Stone IPA - My Attempt At A Clone

[ZeMadMonkey]

My latest brew was the Stone IPA recipe from Mitch Steele's IPA book. For the most part I have been brewing recipes from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing and Brewing Classic Styles. Last year I brewed a Pliny clone, and while it came out wonderful, I do not have Pliny in my area so I was not able to make a comparison. December of last year, I took my first shot at brewing the Stone IPA recipe from Mitch Steele's IPA book. It was a rough brewday in general and it did not come out to where I wanted it. I have been super busy with work this year and haven't been able to brew. Three weeks ago, after brewing a Belgian Pale Ale the previous month, I took a second crack at brewing this recipe. I got to say I am really impressed with the beer that I brewed. In complete honesty, I can detect small differences, but they are so close that I am really happy with the outcome.

My brew is slightly darker as I used C20 rather than C15 as the recipe called for. The dry hop aroma is a dead on match in terms of the aroma itself and the intensity or the aroma. The bitterness is a dead match. The flavor is just slightly off, but I could not tell you why it is off. I will have to figure that out.

I have been looking to have a house brew for some time now and I think Stone IPA is going to be it. Now we will see how good I am...can I reproduce this? Can I brew this the same way twice? I am really looking forward to trying. Also, by making Stone IPA my house brew, I am looking to explore yeast washing and repitching.

If your are a fan of Stone or IPAs in general and haven't given Mitch's IPA booking a read, I highly recommend it. It provides a lot of information and is a great read in general.

I am going to brew Stone IPA again and then it's on to Ruination recipe from the book. Rock On! :rockin:

~ZeMadMonkey

COMPLICATION: So the keg I stored my brew in went south, the diptube clogged. I tried replacing the diptube and the poppet but they were not compatible with the other keg I have...so I siphoned the carbed beer to new sanitized keg and hooked it up to the gas and liquid line tubes. Despite the keg juggling the brew came out great. It is not a perfect clone but it is close. Next time I brew this it will be on point and be a perfect clone of Stone IPA.

 

[reuliss]

A couple of questions.
1. Did Mitch recommend a particular water profile?

2. Would you mind describing your dry hopping technique? I've tried a bunch of different approaches and have not liked any of them.


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[ZeMadMonkey]

Mitch says they use municipal water that is carbon filtered and goes through reverse osmosis process. The water is treated to reduce hardness to 100 ppm.

I build my water from distilled water, below is the target water profile I used for this brew. It is a water profile I have seen many people use and reference when talking about water profiles for hoppy beers, I simply adjusted it to hit the correct pH with the malts I used.

(All numbers below are ppm)
Calcium: 103
Magnesium: 18
Sodium: 16
Chloride: 50
Sulfate: 286

My dry hopping procedure is pretty standard. I dry hop with pellets. I transfer my beer to a secondary carboy and drop my hops in. I let it sit at 70 for five days. I then siphon and transfer my beer to the keg.

Just FYI I do perform a 30 minute hopstand with my flameout hops. I have found this definitely contributes to a strong hop aroma in my beer even prior to dry hopping.

 

[reuliss]

Do you feel that you're able to remove the hops from the beer with that dry hopping technique?


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[benco]

Could you post your recipe please. That's one my favorite brews. Thanks!

 

[ZeMadMonkey]

Most of the hops from dry hopping will drop to the bottom of the carboy before I siphon and transfer to the keg. Once it is in the keg whatever hop particles that made it into the keg will drop to the bottom of the keg along with any yeast that was in suspension.

When I keg a beer, I hook it up to CO2 and let it sit at 40F ~10PSI to carb for a week. The first pint or two will have some hop particles in them, but after that I don't see any of the dry hops in my pours.

 

[Redmanll34]

Could you post your recipe please. That's one my favorite brews. Thanks!

http://www.stonebrewing.com/news/081201/ page 44!

 

[benco]

Thanks!

 

[ZeMadMonkey]

Below is my recipe. There are 3 things to keep in mind. My efficiency is on the low end at 65%, so you will need to adjust for you efficiency. The recipe calls for C15, I only had access to C20 at the time when I brewed this recipe. I used a little DME as I have a Blichmann Boilermaker for my mashtun and only put in 17# of grain as I usually do a 1.5 qt/# of grain ratio. Both the C20 and probably the DME to some extent caused my brew to be slightly darker than the actual Stone IPA.

One thing about the IBUs and hop additions. In Mitch's IPA book he mentions in two different sections that somewhere between 20 - 30 % of bitterness from hops is scrubbed during the fermentation process. I took the target IBU of 75 for this recipe and multiplied it by 1.25 to reach a calculated IBU of ~94. I based my hop additions on this calculated IBU.

OG: 1.064 / I actually came in at 1.068
Batch Size: 6.5 gallons
IBU: 75

Mash Ratio: 1.42 qt/ # of grain
Mash Temp: 150F

Boil: 90 min

GRAIN
[93.5%] 2-Row 15.74# (4 oz DME added during the boil)
[06.5%] C20 1.26#

*1 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min before end of boil*

HOPS
21 g Chinook @ 90 min
17 g Columbus @ 90 min
102 g Centennial @ Flameout with 30 min hopstand

DRY HOP - 5 days @ 70F
7 g Chinook
49 g Centennial

YEAST:
WLP007 - Dry English Ale / Use Mr.Malty calculator to make the appropriate sized Yeast Starter on stirplate / followed a standard ale fermentation profile

 

[ZeMadMonkey]

My Stone IPA on the left, actual Stone IPA on the right. Mine has some chill haze, Stone Brewing is clearer. Mine is slightly darker, I used C20 vs C15.

 

[reuliss]

Do you find that the 2 oz of dry hop matches the intensity of the real thing? I woulda thought more dry hops.


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[ZeMadMonkey]

Do you find that the 2 oz of dry hop matches the intensity of the real thing? I woulda thought more dry hops.


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I would have thought it was more dry hops too, but it seems right where it needs to be. I will try more dry hops next time I brew it, but it seems pretty dead on to me. Remember I dry hop for 5 days @ 70F, so it extracts more oils quicker than a temperatures below 70F.

 

[ZeMadMonkey]

UPDATE: So I bottled a six pack of this beer for my dad to have a week ago and were having them this past Sunday. While the keg was clear and only a slight bit of chill-haze, these bottles had commercial clarity. I assume because the fridge is at a lower temperature than my kegerator and bottles are smaller volume of liquid than the keg. There was a secondary surprise with these commercial clarity bottles. While my tastes from the keg were very very close to Stone IPA there, my level of hop bitterness matches Stone IPA and the lingering bitterness matches too. The Stone IPA had hop forward punch/sharpness with each sip and mine had a softer/rounder hop presence with each sip. I assumed I might have to work with my water profile but I was already at ~285 ppm of sulfate. The clarity of the bottles also, surprisingly, sharpened my hop bitterness so that it was an exact match for Stone IPA.

I think if you are trying to clone Stone IPA you definitely have to either let it sit in the keg to reach commercial clarity or use cold crashing. In Mitch Steele's IPA book he does say sit it at 34F for a week, but I have never cold crashed before so I stuck to my process. Cold crashing made the difference between close to a clone to a clone.

It was funny between sips of our beer and Stone IPA my dad and I lost track of which one was Stone IPA and which was our brew and we couldn't figure it out, side by side we couldn't figure it out. It was so awesome! I thought I was going to need to brew this a few more times and am surprised I cloned it on the second time.

 

[benco]

Congrats on the brew! Another reason to enjoy home brewing. I plan on brewing this sometime.

 

[ZeMadMonkey]

Congrats on the brew! Another reason to enjoy home brewing. I plan on brewing this sometime.

Thanks Benco. Hit me up whenever you brew it and let me know how it comes out. I hope some of my experience helps you brew a clone the first time