One of the best beers I've ever brewed was my version of Jamil Zainasheff's Evil Twin (blog post here). There's something magical about so much malt and hop character coming together. I was toying with the idea of re-brewing it, but just for fun I decided instead to try my first recipe from the recent book "For the love of hops" by Stan Hieronymus.
The recipe is for "Marble Red Ale". I should mention that I have never tried a Marble brewery beer, nor heard of them outside of this book, but the recipe would seem to add up to a pretty awesome beer, so I had to try it out.
If you look through my older posts you will see that I have a few different possible brewing configurations, from pretty simple pot on a heat source BIAB with no chilling, right up to recirculating automated step mashing, sparging and full chilling. Generally the higher the OG, the more complex my setup, so for this 1.065 monster I sparged and chilled. I also upped my volume a little to 24L to account for extra losses to hop material.
For yeast, I cultured up a large stirred starter of WYeast PACMAN, which I kept from a smack pack from late last year. Pacman is now my favourite yeast for American ales. I feel that it gives a really nice mouthfeel that I don't get from other american ale yeasts. Also it really is a beast and gets through high OG worts very quickly.
Here's the recipe:
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
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75.0 5.14 kg. Pale Ale Malt (2-row) Australia 1.037 2
10.0 0.69 kg. Vienna Malt Germany 1.036 4
10.0 0.69 kg. Crystal 77L UK 1.035 75
5.0 0.34 kg. Crystal 120L UK 1.033 120
Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
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20.27 g. Columbus Pellet 15.00 38.7 60 min.
11.73 g. Citra Pellet 11.50 3.4 10 min.
11.73 g. Simcoe Pellet 13.00 3.9 10 min.
23.47 g. Cascade Pellet 5.75 3.4 10 min.
48.00 g. Cascade Pellet 5.75 0.0 0 min.
90.67 g. Cascade Pellet 5.75 0.0 Dry Hop
13.87 g. Simcoe Pellet 13.00 0.0 Dry Hop
13.87 g. Citra Pellet 11.50 0.0 Dry Hop
Yeast
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Pacman