Arrogant Bastard Show

[beerpressure]

Do we know the AA% for the chinooks that the guys used?

[Droodles1]

Do we know the AA% for the chinooks that the guys used?

13% AA

[beerpressure]

Had a real one next to my clone tonight. Stone's just is darker red than mine. Beersmith shows my SRM as 20. Commercial example seems darker than that. I used the exact grain bill as listed in the show, I just may have not boiled it down enough. Ended up with over 6 gallons after flameout.

Store bought A.B. has more bitterness and overall hoppy flavor. This also may be due to be not boiling off enough.

I will be rebrewing this for a club meeting and I really would like to hear your suggestions. Same gain bill & hop bill but a more vigerous boil? Adjust grain and hop bill? Add gypsum?

[Travisty]

I had similar results when I did a side by side last week. I also noticed that the head on my clone was lighter in color than the real thing.

Whenever I make the clone again I'm planning on adding like 1% roasted barley to deepen up the red color and get a little more color in the head. The special B flavor seemed just right to me though so I'll leave that the same. I'm also going to up the late hops by maybe 5 or 10% to try and match the hop flavor and aroma in the real AB and I'm going to add gypsum to crisp up the bitterness.

[Hoser]

Two words: Dry Hop.

Are you going to tell me that Stone dry hops almost every beer, but doesn't dry hop their Arrogant Bastard? I find that hard to believe. That is my biggest problem with the clone recipe. Just my opinion. Too much hop flavor and aroma to not be dry hopped.

[Travisty]

I was thinking about that as well for my next try at the recipe.

[Hoser]

Knowing Stone and Mitch, I don't think it is an all chinook beer, either. Which especially makes sense when Jamil and Tasty blended in crystal malt extracts with Stone IPA. Their reasoning is that it has the same hop flavor profile? Which I agree with, but when you look at http://www.stonebrew.com/ipa/ they list the hops for Stone IPA as columbus, chinook, and centennial. So, why did they not mention changing the hops in the rebrew show. Just a statement I found confusing. To me the chinooks are too dominant and conflicting, but when I did my version of the clone and subbed out half of the chinook for centennials, and dry hopped I thought it was much closer to the Arrogant Bastard in hop flavor and aroma when I did a side-by-side. I have yet to do the rebrew with only 10% Special B, so maybe that makes a difference. I doubt it. I believe my attempt was a percenatge of C-60L, Special B, and chocolate for color. Much closer to clone than my original attempt with all chinook. Just my opinion.

[Travisty]

I thought that the hop flavor itself was pretty close to the real thing, just not sharp enough, hence my thought to add some gypsum. However my palate when it comes to particular hop varieties is not quite as honed as I would like so I could be wrong.