Two Hearted Clone Recipe Critique

Yeah, process and equipment come into the equation.

The one I brewed in the past was Briess 2 row, some munich or viena, forget the hop schedule but it was all Centennial of course. If you have every had fresh Two Hearted at the brewery, it can be another thing from what you get in the bottle that has sat on the shelf for some time. That is what I would be shooting for now.

In the Zymurgy article John Mallet talked about a process change, which was not explained. The regulars at the Cafe asked "what did you do to the Two Hearted?", so they went back to the original process. They use tanks that have a very shallow cone angle for Two Hearted, my guess (just a guess) is that when the dry hops sink, they end up with more area exposed to the beer, where in a steep coned conical they would be compressed in the bottom of the cone. They only had a few of those tanks, but with the new brewery expansion they bought a lot more for some reason.

 

Hahah, you mean you didn't get your question answered in the first 26 replies?

I say make it. I made a very similar beer for my second homebrew ever a couple years ago. I didn't have the capability for full wort boils then, nor did I have a wort chiller. I did a 3 gallon boil and topped it off with water. It ended up being pretty good, and had some similarities to Two Hearted.

 

I never said that and I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm not the only one who notices the same trends after an OP asks for a critique. You're right, the responses are usually less crystal, more hops. But 9 times out of 10, those people are right. The OP is using something like 70% Golden DME, 8% carapils, 15% crystal 60, 4 oz. of hops, and 1 oz. dryhops. They want to know how this IPA recipe looks. Now, an IPA is an inherently bitter style of beer. If you want a malty pale ale, say so. But if you want an IPA critique, well that's what you're getting. Also, you never hear any bitching from the OP. They enjoy any and all critique and usually state that in their opening comments. The problem arises when the anti-hop, pro-crystal bashers vs. the anti-crystal, pro-hop bashers face off.

You have to look at the situation from both sides... not just your own. You see the side that supports low hops, high crystal. Supporters of this either 1) really dislike when people give a true critique about what they feel that challenges their own, or 2) they don't enjoy the IPA style and never have because they have a strong sweet tooth and hate bitter. I can understand if someone desires these traits from a beer, but 35 IBUs and 1.022 FG is not an IPA. Can we agree on that?

Can we also agree that partial boiling affects hop utilization? If I remember correctly, you were one of the strong proponents against partial boils, especially for an IPA.

 

It seems like we may not be in agreement. That was the take home message of Jack's post to my mind.

I frankly don't feel like I have done enough partial boils to take a side based on personal experience. I've always assumed there was scientific rigor underlying the common wisdom about hop utilization. Like you, I found Jack's casual dismissal of this wisdom pretty shocking, but at your prompting, he did provide some explanation. It appears that some folks took a poke at this assumption about utilization and had some surprising results that might be worth following up on.

 

Peter,

The ‘answer’ is on the Beer Brewing Radio podcast that I provided a link.

The three batches (full wort boil, partial boil and partial boil with late extract) were tested at Monmouth College by Brad Sturgeon and Blake Lyon using American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) approved Spectrophotometric methods. The test results provided a scientific measurement of the IBUs in each batch. It turns out that hop utilization was the same in all three batches; they had the same BU/GU ratios.

The podcast runs for about an hour but the discussion of the scientific testing occurs in the first 15-20 minutes of the podcast.

Cheers!

Jack

 

Jack,

I know I listened to this and eventually will give it another listen. I'll try to keep an open mind when I do. However, I do have a general problem with the Basic Brewing/BYO studies. I feel like they always lack an appropriate number of participants draw solid conclusions, especially when they are doing fairly uncontrolled experiments to begin with (multiple brewers, multiple recipes, multiple brewing systems, variable time windows in which beers are brewed, etc). I understand Chris Colby's ideas about conducting the experiments this way; it helps increase the number of participants and makes any good conclusions that can be drawn broadly applicable. However, I suspect they still lack a proper number of participants to draw good conclusions in most of their studies. I usually find them interesting to listen to, and I think homebrewers like to do these sorts of experiments, so in general, I think BB/BYO has their hearts in the right places, but in this instance, I wonder if they did the homebrewing world a disservice by emphasizing the conclusions that may not be appropriate.

I promise to listen to it again and will try to keep an open mind.

You also posted a link to a Brew Strong podcast. Were they just talking about the BB/BYO study, or were they referencing something else?

Peter

 

I would change the recipe a tad. I'd reduce the amount of crystal to .5lbs, and increase the amount of dry hops. Now, normally 1lb of crystal malt in an ipa in not at all offensive to me, but in my mind Im thinking of what Two Hearted tastes like and I think 1lb of crystal in this biggish extract beer might just be pushing it a little. I say increase the dry hops because Two Hearted has this incredible hop aroma and If I wanted to achieve something similar on my system, something in the neighborhood of 3oz would get me there.

 

The Zymurgy article had the dry hops at 3.5 oz. for 5 gallons.

 

Peter,

I did provide two links for podcasts. I thought that both were interesting.

The BBR podcast was interesting in that it detailed the experiment of three batches of Double IPA using the varying methods (full boil, partial boil and partial boil with late extract). The beginning of the podcast concentrates on the three beers brewed by James Spencer (per the recipe formulated by Chris Colby). The various podcast participants provided subjective feedback based upon their tasting of the three beers. The three beers were tested by Dr. Brad Sturgeon and Blake Lyon (or Limes) of Monmouth College. They provided and discussed the IBU measurements they took using the protocol of the ASBC Beer-23a method. Later in the podcast they did discuss the results they obtained by ‘volunteer’ homebrewer experimenters. I found the beginning of the podcast to be more interesting since this including the scientific studies and testing results. The last half of the podcast provided information that was provided by the ‘volunteer’ homebrewers. There was something like a half dozen to a dozen ‘volunteers’ providing feedback. The consistent conclusion throughout is best summarized by James Spencer in describing the three batches: “Differences between those; very, very slight.”

The Brewing Network podcast is a discussion between John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff. I enjoyed hearing what they had to say but I think their discussion on this topic is well summarized by: that recent scientific studies “…measured the amount of alpha (acids) going into solution and it does not depend on wort gravity.”

If you have time constraints then I would prioritize your listening time to the first 20 minutes of the BBR podcast. As I stated previously I thought this discussion was extremely interesting and very telling. From my perspective the BBR/BYO experiment was very well controlled with the testing results from the folks at Monmouth College being a definite ‘plus’.

Cheers!

Jack

 

That is indeed part of what they said. But they also said that the 'new' theory is that it's the amount of hot and cold break material (proteins) precipitating out (and taking bittering compounds out along with them) that determines hop utilization. If that's the case, it would still explain very nicely why you get lower utilization with higher gravity worts (of equal volumes, with equal AAUs going in). The difference is that the 'proteins per AAU' (my term, not theirs) would be the same for a partial or full boil process. So the 'gravity models' (such as tinseth) can still apply (using the gravity that would have been present if doing the batch as a full boil), you just wouldn't adjust them for partial boils.

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks, Vikeman.

 

you can certainly mash high and get a great IPA - Sierra Nevada mashes Torpedo and Celebration at 156°

 

Shit, I think Lagunitas mashes their IPA at somewhere in the 160f range.

 

If you have the malt that they use you can mash high. Highly modified malts (to maybe overmodified?) with high Lintner numbers let you do this. Rahr or Great Western 2-row would work. I would think twice if I were using a European malt.

Eidt - Bells uses Bries 2-row Brewers as the base malt, so there you go.

 

Too funny! Sometimes I think posters have this statement stored under a function key. :-D

 

It is interesting, but I would really like to see their recipes for these beers. It sounds like they used the same recipe tweaked, but I cannot say exactly. If they are making 3 beers and one of them has double the hops to get to the same place, that's believable. If they are saying with the same hop bill they got the beer the same, I find their results doubtful and would want some further testing.

Full boil: OG 1.076 IBU 66
Partial boil: OG 1.070 IBU 61
Partial Boil: OG 1.066 (late addition) IBU 57

For the record, an OG under 1.070 with under 60 IBUs. That's no DIPA.

 

“It sounds like they used the same recipe tweaked”

I listened to the podcast a couple of times and I heard that they brewed the exact same recipe via three different methods.

There was a difference in the Starting Gravity (SG) of the three batches since James Spencer did not pitch the ‘excess’ trub for the Partial Boil and Partial Boil with late extract batches.

“I find their results doubtful…” That is understandable. The testing results are contrary to ‘conventional wisdom’. The participants of the podcast were also very, very shocked by the results. Chris Colby (editor of BYO magazine) exclaimed: “I think we just wrecked Brewing Science.”

“For the record, an OG under 1.070 with under 60 IBUs. That's no DIPA.” We can debate whether what they brewed was a genuine DIPA but it is a very hoppy beer. The important finding, from my perspective, was that all three brewing methods yielded beers whereby: “Differences between those; very, very slight”. This was confirmed by sensory evaluation and by scientific measurement.

“ …would want some further testing.” If you happen to own an Agilent 8453 UV-Visible n spectrophotometer and are capable of performing an assay per the ASBC Beer-23a method I would be extremely interested in hearing the results of your experiment.

Cheers!

 

You also wanted to see Chris Colby’s recipe. I did a quick web search and found it (see link below).

Below is an extract of a paragraph from this article detailing the aspects of the experiment to ensure that it is a well-controlled experiment.

“In the instructions for these beers, I’ll point out some things to keep in mind in order to keep the experiment as tightly controlled as possible. The basic idea is to keep everything between the two or more batches (experimental trials) identical except for the experimental variable, which in this case is the wort production method. Along these lines, it would be a good idea to buy your ingredients in bulk, so you’re not just using the same recipe, but the same exact ingredients. Use the same equipment for brewing each batch, with the possible exception of using multiple fermenters. Keep the hops frozen between batches. If possible, crush the grains yourself on brewday.”

http://www.byo.com/blogs/experimental-beer-recipe.html?blogger=Chris+Colby

Cheers!

 

Then it is the same recipe, tweaked. Thank-you for confirming that.

10% is not very, very slight. For a home brewer it is slight, for a commercial brewer it is a big deal.

Now you're being obnoxious. I can send in samples for lab testing for IBUs, etc... All I'm suggesting is that a single data point does not wipe out years of scientific testing. The fact is this experiment was over two and a half years ago and there isn't another piece of supporting evidence. I would think that major brewing scientists would look into this further if there was a whiff of truth to this. That said, I would guess that homebrewering size batches are not their primary concern.

If just one data point was all we needed, we would have cold fusion reactors prodding nice clean energy for everyone now...