Beer Forum

I cant get enough of this beer and am depressed to know its a one time brew and will be gone soon. Has anybody made an attempt to clone it or a similar imperial red? If so what was your recipe? I emailed Drakes to see if they would give me a hint at the grain and hop bill but no response. Y'all seem to know your stuff so maybe we can crack this thing if we work together

I don't know if you've seen this already, but the Drakes web site gives a decent description of the malts and hops:

http://drinkdrakes.com/site/?page_id=9#Season

It might give you an idea to start from...

holy crap, I didn't see that!
Time to start my clone, Ill post my version when I finish.

i havent really done any calculations but this is what I got from the description:

8lb 2 row
1 lb carared (what is similar? I don't think my local brew store has this)
0.5 lb chocolate malt
2 oz columbus @60 min
1 oz chinook @30 min
1 oz cascade @10 min
1 oz chinook (dry hop)
1 oz cascade (dry hop)
english ale yeast?

What do you guys think?

devinjames wrote:i havent really done any calculations but this is what I got from the description:

8lb 2 row
1 lb carared (what is similar? I don't think my local brew store has this)
0.5 lb chocolate malt
2 oz columbus @60 min
1 oz chinook @30 min
1 oz cascade @10 min
1 oz chinook (dry hop)
1 oz cascade (dry hop)
english ale yeast?

What do you guys think?

At a glance, it doesn't seem big enough to produce an 8% ABV beer.

hmm i suppose. just needs a couple more pounds of 2 row then.

My attempt just completed.

Ingredients Amount Item Type % or IBU
9 lbs Light Malt Liquid Extract (4.0 SRM) Extract 67.9 %
3 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 26.4 %
8.0 oz Carared (20.0 SRM) Grain 3.8 %
4.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 1.9 %
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00%] (30 min) Hops 30.4 IBU
0.60 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [12.00%] (60 min) Hops 21.9 IBU
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00%] (15 min) Hops 19.6 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (30 min) Hops 12.8 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50%] (60 min) Hops 8.4 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (15 min) Hops 8.3 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops -
1.00 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [12.00%] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops -
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast-Ale
Bottle conditioned.

I had a bottle of Drake's and did a side by side comparison.
Clone was a little darker in color with almost no head retension compared to drake's. Carbonation was almost identical.
Clone had more hop bitterness, flavor and aroma. Drak'e had more malty flavor. It may be due to the age of the clone (very green) as compared to Drake's (bottled almost a year ago). Over all, I'm very pleased with the clone. I liked the hop schedule and may only tweak the carared and chocolate malts lower on my next attempt. This version I did a partial mash because I was brewing at a buddies place and didn't want to bring all my equipment. I'll probably do an all grain next.

Any ideas on how to help out with the lack of head retention? I was thinking of adding 1/2 to 1 lb of flaked wheat.

the flaked barley could work!

http://hopville.com/recipe/494855/speci ... ia-red-ale

This was my version, its in bottles carbonating right now. It tastes pretty damn good (and pretty close, though i attempted to make the recipe slightly more my own) but have yet to do a side by side. Luckily ive been hoarding 4 bottles of jolly rodger; I just couldnt bare to see this amazing beer go.