Previous attempts I've had at cloning commercial recipes include Green Flash West Coast IPA (original recipe) and Dieu Du Ciel's Isseki Nicho, both beers I'd been able to sample enough to have a stab at from scratch. The former was pretty close in my view with the latter being slightly wide of the mark, but still resulting in a decent beer overall.
A friend of mine asked me to brew a beer for his wedding day. Initially this was going to be a Belgian blonde, something along the lines of Leffe Blonde, which on the face of it would have been pretty straightforward apart from reaching the same levels of 'perfume' from the spices perhaps. However, things took a twist when he changed his mind and decided that Magic Hat's #9 was to be the beer of choice. My friend visits the US frequently with his job and both he and his fiancée love this beer. I believe their plan is to have their guests drink this while en-route to the reception after the ceremony, so perhaps the lower ABV was a wise choice!
One problem - I'd never tasted it, at least not that I could recall. I turned to the internet, first reading about the beer on Magic Hat's website:
"An ale whose mysterious and unusual palate will swirl across your tongue & ask more than it answers. Brewed clandestinely & given a name whose meaning is never revealed. Why #9®? Why indeed."
Hmm, well that's nice and fluffy. Clandestine and mysterious are not clone-brew friendly words at all. However, their site does contain some useful information too, including the malts, hops, yeast, SRM, IBUs and OG. I do appreciate it when breweries share this level of information about their beers. While most consumers might not find it interesting, as a home brewer I'm all ears!
So there was something to work from as a base - good. Next I sent some tweets and was pointed towards a "Can You Brew It" episode. If you haven't already come across this podcast it's well worth a listen. The specific episode on #9 is here. The intro for the show describes this as "a tricky apricot flavoured ale that's perfect for the summer, but difficult to get the fruit character just right". Well, challenge accepted! The next thing was to finalise a recipe. I decided to basically just go with the recipe that CYBI came up with as others had reported it being pretty close to the original, as long as you get the all important apricot aspect right in the finished beer. After a bit of tinkering for quantities and switching things around a bit, I settled on this:
The base beer is, on the face of it, very simple. The choice of Fuller's yeast was an interesting one, as to me this is a fruity estery kind of yeast and I imagined the beer to be clean to let the apricot shine. I put my faith blindly in the CYBI recipe and jumped in but did decide to run the yeast towards the bottom of the range in order to keep a lid on the esters it produces - just a hunch I had really.
Everyone loves a montage! |
Packaging day arrived and I poured out 1/3rd pint of #9 along side the same quantity of my beer taken from the FV. The first thing that pleased me was the colour was pretty much there. Tasting #9 was interesting - definite English Ale characteristics, a low bitterness and a very subtle apricot flavour in the finish, which also carried over to the aroma. I started to drip the flavouring in to my beer and only needed two drops before I was pretty close in terms of flavour and aroma - actually very pleasingly close, success! So next was just a case of doing some sums and working out how much to add to my final quantity, followed by a marathon bottling session (123 bottles). These will now be left to condition for 7-10 days before being labelled with a fantastic custom design that another friend of the happy couple conceived.
Best of luck for your big day, Damian and Vanessa. Hope you enjoy the beer!