Nothing like my brewing equipment (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This Week on Brew Disasters: Cloning Lagunitas Brewing’s Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale.
Note: a pictorial of the brewing process is toward the end of this post.
We here at Flog-This-Dead Brewing are excited to try brewing a new (to us anyway) beer: Lagunitas Brewing’s Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale. The grain bill is 16 pounds; a 50/50 blend of wheat and barley. The beer has minimal brewing hops and, true to the Lagunita’s way, massive dry hopping, 4.5 ounces for a 5 gallon batch.
A huge thank you to the Jamil Zainasheff and Mike “Tasty” McDole of the Brewing Network‘s Can You Brew It and Lagunitas Brewing Company for sharing their Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale recipe with them. And, lastly, thanks to my buddy Paul for pointing me to the recipe and my loving wife for helping at just the right times.
As you may recall, we here at Flog-This-Dead Brewing just supplemented our temperature monitoring from a handheld Taylor 9842 Commercial Waterproof Digital Thermometer to a BrewMometer by Blichmann Engineering. So we started the strike water temperature for our mash at 20F above our desired mash temp, because we had found that after adding our grain the water cooled 20F. Apparently, having a thermometer probe further down makes a big difference and the mash temperature did not drop the 20F expected. Yikes, instead of a desired mash temp of 150, the mash temp was 170F! We yanked the bag of grain out of the mash tun and began cooling the watery wort down.
After cooling the mash conversion process started at a temperature of 149.5 and after 60 minutes finished at 137F. A batch sparge was used and the total wort produced was 10.5 gallons with a pre-boil specific gravity of 1.043 (1.033 @ 117F); a full 12 points below the 1.055 that was the target, the addition gallon produced had a lot to do with that (You would think I could subtract 9 from the yield of the first runnings, but no, I muffed it). One-half pound of corn sugar and one-half pound of dry malt extract were added to boost the specific gravity.
It took over about an hour and a half to get the wort to boiling for the 90 minute boil.
Total time for brewing day (including cleanup–that’s why it’s a hobby and not a business): 12 hours.
First impressions:
- Appearance: 10L hazy-like smoggy LA day
- Aroma: fruity, sweet,
- Flavor: Sweet-malty, fruity, a sweetness lingers on the tip of the tongue
- Mouthfeel: syrupy (it is wort after all)
- Overall impression: Good start. Slightly maltier than hoppy.
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- Toasting wheat malt
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- Lighter for lighting propane burner
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- 45F water in keggle.
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- The Flog This Mule mill. The hopper was fashioned from book cardboard and contact paper. A world war II vintage drill form Douglas Aircraft surplus supplies the power.
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- Filtering water to remove chlorine.
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- Milled grain
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- 149.5F at start of mash. After our initial goof of 170F!
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- 137F a the end of 60 minutes for first mash.
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- Output of ~10.5 gallons of wort from the mash. How on earth did I batch sparge 1.5 gallons too much? Subtract the desired amount (9 gallons) from the first runnings and that’s the amount of hot liquor (aka hot water) to put in for the second.
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- A piece of metal is placed below the thermometer to shield it from convective heat.
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- Wort beginning to boil. The foam in the kettle contains proteins (?) that many say to skim. I skim the foam.
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- BrewPal app has a nice brewing timer. Enter your recipe into BrewPal and it reminds you when to add hops, other additions such as Irish moss, and the wort chiller.
The Flog This Dead Brewing‘s recipe:
| Target Wort Volume Before Boil: | 8.00 US gals | Actual Wort Volume Before Boil: | 10.50 US gals | ||
| Target Wort Volume After Boil: | 6.00 US gals | Actual Wort Volume After Boil: | 7.50 US gals | ||
| Target Volume Transferred: | 5.25 US gals | Actual Volume Transferred: | 5.50 US gals | ||
| Target Volume At Pitching: | 5.25 US gals | Actual Volume At Pitching: | 5.50 US gals | ||
| Target Volume Of Finished Beer: | 5.00 US gals | Actual Volume Of Finished Beer: | 5.00 US gals | ||
| Target Pre-Boil Gravity: | 1.053 SG | Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: | 1.048 SG | ||
| Target OG: | 1.079 SG | Actual OG: | 1.056 SG | ||
| Target FG: | 1.018 SG | Actual FG: | -No Record- | ||
| Target Apparent Attenuation:: | 75.50% | Actual Apparent Attenuation: | 100.00% | ||
| Target ABV: | 8.10% | Actual ABV: | 7.40% | ||
| Target ABW: | 6.30% | Actual ABW: | 5.90% | ||
| Target IBU (using Tinseth): | 29.9 IBU | Actual IBU: | 31.8 IBU | ||
| Target Color (using Morey): | 5.3 SRM | Actual Color: | 5.3 SRM | ||
| Target Mash Efficiency: | 70.00% | Actual Mash Efficiency: | 82.30% | ||
| Target Fermentation Temp: | 64 degF | Actual Fermentation Temp: | |||
| Fermentables | |||||
| Ingredient | Amount | % | MCU | When | |
| 2-Row Malt | 8lb 2oz | 47.30% | 2.4 | In Mash/Steeped | |
| White Wheat Malt | 6lb 2oz | 35.60% | 2.5 | In Mash/Steeped | |
| Torrified Wheat | 1lb 12oz | 10.20% | 0.6 | In Mash/Steeped | |
| Toasted White Wheat | 3.12 oz | 1.10% | 0.5 | In Mash/Steeped | |
| Extract – Light Dried Malt Extract | 8.00 oz | 2.90% | 0.3 | Start Of Boil | |
| Sugar – Corn Sugar/Dextrose (Dry) | 8.00 oz | 2.90% | 0 | Start Of Boil | |
| Hops | |||||
| Variety | Alpha | Amount | IBU | Form | When |
| Nugget | 13.00% | 0.39 oz | 15.9 | Loose Pellet Hops | 90 Min From End |
| Willamette (rhymes with damn it) | 5.20% | 0.28 oz | 3.9 | Loose Pellet Hops | 45 Min From End |
| Tettnanger | 4.50% | 1.18 oz | 7.7 | Loose Pellet Hops | 15 Min From End |
| Willamette | 5.20% | 0.32 oz | 2.4 | Loose Pellet Hops | 15 Min From End |
| Cascade | 5.90% | 0.85 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Centennial | 9.50% | 0.85 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Chinook | 11.50% | 0.85 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Simcoe | 12.50% | 0.85 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Amarillo | 8.50% | 0.63 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Columbus | 15.50% | 0.53 oz | 0 | Loose Pellet Hops | Dry-Hopped |
| Other Ingredients | |||||
| Ingredient | Amount | When | |||
| Irish Moss | 1.00 oz | in boil | |||
| Yeast | |||||
| DCL S-04-SafAle |
Related articles
- This week on Brew Disasters: House Pale Ale (52beers.wordpress.com)
- Try Lagunitas’ 22-ounce bottles — a great deal in craft beer (goerie.com)
- Lagunitas Brewing Company self-proclaims that they suck, and we love them for it (dandyville.com)
- Brew Your Own Beer (answers.com)
- Beer of the Week: Lagunitas Brewing Company (boabeerblog.com)
- Chicago’s Brewers React to Lagunitas Announcement (aleheads.com)
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