Magic Hat Encore recipe?

Try contacting the brewery. They have been good about giving recipes in the past (except for their cash cow, #9, which you probably don't want).

 

Now you too can brew the cash cow, Magic Hat #9: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/can-you-brew-recipe-magic-hat-number-9-a-175571/

 

some advice: hire a lawyer.

 

That is not the actual recipe, just their best guess. Brewers don't always give the recipe, or even many hints, (e.g. Stone refused to give CYBI the AB recipe). We know for sure that MH uses the Ringwood yeast. It also seems unlikely that they would spend the bucks on Maris Otter just to hide it with apricot flavoring.

 

It's my recollection that Stone was the only brewer to refuse to give a recipe; Magic Hat gave JZ this recipe, and he may have made some adjustments or assumptions. For example, so brewers may not have specified the exact base malt, but if JZ used Maris Otter, I would guess that the brewer specified a Pale Ale malt, possibly even English, possibly even Maris. Also, they may not have revealed how much apricot extract to use, which is why McDole had to do it to taste.

 

I recall Matt gave JZ et al exact recipes for Circus Boy and something else that escapes my mind at the moment (not a tough escape...) but I'm pretty sure they only got vague hints about #9. The most mystifying thing about the CYBI recipe is the lack of Ringwood yeast; it pretty much defines all the top fermented MH beers. WLP002/WY1968 is somewhat close, kind of a better behaved cousin, but if you're cloning MH you want the bad behavior.

edit: If the OP wants a beer like Encore, I'd actually recommend WLP002, but that would be an improvement on the MH beer, so not really a clone.

 

Your memory of the show may be better than mine. In any event, the CYBI recipe might be a good place to start if anyone was interested. I never had #9 but have enjoyed apricot in other beers (DFH Aprihop). I've only brewed with Ringwood once and didn't experience the bad behavior that I have heard about (diacetyl).

 

I've also used Ringwood (twice, under a little duress) with good results, as have a few commercial breweries. Magic Hat is rather unique in that they have repitched for many years without going back to the source yeast, and have bred a sort of super diacetyl machine, powerful enough to mask the hops in most of their 'IPA's.

To my knowledge, the first apricot beer was Wasatch Apricot Hefeweizen from Utah, first brewed about 1989. It was actually an American wheat beer rather than a hefe. It wasn't great either. It got briefly popular, and Pyramid was contract brewing it for awhile in the 1990's. I think Pyramid still sells it, as a Pyramid beer, but not sure.

edit: I should add that MH is under new ownership (Sodas & Ices of Costa Rica - no joke) with new managers and brewers, so they may have changed things recently. I've not been interested enough to taste anything MH in the last ~18 months so someone with more recent experience might wish to comment.

 

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Diacetyl is one of the things that can force me to dump a commercial beer (fortunately I have always been able to reduce it below personal detection limits in my homebrew).

 

I had the Encore at a party last night (I wasn't supplying the beer...) and to tell the truth, it wasn't bad.
I haven't been impressed with many of their beers in a long time, except the re-issue last year and this of the Heart of Darkness stout.
I didn;t catch any of the tell-tale diacetyl at all from it, it had a dash of the wheat flavor, and a nice hop character.
I don't think I'd go out of my way for it, but if it was offered I wouldn;t refuse.
For a recipe, I would think the grain bill of a standard American Wheat would be a good place to start, with the hop schedule of a middle-ibu IPA.
Maybe a bunch of Cascade and Amarillo, with a decent bittering charge.

 

Diacetyl is so easy to get rid of that I don't really understand why it shows up in any commercial beer, unless they want it there; maybe they do.

 

A quick google search revealed that BA member Oldsock had the following to say:

Here is what the info Magic Hat gives:

TYPE: India Pale Ale
YEAST: English Ale
HOPS: Simcoe, Amarillo
MALTS: Pale, Malted Wheat, Cara Vienna
ABV: 6.0
GRAVITY: 14.50 Plato
BITTERNESS: 45
SRM: 7.0
---------------------
I'd go with something like:

6 lbs Pale
5 lbs Wheat Malt
.5 lbs CaraVienna
Mash at 151 for 60 min (a bit of gypsum in the water wouldn't hurt if you water is short on sulfate)

90 min boil
.75 oz Simcoe (Whole 14% AA) at 60 min
2 oz each Simcoe/Amarillo at 0
1 oz each Simcoe/Amarillo dry hop

OG 1.059

IIRC Magic Hat has a house English strain, some quick research says Ringwood.

I did something similar last summer, although I used a Hefeweizen yeast and Cascade instead of Simcoe: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/07/hoppy-german-american-wheat-recipe.html

Source: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/looking-ag-clone-magic-hat-encore-213565/