Help me make a Breaking Bud clone

whovous · Oct 11, 2016

A system crash some months back led to a wiped HD, so my notes are gone, but from re-reading my notes here, I seem to have concluded that mashing higher, around 156F, was the right idea to maximize juiciness.

By the way, Breaking Bud just took Bronze in the American Style IPA category at the GABF.

whovous · Jun 8, 2017

It is time to try this one again. A guy with a lot more skill than I have did a presentation on this beer:
https://prezi.com/5d9dit6bdgvh/breaking-the-bud-code/

He said he'd do it once a month and enter the final result in a contest, but that was a year ago with no follow up. I've tried to reach him without success. I want to steal as many of his ideas as I can, but I have at least four problems: First, he says he degassed a sample of the brew and determined it had a FG of something like 1.0065! Two, he debates between mashing at 148 and 150F. Three he debates between neutral and hoppy water profiles. Four, his final grain bill gives an SRM of less than 3, when one of the givens from the brewer is an SRM of 5.0.

This FG and temp imply a very dry beer, and I do not think of this being dry at all. I also can't imagine ever getting as low as that with my setup. And I think the water calls for a NEIPA setup.

He has convinced me to bring my wheat percentage back up, and to use CTZ elsewhere, not just in the 60 minute boil. Here is the beginning of my next recipe. Right now, it stops at the end of the boil, but I plan to add whirlpool and dry hop stages as well. The issue for those is budget as much as anything else. I plan to throw in a LOT of hops.

Here is where I am at now:

7 lbs 11.9 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 85.6 %
1 lbs 2.4 oz Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 2 12.7 %
2.5 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3 1.7 %
0.24 oz Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus (CTZ) [15.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 15.9 IBUs
0.36 oz Mosaic (HBC 369) [12.25 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 13.3 IBUs
0.24 oz Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus (CTZ) [15.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 6 11.3 IBUs
0.24 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 7 9.5 IBUs
1.5 pkg San Diego Super Yeast (White Labs #WLP090) Yeast 8 -

Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color
Est Original Gravity: 1.061 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.7 %
Bitterness: 50.0 IBUs
Est Color: 5.0 SRM

Any thoughts?

Kevin M · Sep 3, 2024

Hi I am very interested in brewing this beer but I see the thread ends here. Any more input out there for this beer?

whovous · Sep 4, 2024

Quite a bit more input. Just a week after my June 8, 2017 post (above) I finally heard from Dwight Mulcahy. He sent me a PDF (attached) of the "final" version of his clone.

whovous · Sep 4, 2024

Here is his email that accompanied the PDF which includes a little more info on the water profile:

I did brew the beer 3 months in a row. It was decided by the club that the last version was better then the actual Breaking Bud. Personally I attribute that to the bottles of Breaking Bud we were getting for side by side tastings were not as fresh as the homebrewed clone.

Couple of pointers:

use the freshest hops you can
the hop stand was done at 190deg for 30mins (applying heat to keep it in the 190-180deg range. Do the hop stand with the pot covered
CO2 purge equipment during any racking
during fermentation and dry hopping shake the carboy/bucket daily
start fermentation at 65deg and after a couple of days ramp it to 70deg
you want this dry I was getting 1.007-1.009 typically... thereby the addition of sugar since I using fresh yeast every time
build a 4L starter for the 12.5gal batch (VERY IMPORTANT)
water is very important... build your own (see below)

The CTZ (Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus) was used as a 60min bittering addition, nothing else. Mosaic and Simco were the stars here. One thing to note is that all the hops were from the same batch so that allowed me to fine tune the aroma profile. You may find variances in the aroma of different hops.

attached is the final recipe used...

here is the water profile that was used for a 12.5gal batch using RO water:

Good luck and let me know how it turns out...

dWiGhT
owner/brewer Clandestine Brewing

whovous · Sep 4, 2024

I sent him some follow-up questions. Here are those questions and his replies:

1. May I share your recipe and advice in the homebrewtalk.com forum?

no problem... the presentation is online here: http://www.wortsofwisdom.org/how-to-clone-a-commercial-beer-breaking-bud/

2. Is it important to use fresh yeast every time? How does that alter the result? Not challenging, just want to learn.

you will find that yeast will mutate and can get more aggressive. Since I was trying to clone the beer I wanted to make sure that there wasn't any changing variables (yeast in the case).

3. Is substituting a CO2 extract for the CTZ a viable idea? I've just learned about this stuff and I think I really like it.

sure... the only thing is that CTZ is a fairly affordable and a great bittering hop. The CO2 hop shots can get pretty expensive.

I am surprised that adding sugar and going so dry turns out to a big part of the answer.

the final gravity came from degasing a sample of Breaking Bud. I was seeing 1.008-1.009 in the stuff I was doing and it was pretty tasty. I'm guessing that Knee Deeps yeast gets reused and more aggressive achieving that low number without sugar. The amount that is used is fairly low just to get it down where it needs to be.

If you have every looked at the Pliny The Elder recipe you will notice that it also has sugar in it to achieve a drier profile.

I have also scaled this recipe up to 1.068 and 20% more IBU without the sugar and it gives a fairly close BooKoo clone. So as a base this recipe can be tweeked in the gravity and IBU to give you other interesting IPA beers.

IMHO... ": )

dWiGhT

whovous · Sep 4, 2024

I am thinking it may be time for me to revisit this beer. I will probably do a 3.5 to 4.0 gallon pressurized fermentation in a five gallon keg and use a HopShot in place of the CTZ if I can find one at my LHBS.