Samuel Adams: Brewing Up a Revolution
When making plans to visit Boston and the Samuel Adams brewery for this story, I discussed my itinerary with a friend living in the city’s South End, who seemed confused. “But isn’t Sam Adams, so – you know – big?” she asked me with one eyebrow cocked quizzically, implying what many of today’s well-rounded beer aficionados probably also think – that Sam Adams is one of the major players in commercial beer – akin to an Anheuser-Busch InBev or SABMiller, and perhaps no longer a craft brewery. And I have to confess, I didn’t have an answer for her at the moment. Because Sam Adams IS big. Like, really big . . . at least compared to many of the other breweries in the US that are classified as “craft” breweries (but they’re still a small player compared to A-B, SABM, etc.). The Boston Beer Company brews just over 2 million barrels of beer each year under the Samuel Adams label. And since Boston Lager was released in 1985, the company has built exponentially on the success of that flagship beer — founder Jim Koch was even recently revealed by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index this year to be one of the US’ newest billionaires. So I have to admit, I was a little surprised to find a bunch of homebrewers brewing up crazy concoctions at will and a pilot system that was essentially a homebrew setup the morning that I visited Sam Adams’ Jamaica Plain brewery. In fact, homebrewing is a vital part of Sam Adams’ corporate culture as well as its success.
Founder, Homebrewer
Right from the start Sam Adams had a leg up over other microbreweries that were testing the commercial brewing waters in the 1980s: Founder Jim Koch. Koch is the sixth generation in a family of commercial brewers, so beer was already in the blood when he picked up the homebrewing hobby as a young man. By the time he started tinkering with batches of Boston Lager in 1984, he felt good about the beer he would eventually sell.
“I had an advantage over the other startup microbreweries,” Koch said. “I was both a homebrewer and came from a long line of pro brewers. With that came an approach with quality and consistency.” Back in the 80s, he said, almost nobody came from a brewing background — home or commercial. “The skill level today is so much higher. A really experienced homebrewer today will have made more of a variety of beers today than we as commercial brewers would have in 1984.”
At the time that Koch decided to open a brewery in 1985, “craft” brewing was a very different scene, however (“craft beer” is a term that Sam Adams actually helped to define. See sidebar on page 61). When Boston Lager first rolled out, the beer market featured a small handful of microbreweries and was dominated by mass-market pale lagers, and a “fancy” beer would have been, perhaps, a European import that often suffered greatly during transport to the US.
“You couldn’t go to the grocery store and get a world-class beer in a variety of styles like you can now,” Koch said. Back then a full-flavored beer option would have been, “an oxidized Sam Smiths.”
The challenge for Koch before people embraced beers like Boston Lager was getting past distributors and skeptics and getting his beer into the glasses of beer drinkers, which often meant going from pub to pub, bar to bar, pouring his beer for bartenders and persuading them to carry it on their draft or bottle list. Koch also realized that a great way to market his beer was to educate people about what good beer tasted like and how beer is made, an effort that has not only endeared Sam Adams to millions of craft beer drinkers, but has also been a boon to the rest of the craft beer movement. Because of Jim Koch, small-batch, flavorful beer is no longer a tough sell on the commercial market.
“What he has done is amazing,” David Geary, president of D.L. Geary Brewing in Portland, Maine said recently to The Boston Globe of Koch’s success and marketing efforts. “He’s very focused, a brilliant marketer and he sort of taught us all how to sell beer.”
The Brewery
One of the hallmarks of Koch’s marketing — educating people about beer — begins at the original Sam Adams Brewery in Boston’s Jamaica Plain. Since its early days, the home base has become part brewery, part welcome center. For lots of people, Boston Lager is the first craft beer they have ever tasted, and the brewery tour is the first time they see and touch some of the ingredients that are used to make beer. Tours are led every 45 minutes, Monday through Saturday, and lead guests right into the heart of the brewery to see the iconic brewing system and the brewers who star in the Sam Adams commercials, as well as the oak barrels in their aging program. And, of course, they get to sample the beers. When I visited, first thing on a Friday morning, I watched a tour group touch and smell a bowl of hops – each person slowly passing it along to the next. Behind them, another group of twenty or so people were waiting for the next tour to start, and a third collection of people had started gathering outside the front door of the brewery.
Since it opened in 1995, the physical presence of the Boston Beer Company has expanded past the walls of the Boston brewery to em-ploy more than 800 people and encompass additional breweries in Cincinnati, Ohio and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania (where much of its year-round bottle and canned offerings are brewed).
In Boston, however, the brewers get to play with more of the experimental stuff as it is also the home of Sam Adams’ barrel-aged beer program, the small batch series and houses the brewery’s pilot brewing system, — a 10-gallon, three-tier MoreBeer! stand that would make any homebrewer proud.
The Boston pilot brewing system is also where some of the ingredients that make up the brewery’s 50-plus offerings are tested. Jennifer Glanville, the Brewery Manager and a brewer at the Boston location, who is most often the person sourcing a lot of those ingredients, showed me during my visit that while Sam Adams’ operations are big, they have an approach to brewing that I can only best describe as scientific homebrewing. An idea for a new beer is born, the ingredients are sourced, and they give it a try on the pilot system. They will often brew batches over and over again with slightly different ratios of ingredients or ferment them with different yeasts at varying temperatures and then gather all the brewers together to taste the results side by side to find the one that’s just right. For example, a recent spiced beer experiment involved 16 batches of beer with 16 different spice profiles. Another experiment might include 10 fermentations of the same wort, or 12 of the same beer with 12 different hopping schedules.
“It’s always about experimentation and tasting,” Glanville said, describing the tasting days as an “organized chaos” of tables covered with glasses and brewers tasting and retasting each sample.
Glanville’s experiments also extend to testing ingredients that are used in existing Sam Adams beers already in the marketplace to see if anything has changed in quality or if certain ingredients could be improved upon.
“We are always trying to get the best out of our ingredients,” she said. “For example, it used to be that harvesting hops was a beauty contest to get the biggest, brightest green hops. We did some trials with our hop farmers, however, and the data we ended up with showed that we got better aroma and quality when we harvested the hops a little earlier than normal – around Labor Day.”
A Culture of Homebrewing
When Koch wanted to become a brewmaster, he dusted off his grandfather’s recipe in 1984 and made his first batches of beer in his Newton, Massachusetts kitchen, just like lots of homebrewers still do to this day. And because of those early days, Koch has maintained a strong homebrewing culture in his company, including encouraging all of his employees to homebrew and holding some of the largest (and most visible) homebrewing competitions in the country. This is because not only was Koch a homebrewer himself, but also because he believes that Sam Adams owes a lot of its success to homebrewers.
“In the early days homebrewers were the only ones who appreciated what we were doing,” Koch said, “and it was a mutual embrace. To me, the homebrewing community is the roots of craft brewing.”
Like the craft beer scene at the time when Sam Adams started, the homebrewing scene and the resources required to homebrew when Koch started getting into the hobby were just as drastically different. The changes we modern homebrewers enjoy (and sometimes even take for granted) today amaze him.
“Back then we had a hard time even scrounging up glass carboys — you had to try and steal them from the Poland Springs water delivery guy. You had to use Blue Ribbon malt extract that you got at the grocery store. A homebrewer today can get better equipment and ingredients than a pro brewer could get in 1984.”
To encourage his employees to make their own beer when Sam Adams started to grow, Koch started an in-house homebrew competition. In the mid 1990s, the company decided to open the competition up to all US homebrewers and it is now known as the Longshot American Homebrew Contest — one of the largest homebrew competitions in the world. The Longshot is judged in stages and regional semifinals in an attempt to fairly evaluate each entry based on the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines. Koch and the panel of expert judges then taste the winning beers from those semifinals and choose what they believe are the four best beers — including the contest winner. Those four finalists are then invited to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado where the winners are announced (two homebrewers and one employee brewer), and the resulting beers are brewed by Sam Adams and distributed nationally in mixed packs.
Homebrewers in New England have also competed in the the Samuel Adams Patriot Homebrew competition, which ran every year from 2007 to 2012. The winner of that competition was awarded a chance to brew their homebrew at Sam Adams and their homebrew earned a spot amongst the taps at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts during the Patriots football season.
“The homebrewing community continues to be the source of nourishment and creative energy,” said Koch. “Craft brewing gets all the attention, but the creativity comes from these roots. Any practicing craft brewer would benefit from contact with homebrewers.”
Brewing the Samuel Adams Way
The secret to brewing the Sam Adams way, according to Koch, is three pronged. In addition to the aforementioned experimentation, you must also master and appreciate the classic beer styles, and you must always brew balanced, drinkable beers consistently.
A Sam Adams beer, Koch said, is flavorful, balanced and complex. It’s not enough for the beer to just have a lot of flavor.
“If there is a ‘Boston Beer’ way, it’s probably respect for tradition,” said Koch, “and a relentless desire to innovate and push boundaries. You can throw a lot of hops and malts and do some over-the-top techniques,” Koch said, “but it has to be balanced. I believe beer should be simply a pleasure to drink. As a beer drinker I drink ultimately for pleasure.”
And there would be no Sam Adams success story without emphasizing consistency. One of the biggest reasons why some of the first-wave microbreweries that started around the same time as Sam Adams but didn’t make it, said Koch, is because many of them simply weren’t releasing good beer with regularity, which turned off consumers.
“I was appalled when I heard craft brewers say that eighty percent of their batches were good,” said Koch of confessions he heard from fellow microbrewers in the early days. “I just knew that you could not build a customer base or an industry if we didn’t raise the quality standards. There was a lot of bad beer at the time and as a result the industry was struggling. In addition to Sam Adams, some of the only other breweries that were making great beer every time were Sierra Nevada and Anchor — and today we are the ones who are still around.”
So if you want your beers to get the Sam Adams stamp of approval, get the classic styles down pat, and perfect brewing practices to the point where you can brew the same beer exactly the same way every time. This means really nailing down your ingredients by brewing test batches (as Sam Adams does) to find what works best, making sure your water source is consistent, and hitting the same targets and temperatures from batch to batch. The best way to do this, as a homebrewer, is to take good notes throughout the brew day and refer back to those notes when you brew that recipe the next time.
As for experimenting, well that’s easy for homebrewers, right? After all, we don’t have to sell our beer, we just have to like it enough to drink it. Glanville says that doing experiments with ingredients and techniques much like she does at Sam Adams might not always produce the beer you want to drink, but you always learn something.
“I wish I could do what you guys do,” said Glanville of the constraints every commercial brewery has in that they need to be able to sell the beer that they make. “You have the opportunity to do more experimentation than we do.”
So you want to try using jalapeños in your next batch of homebrew? Go ahead! Glanville said one of the things she likes best about working at Sam Adams is that Jim gives the brewers his blessing to give any beer style or ingredient a chance. Try splitting up a batch or two of your next homebrew into 1-gallon (3.7-L) factions and ferment it at different temperatures or with a different yeast strain, or use a different hopping program to see if you could be brewing your favorite homebrew a little better, make it a little more exciting or to discover a new flavor profile entirely.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” said Glanville with a smile. “So what if it doesn’t come out exactly the way you want it. You’re either going to drink it or throw it away. Try experimenting with flavors that you might not think about for brewing beer. You will learn from everything you do.”
Modern Day Sam Adams
So how does a commercial brewery that has enjoyed so much sustained success stay relevant with a new brewery opening every other week? The trick, said Koch and Glanville, is to do a good job brewing the classics while periodically catering to the drinkers who have become progressively more educated and esoteric in their appreciation of beer.
“There is so much variety in the market these days that the most relevant beers are the ones that have become classics,” Koch said. “Think of Macallan single malt Scotch. It’s always relevant because it sets the standard for all other single malts.” And Koch feels that same way about Boston Lager, describing it as the “measuring stick” for all other American craft lagers. For him, there is a difference between a great beer and an interesting beer, and what he is looking for from a Sam Adams offering is a great beer — something that is, “reliably rewarding.” “This is why Boston Lager has been the leading craft beer for 30 years,” he said.
And for those who are always looking for the next new style, Sam Adams has you on the radar as well.
“Jim encourages us to brew what we want,” said Glanville of the creative process at the brewery. “Many (of the beers we brew) never see the commercial light of day,” while others might go on to be brewed as part of the Sam Adams lineup for several years. This includes their small batch series (see the recipe for Dark Depths on page 57) as well as their Barrel Room Collection, which are Belgian-style, bottle-conditioned, barrel-aged beers. Each beer in this series is blended and aged with a percentage of a beer they call Kosmic Mother Funk (or KMF), which they define as, “Our special beer aged in wooden vessels for over six months. This beer is very fruity and sour due to a secondary fermentation with brettanomyces yeast.”
“There are a lot of great beer styles that have yet to be made,” said Koch of what he sees for the future of Samuel Adams beers and the Boston Beer Company. “There are techniques to be discovered. I want to be one of the brewers who creates those styles.”
And sometimes the next new thing is really just bringing back an old thing. For example, Glanville recently headed up an eight-year project to brew a centuries-old Finnish Sahti that is aged with juniper berries — a style that was originally brewed by Scandinavian women. Glanville spent eight years getting the recipe and resulting beer the way she wanted it, which is now offered nationwide as Norse Legend, a part of their Small Batch Series. The Sam Adams approach is to look for inspiration from the classics, and give them a modern approach with ingredients and techniques.
“It is important to have principles, standards and philosophy, but not be fanatic about it,” Koch explained, comparing his brewing philosophy to those of other craft breweries. “Not everybody agrees,” he said, adding that he has a lot of respect for differing opinions and enjoys drinking beers made by brewers who have a different approach. “I’m glad we are all in this together.”
Sam Adams Defines Craft Beer (Sidebar)
It’s easy to look at the craft beer industry today and think it was all destined to work out and that craft beer was always going to be a big success. But that wasn’t the case back when Sam Adams came onto the market. Back then, breweries like Sam Adams were called “microbreweries.”
“In the beginning, there were just a dozen or so of us,” Koch said of the first American microbrewers. “There was discussion about ‘what is a microbrewery’ at the time and we figured that nobody’s every going to get bigger than 15,000 barrels a year,” so that’s where they drew the line at the time. “We were like medieval people thinking you’d fall off the Earth if you sailed too far.”
But of course Sam Adams DID get bigger than 15,000 barrels. Much bigger. And the term “micro” didn’t really apply anymore. But at the same time, they weren’t in a league with Anheuser-Busch. Craft beer still claims only about 6.5 percent of the overall beer market. But the fact is, we wouldn’t even call breweries “craft” breweries if it weren’t for Sam Adams.
“When we got there,” Koch said of exceeding 15,000 barrels, “there was no real name. For a while we were considered a ‘regional specialty brewer,’ and there were a lot of other words thrown around like ‘cottage’ and ‘artisan.’” Ultimately, though, the industry settled on the word “craft.” “Michael Jackson liked it,” Koch said, so it stuck.
A few years back the size limit for a craft brewery was defined by the Brewers Association as a, “small, independent and traditional” brewery with an annual production of 2 million barrels of beer or less. When Sam Adams, the largest craft brewery in the US, tipped that scale at 2.7 million barrels in 2012, however, the numbers changed to 6 million barrels.
“The largest craft brewery and the one that sort of dictates how the industry is defined as far as volume is Sam Adams, or the larger company Boston Beer Co.,” IBISWorld analyst Hayden Shipp said in a recent interview for CNBC.
And should Sam Adams get even bigger, expect the numbers to change again.
“I didn’t think it would ever be as big as it’s become,” said Koch of the craft beer industry, whose sales growth is estimated at 10.9 percent annually and generated around $3.9 billion in sales in 2012. “Nobody believed this was anything more than a small and struggling group of homebrewers that had gone pro.”
Latitude 48 IPA clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.060 FG = 1.015
IBU = 55 SRM = 13 ABV = 6%
Ingredients
11 lbs. (5 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) honey malt (23 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
11 AAU Zeus pellet hops (60 min.) (0.7 oz./20 g at 15.8% alpha acids)
2.1 AAU Hallertau pellet hops (15 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 5.2% alpha acids)
3.8 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (15 min.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (15 min.) (0.2 oz./6 g at 6.9% alpha acids)
5.1 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
1.9 AAU Hallertau pellet hops (5 min.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 6.3% alpha acids
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
1.5 oz. (42 g) Hallertau pellet hops (dry hop)
0.7 oz. (20 g) Simcoe® pellet hops (dry hop)
0.3 oz. (9 g) Mosaic™ pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), Fermentis Safale US-05 or Lallemand BRY-97 yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Mix the crushed grains with 5 gallons (19 L) of 165 °F (74 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 153 °F (67 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to achieve volume and pre-boil gravity around 1.049 SG. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for about a minute to create a whirlpool and let it spin and settle out for 15 minutes before beginning to chill the wort. Cool the wort down to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 65 °F (18 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C) for one week or until signs of fermentation have died down. Rack to a secondary vessel and cool beer to 60 °F (16 °C). Condition for an additional two weeks, adding dry hops for the final 10 days of conditioning. Bottle or keg, carbonating to 2.4 volumes of CO2.
Latitude 48 IPA clone
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.060 FG = 1.015
IBU = 55 SRM = 13 ABV = 6%
Ingredients
6.6 lbs. (3 kg) light liquid malt extract
1.2 lbs. (0.54 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) honey malt (23 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
11 AAU Zeus pellet hops (60 min.) (0.7 oz./20 g at 15.8% alpha acids)
2.1 AAU Hallertau pellet hops (15 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 5.2% alpha acids)
3.8 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (15 min.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (15 min.) (0.2 oz./6 g at 6.9% alpha acids)
5.1 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
1.9 AAU Hallertau pellet hops (5 min.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 6.3% alpha acids
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
1.5 oz. (42 g) Hallertau pellet hops (dry hop)
0.7 oz. (20 g) Simcoe® pellet hops (dry hop)
0.3 oz. (9 g) Mosaic™ pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), Fermentis Safale US-05 or Lallemand BRY-97 yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
Place crushed grains in a muslin bag and steep in 6 qts. (5.7 L) water at 153 °F (67 °C) for 45 minutes. Remove the grain bag and slowly wash the grains with 1 gallon (3.8 L) hot water. Transfer wort to brew kettle and top off to make 6 gallons (23 L) in your brew kettle. Just before the water reaches boil, remove from heat and stir in the malt extract until all extract is dissolved. Your pre-boil gravity should be around 1.049 SG. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according to the schedule above. Once you turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for about a minute to create a whirlpool and let that spin and settle out for about 15 minutes before beginning to chill the wort. Cool the wort down to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 65 °F (18 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Follow the remainder of the all-grain recipe.
Samuel Adams’ Cream Stout clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.057 FG = 1.020
IBU = 28 SRM = 55 ABV = 4.9%
This stout was designed as a traditional English sweet stout, with lots of rich, creamy, roasted character.
Ingredients
8 lbs. (3.6 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) white wheat malt (2 °L)
0.9 lbs. (0.41 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
0.9 lbs. (0.41 kg) chocolate malt (350 °L)
0.6 lbs. (0.27 kg) roasted barley (500 °L)
4 oz. (0.11 kg) Weyermann Carafa® I malt (350 °L)
0.7 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (60 min.) (0.1 oz./3 g at 6.9% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (30 min.) (0.2 oz./6 g at 6.9% alpha acids)
0.6 AAU UK Fuggle pellet hops (30 min.) (0.1 oz./3 g at 5.7% alpha acids)
1.1 AAU UK Fuggle pellet hops (15 min.) (0.2 oz./6 g at 5.7% alpha acids)
4.8 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (5 min.) (0.7 oz./20 g at 6.9% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), Fermentis Safale US-05 or Lallemand BRY-97 yeast
2/3 cup (133 g) dextrose (if bottling)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Mix the crushed grains with 4.5 gallons (17 L) of 167 °F (75 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 155 °F (68 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to achieve volume and pre-boil gravity around 1.046 SG. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according the ingredients list. Once you turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for about a minute to create a whirlpool and let that spin and settle out for about 15 minutes before beginning to chill the wort. Cool the wort down to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 65 °F (18 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C) for 1 week or until signs of fermentation have died down. Cool beer to 60 °F (16 °C) and condition for an additional 1-2 weeks. Bottle or keg and carbonate to 2 volumes of CO2.
Extract with Grains Option:
Omit the 2-row pale and white wheat malt and add 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) light liquid malt extract and 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) liquid wheat malt extract. Place crushed specialty grains in a muslin bag and steep in 1 gallon (3.8 L) water at 150–160 °F (66–71 °C) for 20 minutes. Remove the grain bag and slowly wash the grains with 2 qts. (1.9 L) hot water. Transfer the wort to brew kettle and top off to make 6 gallons (23 L) in your brew kettle. Just before the water reaches a boil, remove from the heat and stir until all the extract is dissolved. Your pre-boil gravity should be around 1.046 SG. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according to the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for about a minute to create a whirlpool and let that spin and settle out for 15 minutes before beginning to chill the wort. Cool the wort down to about 65 °F (18 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Follow the remainder of the all-grain recipe.
Samuel Adams Brewing Company: Double Agent IPL clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.053 FG = 1.015
IBU = 43 SRM = 10 ABV = 5%
Ingredients
7.7 lbs. (3.5 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg) Munich malt (10 °L)
6.3 AAU Zeus pellet hops (60 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 15.8% alpha acids)
1.4 AAU Citra® pellet hops (15 min.) (0.1 oz./3 g at 13.7% alpha acids)
1.3 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (15 min.) (0.1 oz./3 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
1.9 AAU Ahtanum™ pellet hops (15 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 4.7% alpha acids)
3.8 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (5 min.) (0.3 oz./9 g at 12.8% alpha acids)
2.5 AAU Cascade pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 6.3% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Centennial pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Simcoe® pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Nelson Sauvin pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Cascade pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP830 (German Lager), Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) or Mangrove Jack Bohemian Lager yeast (~ 4 qts./3.9 L starter, or 2 sachets dry yeast)
2/3 cup (133 g) dextrose (if priming)
Step by Step
Mix the crushed grains with 4.5 gallons (17 L) of 165 °F (74 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 153 °F (67 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to collect enough wort for a pre-boil gravity of 1.042 (about 6 gallons/19 L). Boil for 60 minutes. Add hops and yeast nutrients according the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, stir the wort for a minute to create a whirlpool and let settle for 15 minutes. Cool the wort to around 53–55 °F (12–13 °C), aerate, and pitch yeast. Ferment at 57 °F (14 °C) for 2 weeks or until signs of fermentation slow down. Rack to a secondary and lager for 3 weeks at 40 °F (5 °C). Add the dry hops for the final week of the lagering phase. If signs of diacetyl are apparent during racking, a diacetyl rest is recommended. Give the beer 2 days at 70 °F (21 °C) to allow the yeast to process any diacetyl before racking over to the secondary vessel. After the lager period is complete, bottle or keg and carbonate to 2.4 volumes of CO2.
Extract option:
Substitute both of the malts in the all-grain recipe with 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) light liquid malt extract, 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Munich liquid malt extract, and 0.7 lb. (0.32 kg) extra light dried malt extract. Heat 6 gallons (23 L) soft water in your brew kettle. If you have hard water (> 150 ppm calcium carbonate), you can soften by boiling the water for half an hour and decanting off the precipitated chalk or by cutting your tap water with distilled or reverse osmosis (RO) water. Just before the water reaches boil, remove from heat and stir in the malt extract until all extract is dissolved. Boil for 60 minutes. Follow the remaining portion of the all-grain recipe.
Dark Depths Baltic IPA clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.079 FG = 1.020
IBU = 55 SRM = 30 ABV = 7.6%
Ingredients
8.1 lbs. (3.7 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
6.9 lbs. (3.1 kg) Munich malt (10 °L)
1.8 lbs. (0.82 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) Weyermann Carafa® I malt (350 °L)
9.5 AAU Zeus pellet hops (90 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 15.8% alpha acids)
2 AAU Saaz pellet hops (15 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 3.4% alpha acids)
2.8 AAU Ahtanum™ pellet hops (15 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 4.7% alpha acids)
2.8 AAU Ahtanum™ pellet hops (5 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 4.7% alpha acids)
5.3 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 13.2% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
1 oz. (28 g) Simcoe® pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Topaz pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) East Kent Golding pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP830 (German Lager), Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) or Mangrove Jack Bohemian Lager yeast (~ 6 qts./5.7 L starter or 2.5 sachets dry yeast)
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Mix the crushed grains with 6 gallons (23 L) of 167 °F (75 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 153 °F (67 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to achieve volume and pre-boil gravity of 1.058 SG, about 6.8 gallons (26 L). Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, stir the wort to create a whirlpool and let settle for 15 minutes. Cool the wort to 53–55 °F (12–13 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Ferment at 57 °F (14 °C) for 2 weeks or until signs of fermentation slow. Rack to a secondary and lager for four to six weeks at 40 °F (5 °C). Add the dry hops for the final two weeks of the lagering phase. If diacetyl is apparent during racking, give the beer 2 days at 70 °F (21 °C) to allow the yeast to process any diacetyl before racking to the secondary vessel. After the lager period is complete, bottle or keg, carbonating to 2.1 volumes of CO2.
Dark Depths Baltic IPA clone
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.079 FG = 1.020
IBU = 55 SRM = 30 ABV = 7.6%
Ingredients
9.9 lbs. (1.5 kg) Munich liquid malt extract
1.8 lbs. (0.82 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) Weyermann Carafa® I malt (350 °L)|
9.5 AAU Zeus pellet hops (90 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 15.8% alpha acids)
2 AAU Saaz pellet hops (15 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 3.4% alpha acids)
2.8 AAU Ahtanum™ pellet hops (15 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 4.7% alpha acids)
2.8 AAU Ahtanum™ pellet hops (5 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 4.7% alpha acids)
5.3 AAU Simcoe® pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 13.2% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
1 oz. (28 g) Simcoe® pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Topaz pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) East Kent Golding pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP830 (German Lager), Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) or Mangrove Jack Bohemian Lager yeast (~ 6 qts./5.7 L starter or 2.5 sachets dry yeast)
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
Place crushed specialty grains in a muslin bag and steep in 1 gallon (3.8 L) water at 150–160 °F (66–71 °C) for 20 minutes. Remove the grain bag and slowly wash the grains with 2 qts. (1.9 L) hot water. Transfer wort to brew kettle and top off to make 6.5 gallons (25 L) in your brew kettle. Just before the water reaches boil, remove from heat and stir in the malt extract until all extract is dissolved. Your pre-boil gravity should be around 1.058 SG. Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according to the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for a minute to create a whirlpool and let that settle for about 15 minutes. Cool the wort down to about 53–55 °F (12–13 °C). Follow the remainder of the all-grain recipe.
Samuel Adams Brewing Company: Noble Pils clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.048 FG = 1.012
IBU = 34 SRM = 5 ABV = 4.9%
Ingredients
7.4 lbs. (3.4 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
2.5 lbs. (1.1 kg) Bohemian Pilsner malt (2 °L)
7.4 AAU Hallertau pellet hops (90 min.) (2 oz./56 g at 3.7% alpha acids)
1.5 AAU Tettnang pellet hops (5 min.) (0.4 oz./11 g at 3.8% alpha acids)
2.3 AAU Saaz pellet hops (5 min.) (0.6 oz./17 g at 3.8% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
1 oz. (28 g) Tettnang pellet hops (dry hop)
0.75 oz. (21 g) Saaz pellet hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Strisselspalt pellet hops (dry hop)
0.25 oz. (7 g) Hersbrucker pellet hops (dry hop)
White Labs WLP830 (German Lager), Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) or Mangrove Jack Bohemian Lager yeast (~ 3 qts./2.9 L starter or 1.5 sachets dry yeast)
2/3 cup (133 g) dextrose (if priming)
Step by Step
Mix the crushed grains with 3.75 gallons (14 L) of 165 °F (74 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 153 °F (67 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to achieve volume about 6.8 gallons (25 L) and pre-boil standard gravity of 1.035. Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according the ingredients list. Turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for a minute to create a whirlpool and let that settle for about 15 minutes. Cool the wort down to 53–55 °F (12–13 °C), aerate, and pitch yeast. Ferment at 57 °F (14 °C) for 2 weeks or until signs of fermentation have died down. Rack to a secondary and lager for an additional three weeks at 40 °F (5 °C). Add the dry hops for the final two weeks of the lagering phase. If signs of diacetyl are apparent during racking, then a diacetyl rest is recommended. Give the beer 2 days at 70 °F (21 °C) to allow the yeast to process any diacetyl before racking over to the secondary vessel. After the lager period is complete, bottle or keg and carbonate to 2.4 volumes of CO2.
Extract option:
Substitute both of the malts in the all-grain recipe with 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) light liquid malt extract, 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Pilsner liquid malt extract, and 3 oz. (90 g) extra light dried malt extract. Heat 6.25 gallons (24 L) soft water in your brew kettle. If you have hard water (> 150 ppm calcium carbonate), you can soften by boiling the water for half an hour and decanting off the precipitated chalk or by cutting your tap water with distilled or reverse osmosis (RO) water. Just before the water reaches boil, remove from heat and stir in the malt extract until all extract is dissolved. Boil for 90 minutes. Follow the remaining portion of the all-grain recipe.
Samuel Adams Brewing Company: Holiday Porter clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.063 FG = 1.020
IBU = 40 SRM = 30 ABV = 5.8%
This holiday release features a deep dark color, with rich chocolate and coffee flavors, as well as cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Ingredients
10.1 lbs. (4.6 kg) 2-row pale malt (2 °L)
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) Munich malt (10 °L)
1.2 lbs. (0.54 kg) caramel malt (60 °L)
0.5 lbs. (0.23 kg) Weyermann Carafa® III malt (525 °L)
0.3 lbs. (0.14 kg) flaked oats
4.25 AAU Spalt pellet hops (60 min.) (1.25 oz./35 g at 3.4% alpha acids)
1.25 AAU UK Fuggle pellet hops (60 min.) (0.25 oz./7 g at 5% alpha acids)
6 AAU Spalt pellet hops (5 min.) (1.75 oz./50 g at 3.4% alpha acids)
4.4 AAU East Kent Golding pellet hops (5 min.) (0.75 oz./21 g at 5.8% alpha acids)
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrients (15 min.)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), Fermentis Safale US-05 or Lallemand BRY-97 yeast
3⁄4 cups (150 g) dextrose (if priming)
Step by Step
This is a single infusion mash. Mix the crushed grains with 5 gallons (19 L) of 167 °F (75 °C) strike water to stabilize the mash at 155 °F (68 °C). Hold at this temperature for 45 minutes. Vorlauf for 15 minutes then begin sparge. Run off into kettle to achieve volume and pre-boil gravity around 1.051 SG. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrients according to the ingredients list. Once you turn off the heat, give the wort a stir for about a minute to create a whirlpool and let that spin and settle out for about 15 minutes before beginning to chill the wort. Cool the wort down to slightly below fermentation temperature, about 65 °F (18 °C). Aerate the wort with filtered air or pure O2 and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C) for 1 week or until signs of fermentation have died down. Rack to a secondary vessel and cool beer to 60 °F (16 °C). Condition for an additional 1–2 weeks. Bottle or keg and carbonate to 2.2 volumes of CO2.
Partial mash option:
Replace the Munich malt and reduce the 2-row pale malt in the all-grain recipe to 1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) and add 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) light liquid malt extract and 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Munich liquid malt extract. Place crushed grains in a muslin bag and steep in 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) water at 155 °F (68 °C) for 45 minutes. Remove the grain bag and slowly wash the grains with 1 gallon (3.8 L) of hot water. Transfer wort to brew kettle and top off to 6 gallons (23 L). Just before the water reaches boil, remove from heat and stir in the malt extract until dissolved. Your pre-boil gravity should be around 1.051 SG. Boil for 60 minutes. Follow the remaining portion of the all-grain recipe.
