Well here I am, sitting in my chair, watching Jersey Shore (I need my trash reality TV, we'll get to that) and blogging about brewing beer, instead of being outside actually homebrewing a beer. The reason I'm not outside is because I feel like sick-ish, I've been coughing up some crud for the past 24+ hours and I need to get some rest. So this entry is a prelude to my homebrewing session that I'll be doing tomorrow.
I'm a pretty regular listener to the podcasts from The Brewing Network (BN) and one of their shows called The Jamil Show: Can You Brew It attempts to brew clone recipes of popular commercial beers, with great success. One of the beers that I have heard the BN brewcasters rant and rave about for years is the Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA. This beer has won numerous awards including gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2008 and 2009 (They also won Mid-Size Brewing Company and Mid-Size Brewing Company Brewer in 2011). Winning a medal at GABF is tough, getting one in the IPA catagory is difficult due to the high number of entries (176 entries in 2011), securing a gold medal is amazing and winning gold back to back years is almost impossible. In fact, here's what the crew at Firestone Walker has to say about their award winning IPA:
"An instant classic, Union Jack is the recipient of numerous awards including back to back wins at the Great American Beer Festival. Union Jack is abound with hop aroma and character. In fact this well balanced, west coast IPA is dry hopped 3 separate times, each lot giving it more and more of the grapefruit citrus hop aroma and flavor it is known for. Overall it utilizes over 4 pounds of pacific northwest hops per barrel."
Below is a summary of the recipe, I had to substitute Carastan for Caramalt just like the brewcasters had to do in their version of the recipe.
I'm a pretty regular listener to the podcasts from The Brewing Network (BN) and one of their shows called The Jamil Show: Can You Brew It attempts to brew clone recipes of popular commercial beers, with great success. One of the beers that I have heard the BN brewcasters rant and rave about for years is the Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA. This beer has won numerous awards including gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2008 and 2009 (They also won Mid-Size Brewing Company and Mid-Size Brewing Company Brewer in 2011). Winning a medal at GABF is tough, getting one in the IPA catagory is difficult due to the high number of entries (176 entries in 2011), securing a gold medal is amazing and winning gold back to back years is almost impossible. In fact, here's what the crew at Firestone Walker has to say about their award winning IPA:
"An instant classic, Union Jack is the recipient of numerous awards including back to back wins at the Great American Beer Festival. Union Jack is abound with hop aroma and character. In fact this well balanced, west coast IPA is dry hopped 3 separate times, each lot giving it more and more of the grapefruit citrus hop aroma and flavor it is known for. Overall it utilizes over 4 pounds of pacific northwest hops per barrel."
Below is a summary of the recipe, I had to substitute Carastan for Caramalt just like the brewcasters had to do in their version of the recipe.
Recipe Specifics
Batch Size (Gal): 6.00
Wort Size (Gal): 6.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 16.78
Anticipated OG: 1.071 Plato: 17.19
Anticipated SRM: 6.9
Anticipated IBU: 82.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
13.75 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
1.98 lbs. Munich Malt
0.83 lbs. CaraPilsner
0.22 lbs. Carastan Malt
Hops
0.88 oz. Warrior Pellet 17.00 AA% 61.2 IBUs 90 min.
0.63 oz. Cascade Pellet 7.00 AA% 8.4 IBUs 30 min.
0.63 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 AA% 12.6 IBUs 30 min.
1.83 oz. Cascade Pellet 7.00 AA% 0.0 IBUs 0 min.
1.83 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 AA% 0.0 IBUs 0 min.
1.55 oz. Cascade Pellet 7.00 AA% 0.0 IBUs 1st Dry Hop
1.55 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 AA% 0.0 IBUs 1st Dry Hop
1.06 oz. Cascade Pellet 7.00 AA% 0.0 IBUs 2nd Dry Hop
1.06 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 AA% 0.0 IBUs 2nd Dry Hop
0.49 oz. Amarillo Gold Pellet 10.00 AA% 0.0 IBUs 2nd Dry Hop
0.49 oz. Simcoe Pellet 12.40 AA% 0.0 IBUs 2nd Dry Hop
Yeast
White Labs WLP002 English Ale
Mash Schedule
Intermediate Rest Temp : 145 Time: 60 min.
Saccharification Rest Temp : 155 Time: 15 min.
Mash-out Rest Temp : 168 Time: 15 min.
Sparge Temp : 170 Time: 45 min.
Notes
Pitch at 63F and let free rise to 66F
Mmmm. Titillating read. I need a beer now to cool off.
I listened to the Jamil show and noted that at the end Tasty was discussing adding gypsum to reverse osmosis filtered water. I don't see it in the recipe here? Everything else looks good, thanks for the post. This is one of my favorite IPA's.
Anon - I didn't put anything regarding water in the post because every water source is different. And every water source can change throughout the year. In my case, I didn't use RO water, I used local water and treated it with various brewing salts, gypsum was one of them. I'm a big fan of Union Jack myself, which I hadn't tried prior to this post. I have since tasted the commercial version vs. my clone, they're quite different.
I see you mention your beer is quite different than the commercial. Do you think it's a recipe issue, water, process? I did brew the generally considered final clone of Arrogant Bastard and ended up with a good beer but completely different than the cloned one, so I'm wondering about the real clonability of those recipes.
Cheers!