Russian River Brewing Co.’s Pliny the Elder clone
Russian River Brewing Co.’s Pliny the Elder clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.069 FG = 1.009
IBU = 100 SRM = 5 ABV = 8%
We first made Pliny the Elder in 1999, initially for a Double IPA festival at The Bistro in beautiful downtown Hayward, California. Previous to that, in 1994 I had made what is now considered to be the first modern double IPA in recent brewing history. So making a big, over-the-top IPA was not something new to me. In 2004, after Natalie and I took over Russian River Brewing Company . . . Pliny the Elder became a year-round beer and quickly became our top selling beer, which it still is today. – Vinnie Cilurzo
Ingredients
13 lbs. (5.9 kg) 2-row pale malt
13 oz. (370 g) corn sugar
21 AAU Warrior hops (60 min.) (1.35 oz./38 g at 15.5% alpha acids)
4 AAU Amarillo® hops (15 min.) (0.42 oz./12 g at 10% alpha acids)
17 AAU Simcoe® hops (15 min.) (1.4 oz./40 g at 12% alpha acids)
1.1 oz. (31 g) Cascade hops (whirlpool)
1 oz. (28 g) Simcoe® hops (whirlpool)
0.7 oz. (20 g) Amarillo® hops (whirlpool)
0.68 oz. (19 g) Centennial hops (whirlpool)
0.7 oz. (20 g) Amarillo® hops (dry hop)
0.35 oz. (10 g) Amarillo® CGXTM hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Citra® hops (dry hop)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Citra® CryoTM hops (dry hop)
0.9 oz. (26 g) Crystal hops (dry hop)
0.28 oz. (8 g) Chinook hops (dry hop)
1.55 oz. (44 g) Simcoe® CryoTM hops (dry hop)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale), White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), or SafAle US-05 yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by step
Mash the grains at 156 °F (69 °C) for 60 minutes, targeting a mash pH of 5.35–5.45. Conduct a 170 °F (77 °C) mash out step, if desired. Vorlauf until your wort is clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge the grains with 168 °F (76 °C) water to obtain 6 gallons (23 L) of wort (or more, depending on your evaporation rate).
Boil for 60 minutes following the hopping schedule. Add the corn sugar with 15 minutes remaining. After the boil is complete, add the whirlpool hop additions and stir the wort briskly to form a whirlpool, then cover and let stand for 15 minutes. Russian River adjusts the pH in the whirlpool down to 5.0–5.1.
Chill the wort to 62 °F (17 °C). Aerate the wort if using a liquid yeast strain, pitch the yeast, and add yeast nutrient if desired. Ferment at 64 °F (18 °C) until final gravity is achieved and let the beer sit for one to two additional days.
If possible, remove yeast from fermenter before adding the dry-hop additions. If able, after three more days, dump the cone of your fermenter to remove as much dry hops and yeast as possible.
Before the dry hop, Vinnie Cilurzo recommends taking a gravity reading of the beer and recording it in your brew log. This exercise will be particularly helpful as it relates to hop creep. Three days after dry hopping, take a gravity reading and note it. Do the same the following day. Once you go two days in a row where your gravity has not dropped from the secondary fermentation from hop creep, you can proceed with chilling the beer and/or bottling or kegging. Bottle or keg and force carbonate as usual.
Extract version:
Replace the 2-row pale malt with 8.6 lbs. (3.9 kg) light liquid malt extract. Add 6.5 gallons (24.5 L) water to your brew kettle and bring to a boil. Remove kettle from heat and carefully stir in the liquid malt extract until totally dissolved. Return to boil and boil for 60 minutes, following the remainder of the all-grain recipe.
Notes from Vinnie:
I wrote this recipe using Warrior T90 pellets, but in actuality we use Warrior CO2 extract from Yakima Chief Hops. Feel free to make this substitution if you have access to the extract. It could be a different bittering hop extract if you want. The extract reduces the green matter in the kettle, thus raising your yield. It also reduces the vegetal matter contribution to the overall flavor profile of the beer.
At our Windsor, California, production brewery we incorporate whole cone hops into the final hop addition. This is done by way of a hop back where the wort runs from our whirlpool, over the whole cone hops in the hop back, and from there the wort gets cooled off and heads to the fermenter.
Like our Blind Pig IPA, over the years this recipe has changed as well. Same as Blind Pig, there once was a small percentage of crystal malt (40 °L) in the recipe but we removed it, leaving the beer leaner and thus allowing the hops to pop more. I look at a beer recipe more as a concept rather than a strict recipe and, in particular with this recipe, I feel like these changes have kept Pliny the Elder relevant even after 20 years.
When I first published the Pliny the Elder homebrew recipe back in 2005, my goal was to give brewers a starting point with a big, hopped up beer like this. The same goes now! Feel free to brew this recipe as is, but if you can’t find a particular hop, don’t stress over it — find something similar and experiment and explore, that is what homebrewing is all about.
Written by Vito Delucchi
We first made Pliny the Elder in 1999, initially for a Double IPA festival at The Bistro in beautiful downtown Hayward, California. Previous to that, in 1994 I had made what is now considered to be the first modern double IPA in recent brewing history. So making a big, over-the-top IPA was not something new to me. In 2004, after Natalie and I took over Russian River Brewing Company . . . Pliny the Elder became a year-round beer and quickly became our top selling beer, which it still is today. – Vinnie Cilurzo