Odell Brewing’s Isolation Ale Clone: Replicator
Dear Replicator, I’ve been a long-time reader and subscriber and finally have a question to ask which hasn’t been answered in either your great magazine or on the interwebs. I am a BIG fan of Odell Isolation Ale, but have been unable to find a clone recipe. I was hoping your team would be able to help me out.
Andrew Rusinas
Chicago, Illinois
I’m a big fan of Odell’s Isolation Ale, so I was very happy when Odell Head Brewer Bill Beymer and company decided to provide us with (most of) the recipe for it. Truly a great, great winter beer!
Odell is one of the pioneering craft breweries, first opening their doors and mash tuns in 1989.
Bringing with him his experience as a professional brewer (for Anchor Brewing Co. in the 1970s) and his love of homebrewing, Doug Odell co-founded Odell Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife, Wynne, and sister, Corkie. From the start they have focused on producing beers of unparalleled quality inspired by the best beers of Britain, with beers like Isolation Ale – though commonly referred to as a “winter warmer,” it fits nicely into the mold of an English strong ale.
Odell is also a brewery that focuses on quality over quantity. They remain a largely regional brewery, and have grown slowly over the past three decades. Last year, the brewery sold out – to their own employees. The three co-founders retained a smaller share of the company (and largely stayed in their respective jobs), and sold the remainder of the stock to their fellow executives, managers, and 119 employees. Wynne, Doug, and Corkie have appointed themselves “Founders for Life” and hope to “still be hoisting pints in the taproom when [they] are 90.”
One of those pints (at least three months out of the year!) will be Isolation Ale. Earning a very rare perfect-100 review (“world-class beer”) from the founders of Beer Advocate, Isolation Ale is an outstanding “skill-position” beer. It’s designed to be a beer you can drink as you “welcome autumn’s first snow,” according to the brewery – not a beer to drink when you’re snowed under and awaiting relief from a team of sled dogs! That means that the beer needs to be rich enough to carry you through the late fall months and into the winter, but not be so heavy that it reminds you more of something you’ll drink in the snow-drifted months to follow. This is a needle that it threads beautifully.
Pouring a beautiful amber-red, this beer consists of a pretty typical blend of base malts (British pale malt and Vienna) and a complex blend of specialty and caramel malts. The result is a beer that is nutty, toasty, bready, and rich with caramel and toffee notes thanks to a number of crystal malts. It balances that rich maltiness with a healthy dose of hops, allowing for a crisp finish in what is otherwise a decidedly malt-forward beer. British ale yeast also adds a nice, subtle fruity note that complements the dark-fruit flavors imparted by the darker crystal malts. This is a complex beer and the depth of the flavor is all the more impressive when you consider that it is also a medium-strength beer, coming in at just about 6% ABV. Odell puts the whole recipe to work here, and the result is one of the most flavorful beers you’ll find in the market.
If you’re in one of the dozen states lucky enough to stock Odell, be sure to grab some of this right now! Or, of course, you can now brew your own version to get you through the fall months as the weather cools. But be warned: The good folks at Odell didn’t give us quite everything in this recipe, wanting to retain an air of mystery, one supposes. I’ve made what I think are some good educated guesses (mainly around the hop additions’ timing, and on one malt – we’ve got the rest, though!), but this one may require some trial, error, and evaluation. Brew it yourself, store it in your coldest fridge, and you can compare your clone attempt to this year’s batch.
This is a complex beer and the depth of the flavor is all the more impressive when you consider that it is also a medium-strength beer, coming in at just about 6% ABV.
Odell Brewing Co.’s Isolation Ale clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.061 FG = 1.015
IBU = 29 SRM = 16 ABV = 6.1%
Ingredients
4.25 lbs. (1.9 kg) Maris Otter pale malt
3 lbs. (1.4 kg) Vienna malt
2.75 lbs. (1.25 kg) Briess Ashburne® mild malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Munich malt (10 °L)
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) crystal malt (90 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) crystal malt (10 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (45 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (120 °L)
3.25 AAU Nugget hops (60 min.)
(0.25 oz./7 g at 13% alpha acids)
5.5 AAU Cascade hops (30 min.)
(1 oz./28 g at 5.5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1098 (British Ale) or White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and mix with 4 gallons (15 L) of 165 °F (74 °C) strike water to reach a mash temperature of 152 °F (67 °C). Hold this temperature for 60 minutes. Vorlauf until your runnings are clear, and lauter. Sparge the grains with 2.9 gallons (11 L) and top up as necessary to obtain 6 gallons (23 L) of wort.
Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops according to the ingredient list and Irish moss as desired.
After the boil, chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 66 °F (19 °C). Aerate the wort with pure oxygen or filtered air and pitch yeast.
Ferment at 67 °F (19 °C) for the first three days, then allow temperature to rise to 70 °F (21 °C). Hold
there until fermentation is complete (1.015 specific gravity, about ten days after fermentation begins). Once the beer completes fermentation, bottle or keg and carbonate to approximately 2.25 volumes. You may want to cold-crash the beer prior to packaging to 35 °F (2 °C) for 48 hours to improve clarity. Store carbonated beer at near-freezing temperatures for at least two weeks before drinking.
Odell Brewing Co.’s Isolation Ale clone
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.061 FG = 1.015
IBU = 29 SRM = 16 ABV = 6.1%
Ingredients
1 lb. (0.45 kg) light dried malt extract
3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Briess Goldpils® Vienna liquid malt extract
3 lbs. (1.4 kg) Munich liquid malt extract
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) crystal malt (90 °L)
0.5 lb. (0.23 kg) crystal malt (10 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (45 °L)
4 oz. (113 g) crystal malt (120 °L)
3.25 AAU Nugget hops (60 min.)
(0.25 oz./7 g at 13% alpha acids)
5.5 AAU Cascade hops (30 min.)
(1 oz./28 g at 5.5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1098 (British Ale) or White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Bring 5.4 gallons (20.4 L) of water to approximately 162 °F (72 °C) and hold there. Steep specialty malts in grain bags for 15 minutes and then remove the grain bags and let drain fully. Add malt extracts while stirring, and stir until completely dissolved. Bring the wort to a boil. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops according to the ingredient list and Irish moss as desired.
After the boil, chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 66 °F (19 °C). Aerate the wort with pure oxygen or filtered air and pitch yeast.
Ferment at 67 °F (19 °C) for the first three days, then allow temperature to rise to 70 °F (21 °C). Hold there until fermentation is complete. After fermentation, bottle or keg the beer and carbonate to approximately 2.25 volumes. You may want to cold-crash the beer prior to packaging to 35 °F (2 °C) for 48 hours to improve clarity. Store carbonated beer at near-freezing temperatures for at least two weeks before drinking.
Tips for Success
Head Brewer Bill Beymer notes that they use Nugget and Cascade hops in Isolation Ale in moderate amounts: I’ve split them here with the Nugget as principally a bittering hop and Cascade as a flavor hop, but this was one that Bill and company decided to hold close to the vest, so you may have to experiment on the timing and ratios. Bill notes, though, that the malt character is the focus of this beer.
For yeast, Bill suggests using a British ale strain that produces mild esters and complements this malt-forward winter ale. The relatively warm fermentation temperature should help bring out the esters that Bill’s talking about, but if you’re noticing too much yeast character in the final beer you might want to hold steady at 67 °F (19 °C) instead of allowing the temperature rise (though an increase at the end of fermentation is still appropriate to ward off diacetyl).
