Beer Forum

beltbuckle wrote:I think it's closer to an APA than a Maibock, but I'm not sure it fits in either well. A Maibock should be mostly pils malt so that kind of rules it out. Anyone with more experience have an opinion on where it could be placed?

+1 on this question. I was wondering about brewing it with a White Labs Bock Lager yeast. Might shift it more closely to the MaiBock style. (I've also had some really good MaiBock's brewed with Canadian 2 row).

Finally brewed this 2/15 and just tapped it tonight. Frickin' great beer. I had too many of my APA's before hand (to free up the tap) so I didn't get to do a head-to-head, but that will come soon. Either way I love this beer.

just tapped mine yesterday as well, and agreed, it's great. Though, I don't think it would pass as an APA. It def has some maibockish tastes going for it, not that it's enough to categorize it as one though.

I just kegged my 10gal batch of this over the weekend. I went and bought a real Dead Guy from the store and poured a sample and let it sit out for about 4 hours to get it in the same state (not carbed and warm) as my brew clone.

The malt profile was very close. They both had that caramel, roasty flavor. I used Briess's caramel 40 instead of carastan since I couldn't find the carastan easily. But malt-wise my clone and the real deal are really close.

Color was really close too, maybe 1 or 2 SRM difference. The real one was a bit lighter. But you wouldn't notice if they weren't sitting right next to each other.

The real dead guy had more quite a bit more hop bitterness. If I brew it again I will up the 90 minute addition a tad for MY system. I do use hop bags so that might have something to do with it. I still had a little bit of Perle hops so I thought I would try an experiment to add more bitterness.

In one 5gal keg I added a hop tea that consisted of 10 grams of Perle (all I had left) boiled in 500mL of water for about 60 minutes.

In the other 5gal keg I added a hop tea of Northern Brewer, 14.8 grams boiled 60 minutes in 500mL of water. Northern brewer was the closest thing I had on hand to the Perle.

So I'll give it a week to carbonate and compare my retro-bittered batch to the real thing. Hope the hop tea helps a bit. I was wishing I had bought some hop extract... next hop purchase I'll have to add some on.

I'm glad everyone is posting with results. My results were so-so...it had a similar profile but mine tasted more bitter, and had more esters..since my fridge broke during fermentation. I cant decide if I want to rebrew this with my smackpack of pacman, or brew Shakespeare Stout...I'm leaning more towards dead guy so I can nail it down.

I thought I would circle back and comment on the recipe. After 3 weeks or so in the keg, I'm calling this one cloned as well. The first week or two there was a malt flavor and mouth feel in the homebrew that was slightly different than the real deal. Hard for me to describe but if felt like it was just laying on the tongue.

I mentioned earlier that in my system I would up the hops 10% on my system, which I made a hop tea to remedy.

After about 3-4 weeks in the keg, this beer really came into its own and now is extremely close to Rogue's beer. The malt profile has had time to round out a bit and now it has a similar mouth feel to the commercial example. If I was at a friend's house and they gave me a pint of this and told me it was Dead Guy I wouldn't question it.

All in all, give this one a try if you like Dead Guy. Give it a few weeks in the keg (or cold storage) before you pass judgement and you will end up with a great brew.

Digging up the dead ...

I am confused. Rogue lists the Dead Guy IBU at 40 yet the recipe and John himself stated 49 IBU.

So what is it, 40 or 49 IBU?

Shouldn't there be a pronounced taste difference between the two?

I am surprised that the show didn't mention anything about the IBU discrepancy or taste after brewing.

Another question.

I am running the CYBI recipe (as posted exactly) through Beersmith 1.4. Using Munich malt (SRM 9.0), 2-Row (2 SRM), and Crystal 15 (15 SRM), the estimated color is 8.5 SRM.

Rogue lists Dead Guy at 16 Lovibond.

Generic Munich doesn't appear to have the right amount of SRM to hit the color target. Several substitues are below.

Caramel Munich is 56 SRM
Weyermann Cara Munich I is 30.6 - 38.1
Weyermann Cara Munich II is 41.8 - 49.3
Weyermann Cara Munich II is 53.1 - 60.6

What type of Munich do you suggest for getting the color right?

If keeping true to the recipe, using Munich, how do I achieve the right color?