Recipe Help - Pirate Life IPA Clone

[brewdjoffe]

Hi all

I love absolutely love the Pirate Life IPA and wanted to brew something that tastes similar to it. I want it to be very hop forward and refreshing. As a bit of background I'm a new brewer and am only trying my hand at extract brewing for the moment. Once I am comfortable that I can brew a decent extract beer I will move on to partial-mash, BIAB and all grain (eventually). I have brewed 3 batches so far, mostly IPAs and Pale Ales, and they have all turned out pretty good. Nothing world class but better than expected.

I've taken this off Pirate Life's website: "Sitting nicely between our Pale Ale and IIPA at 6.8% ABV the IPA has a gentle orange hue and a round, full bodied malt character care of Pale Malt, Munich and Crystal. With our Pale Ale and IIPA having withdrawn most of our funds from the dank bank we thought it was time to make a beer that brought something a little different to the table. Chock full of Centennial, Riwaka and Simcoe our IPA is bright, fruity and full of liquid fun."

I have been reading Randy Mosher's book "Mastering Home Brewing" and thought for my next project I would create a beer from scratch. So far it has been kits and recipes I have found online. With all this considered I have come up with the following recipe for the Pirate Life IPA clone:

21 Litres (I will boil around 11 litres and use top up water for the rest)

Malts/Grains

3.4kg Light Liquid Extract (2 x 1.7kg cans of Black Rock; one added at the beginning of the boil and one added with 15mins remaining in the boil)
400gm Munich Liquid Extract
400gm Crystal 20L
200gm CaraPils

Hop Schedule

25gm Simcoe - 60 mins
25gm Centennial - 30 mins
50gm Riwaka - 10 mins
75 gm Simcoe - 0 mins
25gm Riwaka - Dry Hop
25gm Simcoe - Dry Hop

Yeast

WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast

I put the above into my brewing software and it gave me ABV 6.8%, OG: 1.063, FG: 1.013 and IBU 69

Any general comments would be appreciated, considering I've never tried to clone a beer before. All the stats look good from the brewing software so far but wanted to get some second opinions

Thanks!

 

[Brownsworthy]

I'd probably use a Briess Munich lme 1.5kg in place of a black rock light lme, as it is half pale half munich,and instead of having a 30min hop addition go heavy on hops late say 10-0 min.

Cheers

 

[Grainer]

I'd imagine there would me more dry hopping in this one..

 

[brewdjoffe]

I'd probably use a Briess Munich lme 1.5kg in place of a black rock light lme, as it is half pale half munich,and instead of having a 30min hop addition go heavy on hops late say 10-0 min.

Cheers

I'd imagine there would me more dry hopping in this one..

Thanks Grainer and Brownsworthy

Think I might tweak the hop schedule a bit -

25gm Simcoe - 60 mins
25gm Centennial - 10 mins
50gm Riwaka - 0 mins
75 gm Simcoe - 0 mins
50gm Riwaka - Dry Hop
50gm Simcoe - Dry Hop

Also, with regards to the Munich LME, from what I've read I've heard that if you're using 2row as a base (pale extract), then you should limit munich to max 15%. Might be wrong. Does this only apply to all grain?

 

[soundawake]

Pirate Life use US05 for their yeast. The brewer told me when I was at the brewery. They also ferment at 21 degrees.

 

[brewdjoffe]

Pirate Life use US05 for their yeast. The brewer told me when I was at the brewery. They also ferment at 21 degrees.

Great, thanks for the tips. Considering that I am finding it hard to source WLP090 I was leaning towards just using US05 anyways!

 

[Brownsworthy]

I've used more than 15% and not noticed any issues I think I've pushed it up to near 25%.

The last extract IPA I did used 1.5kg Briess Liquid Munich malt, 1.5kg Coopers Light Malt Extract, 800g light dry malt, 200g dry wheat malt, 300g Caramunich 2, 200g CaraPils and it was a cracker.

 

[razzmeister]

Sorry brewdjoffe, not meaning to hijack here!
But would you guys also know how to tweak this to use partial grain and use some Briess LME?
I just saw this topic and was interested as I also rather liked the Pirate Life IPA and I have a 9L (I think) tub of the briess golden light LME sitting here waiting to be used!
Thanks

 

[Brownsworthy]

Just sub the briess for the other lme they're near enough the same thing.

 

[blotto]

Pirate Life use US05 for their yeast. The brewer told me when I was at the brewery. They also ferment at 21 degrees.

I'd imagine they ferment under pressure also? This would provide a cleaner ferment as discussed some what in this thread http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/66163-fermenting-under-pressure/

 

[jimmyj]

Got too love those big late hop additions. Good luck brewdjoffe

 

[Dan Pratt]

I'd imagine they ferment under pressure also? This would provide a cleaner ferment as discussed some what in this thread http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/66163-fermenting-under-pressure/

I highly doubt they ferment under pressure at all, I'd even bet on it. No offence.

They would be pitching healthy viable yeast and well over the required amount, enough to prevent the formation of esters. It would also allow for faster turn around times for production timelines.

 

[soundawake]

It would also allow for faster turn around times for production timelines.

Yep that's why. Not under pressure, the fermenters had blow off hoses going into big white buckets. The activity in the buckets... was going BANANAS.

 

[blotto]

No offence taken at all, I suppose there is more than one way to skin a cat. I never would have thought brewing at 21 would be that tasty, depending on style and what your after I suppose. Would you say they'd have on average more than one packet of yeast per 21ltr batch to achieve such results at that temp?

 

[blotto]

I should say I mostly brew at the 18 to 19 mark with my ales. I've never really made anything spectacular that suited my taste above that.

 

[Dan Pratt]

No offence taken at all, I suppose there is more than one way to skin a cat. I never would have thought brewing at 21 would be that tasty, depending on style and what your after I suppose. Would you say they'd have on average more than one packet of yeast per 21ltr batch to achieve such results at that temp?

For a homebrewer a 2 packet would be plenty and in order to not spend cash on 2 packets for the beer, make your beer with one and keep the yeast cake and repitch that into the next beer at higher temps (21-23c). You will see that the beer is just as clean as when you ferment at lower temps with less yeast. Fermentation with an entire yeast cake @ 22c takes about 3hrs to start forming a krausen and about 48hrs to finish fermenting. If you NC then just add the next beer directly to the FV with the yeast.

Sorry to the OP but as usual the best stuff learned on the forum is within the thread itself.

As a side note, on monday night i moved my summer ale to the corny keg for dry hopping and kept the yeast cake, got about 700mls of clean fresh yeast, This will be pitched this weekend for my next beer. alot of brewers just take 1 cup full and that is plenty for a 21lt batch to rip through at higher temps or at lower temps for that matter.

Edit - Im currently figuring out how much yeast i can use to ferment at higher temps yet still get enough Lag phase for the purpose of the lag phase and the yeast to eat fatty acids and lipids etc during that phase. reason is that the stability of the final beer is reduced and doesn't stay as fresh for as long as other beers done at lower temps with correct pitch rates v's massively over pitching.

 

[brewdjoffe]

Got too love those big late hop additions. Good luck brewdjoffe

Thanks mate - will let you know how it turns out

 

[Killer Brew]

They are very particular on their dry hop schedule rotating out the used hops and replacing with new every 2 days for a total of 6 days.

 

[Ferg]

They are very particular on their dry hop schedule rotating out the used hops and replacing with new every 2 days for a total of 6 days.

This makes me wonder - I just dry hopped my 5am Saint with a lot of hops ~ 10g/L. I wonder if it would have been more effective splitting that up and doing the dry hopping in batches?

 

[brewdjoffe]

They are very particular on their dry hop schedule rotating out the used hops and replacing with new every 2 days for a total of 6 days.

This makes me wonder - I just dry hopped my 5am Saint with a lot of hops ~ 10g/L. I wonder if it would have been more effective splitting that up and doing the dry hopping in batches?

Have you ever done this in your home brew? I generally dry hop in my primary FV and would imagine that I would need to put the hops in a sanitized bag/sock and then fish them out after a couple of days and replace with a new fresh bag of hops.