In an ode to one of our favorite winter seasonals, and in acknowledgement of the fact that Tr\u00f6egs hasn’t made it to the west coast yet, I’m attempting a clone of the infamous Mad Elf. It has Tr\u00f6egenator (doppelbock) as it’s base, using belgian ale yeast instead of lager, and with cherries in the secondary. Source material:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.troegs.com\/our_brews\/mad_elf_ale.aspx<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.homebrewtalk.com\/f12\/troegs-mad-elf-ale-229784\/<\/p>\n
I do not mean to suggest that I can best the great minds at Tr\u00f6egs, 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 ..<\/p>\n
Recipe Type:<\/strong>\u00a0All Grain 13# pilsner 1.50z Tettnang (4.8%, sub for Hallertau) – 90min 1 Whirlfloc (15 min)<\/p>\n 2# sweet cherries (secondary) 1 step mash at 1.3 qt\/lb, 2-step batch sparge<\/p>\n started with 5 gallons of strike water at ~167\u2022, that brought the mash to a paltry 145\u2022. 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.<\/p>\n SG: 1.022 at 120* (not great at all)<\/p>\n OG: 1.071 at 70* (still not great)<\/p>\n it boiled down to definitely less than 5 gallons (probably closer to 4).<\/p>\n UPDATE 10\/22\/12 – began fermenting at 64*, slowly risen to 68* over the past day, with a fermentation evident late in the evening.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an ode to one of our favorite winter seasonals, and in acknowledgement of the fact that Tr\u00f6egs hasn’t made it to the west coast yet, I’m attempting a clone of the infamous Mad Elf. It has Tr\u00f6egenator (doppelbock) as it’s base, using belgian ale yeast instead of lager, and with cherries in the secondary. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,11,59,6,8,64,65,57,29,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cherries","category-chocolate","category-honey","category-hops","category-malt","category-munich","category-pilsner","category-saaz","category-tettnang","category-wlp530-abbey-ale-yeast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/home.kimusubi.net\/beer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nYeast:<\/strong>\u00a0WLP530
\nYeast Starter:<\/strong>\u00a0Cake from Batch 11
\nBatch Size (Gallons):<\/strong>\u00a05
\nOriginal Gravity: 1.071<\/strong>
\nFinal Gravity: 1.012<\/strong>
\nIBU:<\/strong>
\nBoiling Time (Minutes):<\/strong>\u00a090
\nColor:<\/strong>
\nPrimary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):<\/strong>\u00a0at least 14 @ 68-70*
\nSecondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):<\/strong>\u00a014 days<\/p>\n
\n2# munich
\n0.25# chocolate
\n2# Clover Honey\u00a0(at flameout)<\/p>\n
\n0.5oz Saaz (8.1%) – 15 min<\/p>\n
\n2# tart cherries (secondary)<\/p>\n