was using. I just finished drinking one of my 2nd AG batch, surley furious from NB, fantastic, hope this one turns out as good!

Just cracked a bottle of the recipe I posted above. It's been in the bottle for only 1 week but it's been quite warm in the house so it appears to be fully carbed up already.

First impression so far is too much chocolate/roastiness compared with the Tumbler. By my calculations, my recipe yields an SRM of 20-21. But my beer seems a bit darker than what I remember tumbler to be. I'm thinking tumbler lands in the 17-18 SRM range from what I remember. If I were to decide on modifications right now, I'd say it needs a bit more crystal and a bit less chocolate. It is still a bit young so it's early to make final judgements, but as it stands now, my recipe needs some tweaking. Nevertheless, it's a pretty good beer, but just not a Tumbler as far as I'm concerned.

More updates please! Any other Tumbler clones been sampled yet?

hmm, i want to brew something like this next weekend, but i think i will sub biscuit malt for the smoked, since i dont have any in stock

Brasco20 said:

First AG that went smooth, thanks to a screen in my tun, opposed to the false bottom i was using.

Click to expand...

What screen value are you using (or others) I tried a 250 micron and it worked well for half the session and the plugged with sugars apparently! Not grains. Getting sweet wort out and into the BK was a 2 hour pain! the beer turned out ok so all not lost. I'm brewing this week using a 40 per inch SS screen, hope that works or I will be using a 20 per inch next brew.
. Any responses appreciated