In an ode to one of our favorite winter seasonals, and in acknowledgement of the fact that Tröegs hasn’t made it to the west coast yet, I’m attempting a clone of the infamous Mad Elf. It has Tröegenator (doppelbock) as it’s base, using belgian ale yeast instead of lager, and with cherries in the secondary. Source material:
http://www.troegs.com/our_brews/mad_elf_ale.aspx
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/troegs-mad-elf-ale-229784/
I do not mean to suggest that I can best the great minds at Tröegs, rather I mean to pay homage to an incredible brew by attempting to come anywhere close in my first full-boil all-grain 5 gallon batch. And we begin ..
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WLP530
Yeast Starter: Cake from Batch 11
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.071
Final Gravity: 1.012
IBU:
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Color:
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): at least 14 @ 68-70*
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 days
13# pilsner
2# munich
0.25# chocolate
2# Clover Honey (at flameout)
1.50z Tettnang (4.8%, sub for Hallertau) – 90min
0.5oz Saaz (8.1%) – 15 min
1 Whirlfloc (15 min)
2# sweet cherries (secondary)
2# tart cherries (secondary)
1 step mash at 1.3 qt/lb, 2-step batch sparge
started with 5 gallons of strike water at ~167•, that brought the mash to a paltry 145•. It was cold last night so the mash tun (and likely the grain) were colder to start than I’m used to, and I wasn’t as careful to calculate a proper strike temp. So I added 1 gallons of 200* water, and that brought the mash to 148*. I was using my digital TEMPer1, and when I checked with my analog meat thermometer, it read 152*, so I’ll go with that. Mashed from 9:11 to 10:15, then drew the first runnings, added 3 gallons at 170* for the second sparge.
SG: 1.022 at 120* (not great at all)
OG: 1.071 at 70* (still not great)
it boiled down to definitely less than 5 gallons (probably closer to 4).
UPDATE 10/22/12 – began fermenting at 64*, slowly risen to 68* over the past day, with a fermentation evident late in the evening.
UPDATE 11/18/12 – the beer has been fermenting at a pretty steady 68*. racked to secondary onto ~1 gallon of water in which 2.5 lb of cherries (1 lb sweet, 1.5 lb tart) were boiled for 10 minutes. gravity read 1.012.
UPDATE 1/1/13 – tasted a few weeks ago, was quite heavy on the cherry. Tasted last night, and as the cherry was mellowing, it was starting to taste a bit more like the original. Still too sweet and too dark to be a good clone, but tasty none the less.