Looking to get close to Grand Teton's Lost Continent Double IPA

[dandw12786]

Grand Teton's Lost Continent is legitimately one of my favorite beers, and I'm looking to get close to it, if possible, and if anyone is willing to help, that'd be just great. It's their summer seasonal, so I'm only able to get it for a few months a year, which is why I'd like to get something close so I can brew it up whenever I have a craving. Hopefully someone else has had this and can give me a hand here.

Starting with the specs:
OG is 1.07 with an ABV of 8%
117 IBU
SRM is never specified, but it's fairly light, maybe 6 or 7?

Starting with the grain bill, the website states: "Idaho 2-Row Pale Malted Barley and German Melanoidin and Vienna malts give this ale its lovely pale copper hue, with flavors of orange marmalade and dried apricots, supported by a strong backbone of hoppy bitterness."

Plugging into beersmith, 16 lbs of 2 row, and 1 lb each of the Melanoidin and Vienna give me an OG of 1.074 and an ABV of 7.6% with an SRM of 6.3, which sounds just fine to me, but I'm wondering if a pound of each of the other malts is too much?

As for hops, the website states:

"We use only American Pacific Northwest hops. Bravo, Centennial and Columbus hops are added early in the boil for smooth, balanced bitterness. We add Columbus, Bravo and Simcoe later in the boil for flavor, and Columbus, Centennial and Simcoe in the whirlpool for aroma."

"For even more aroma, we dry-hop with Chinook and Bravo hops in the conditioning tank. The result is fruity, floral and complex, with notes of tangerine zest and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice."

So we've got a pretty overwhelming hop bill here, and I'm wondering if this can be simplified into 60, 30, and 5 min or flameout additions.

So my non-scientific method here was to just plug in the three sections into 60,30 and flameout. So I got:

.5 oz each Bravo, Centennial, and Columbus for 60 min.

.75 oz each Columbus, Bravo, and Simcoe for 30 min.

1 oz each Columbus, Centennial, and Simcoe at flameout

1 oz each Chinook and Bravo - Dry hop

This got me to about 105 IBUs, which when compared to 117 I don't think is too far off. The question will be how close the flavor would be. Would it be wise to up the bittering hops a little and maybe do half of them right away, and the other half continuous for 10-15 minutes, and then postpone the 30 min additions to a bit later in the boil?


Looking for any input anyone would have, as I haven't really designed any recipes. Even if you haven't tried the beer, but can see any basic mistakes I'm making, your suggestions are appreciated. At the very least, everything I've plugged in here puts it in the right ballpark for a double IPA in beersmith, so it should at least be drinkable, right???

Thanks!

 

[sonic7173]

Ahhhhhhhh, reverse engineering. I love this aspect of brewing my own beer. I personally have never tried this brew but I do enjoy the trial and error of figuring how to brew a replicate something I enjoy. Sometimes you surprise yourself and make something that you like even more. Personally, I would can the 30 min addition and split the IBU's between a 15 and 5 min addition. Either way, you'll make good beer. Brew it and update us!

 

[dandw12786]

Ahhhhhhhh, reverse engineering. I love this aspect of brewing my own beer. I personally have never tried this brew but I do enjoy the trial and error of figuring how to brew a replicate something I enjoy. Sometimes you surprise yourself and make something that you like even more. Personally, I would can the 30 min addition and split the IBU's between a 15 and 5 min addition. Either way, you'll make good beer. Brew it and update us!

Thanks for the input. Lost Continent doesn't seem to be incredibly popular in general (every summer I wonder if it's the last summer I'll see it), so I'm guessing I won't get a lot of advice about the specific beer, but I'm more looking for advice on making a good double ipa within the parameters I gave, and for flaws in recipe design/hop schedule. So your advice about moving the 30 minute additions is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm kind of wondering if the bittering hops give too many IBUs right away and I should back them off and go for more IBUs through late boil additions, or if that balance is good.

With your advice, I'd probably add another quarter ounce of centennial and keep the rest of the bittering hops the same, but adjust the later hops as follows:

1.5 oz Bravo - 20 mins
1.5 oz Columbus - 15 mins
1 oz Simcoe - 5 mins (maybe 10)

Doing that gets me right at their target 117 IBUs, so on paper this looks pretty close. It may not be Lost Continent, but it should be pretty good.

I've never brewed a beer this big before (intentionally... I accidentally did a double IPA that was just under 8% years ago... Didn't taste great to me, but my friends thought it was swell), so now I begin researching yeast. I usually just sprinkle a dry packet (usually US-05), but now I'm wondering if I can just do 2-3 packets of Nottingham and be good, or if I have to look into starters, which I've also never done. This one is definitely going to be a fun learning experience.

 

[sonic7173]

For that size of beer, two packets of any of the dry yeasts would do fine. I think maybe split your ate additions even
.75 bravo @20
.75 bravo @10
.75 Columbus @15
.75 Columbus @5
.5 Simcoe @15
.5 Simcoe @5
Seems like I get a better range of the profile of a hop with staggered times like that. Either way it sounds good though.

 

[dandw12786]

That looks great, actually. I'm thinking I'll brew this next week and I'll probably go with that hop schedule. Thank you for your help!

 

[couchsending]

This being a bit of a west coast IPA i would use The reference beer in this style as a base to go off of, Pliny.

90 minute boil
Large bittering charge at 90
-Columbus+Bravo
-Co2 extract instead of Columbus
Hops at 45/30
- Centennial at 45
- columbus/Bravo/Simcoe at 30

The Rest of the hops at Whirlpool

They don’t say they use Sugar but any old school west coastish IPA uses Sugar. If the ABV is 8% and the OG is 1.070 then you’ll need a pound of sugar to get the FG low enough for everything to compute. They definitely boil for at least 90 minutes. Pro systems get more color pickup than homebrew systems, not 100% sure why, but don’t be surprised if your beer ends up a different color. Melanoidin is strong so a pound might be a lot. Not sure.

I would think they have to use traditional American Ale Yeast, maybe dry English but I doubt it. Process is probably pretty old school here too and I would bet they try to get as much yeast out of the beer as possible beforedey hopping which means cooling and dumping for a few days before adding DH. You might not be able to do that on your setup unless you have a Conical and Co2.

I actually own a house about a half mile from the brewery on the same street. I use to rent it to a bunch of the brewers. Also John Kimmich from the Alchemist help set that brewery up when he lived in Jackson. I live about 4 hours away and don’t really drink their beer but if I go up there this summer maybe I can get some more info for you.

 

[dandw12786]

This being a bit of a west coast IPA i would use The reference beer in this style as a base to go off of, Pliny.

90 minute boil
Large bittering charge at 90
-Columbus+Bravo
-Co2 extract instead of Columbus
Hops at 45/30
- Centennial at 45
- columbus/Bravo/Simcoe at 30

The Rest of the hops at Whirlpool

They don’t say they use Sugar but any old school west coastish IPA uses Sugar. If the ABV is 8% and the OG is 1.070 then you’ll need a pound of sugar to get the FG low enough for everything to compute. They definitely boil for at least 90 minutes. Pro systems get more color pickup than homebrew systems, not 100% sure why, but don’t be surprised if your beer ends up a different color. Melanoidin is strong so a pound might be a lot. Not sure.

I would think they have to use traditional American Ale Yeast, maybe dry English but I doubt it. Process is probably pretty old school here too and I would bet they try to get as much yeast out of the beer as possible beforedey hopping which means cooling and dumping for a few days before adding DH. You might not be able to do that on your setup unless you have a Conical and Co2.

I actually own a house about a half mile from the brewery on the same street. I use to rent it to a bunch of the brewers. Also John Kimmich from the Alchemist help set that brewery up when he lived in Jackson. I live about 4 hours away and don’t really drink their beer but if I go up there this summer maybe I can get some more info for you.

Wow, this is such great info, thank you so much! A 90 minute boil makes sense, and I've never heard of the Co2 extract, that's interesting. And yeah, I use a Fermonster with a spigot, so I don't secondary and don't really have a way to remove yeast. I hope to get another freezer to cold crash, but that's a ways off. Anyway, if you do go up there and think about it, I'd definitely love some info!

I think I may have two big beers I'll brew this summer, then. I'll definitely take this info and create something, but it sounds like a recipe that may need a bit more time to prepare for, so I may do my first one and save this one for later in the summer, but I'm definitely excited to try it. Would be fun to compare!

Thank you again!

 

[couchsending]

The dry hopping technique is not super critical if you can’t do it.

You can get the extract anywhere. It’s often called a hop shot. Any place online that sells hops usually sells it.