BrewDog release all their recipes to homebrewers!

[sub82]

Yep - the grain quantities in Paradox seem very low for an 1.090 OG beer?

[googoomuck]

Amended version now available, needs an email address to download now though. https://www.brewdog.com/diydog

[googoomuck]

Brewdog were on BBC the other night, didn't come across very well. They are about as punk as Enya.   

[gazz]

Brewdog were on BBC the other night, didn't come across very well. They are about as punk as Enya.

Yeah saw a bit of it, defo didnt come across well, seems they have a very restrictive culture, if your not a young hipster your not in

[Beermonger]

Couldn't see any changes in the updated version, at least not in any of the recipes that puzzled me.

Tom - (and anyone else thinking of trying one and reporting back), I have a 5 am saint (#26) fermenting away now. I wanted to try something I could get my hands on to compare.

I was a bit puzzled by the 2.5 g of Nelson Sauvin thrown in in the middle (which I took as 10 mins), but did it anyway. The interesting thing is is 62 C/144 F mash temperature. I let it go for 75 mins and there was no problem converting, but I wonder what the effect will be on the mouthfeel. Assuming the hop oils will help out there. The dry hop is almost 190 g, which I see sucking up a lot of beer.... but I'll see what happens. I did miss my gravity a bit (1046 instead of 1050), but that wasn't the mash's fault - the second element failed and I didn't get the expected boil off. Not too worried about it.

If the mouthfeel comes out too thin, I think I'll do a Lagunitas on the next batch and mash at 160 F!

[krockett]

Couldn't see any changes in the updated version, at least not in any of the recipes that puzzled me.

Tom - (and anyone else thinking of trying one and reporting back), I have a 5 am saint (#26) fermenting away now. I wanted to try something I could get my hands on to compare.

I was a bit puzzled by the 2.5 g of Nelson Sauvin thrown in in the middle (which I took as 10 mins), but did it anyway. The interesting thing is is 62 C/144 F mash temperature. I let it go for 75 mins and there was no problem converting, but I wonder what the effect will be on the mouthfeel. Assuming the hop oils will help out there. The dry hop is almost 190 g, which I see sucking up a lot of beer.... but I'll see what happens. I did miss my gravity a bit (1046 instead of 1050), but that wasn't the mash's fault - the second element failed and I didn't get the expected boil off. Not too worried about it.

If the mouthfeel comes out too thin, I think I'll do a Lagunitas on the next batch and mash at 160 F!

I would have read that as 25 g. Very interested in how the mash temp turns out- would you mind updating?

[Beermonger]

You're probably right - it should have been 25 g Nelson Sauvin. Ah well. Next time!

The mash was fine. I normally do a 45 min mash, but this time I let it go 75 mins, which is what they recommend. It passed the iodine test and tasted sweet. I missed the postboil gravity by a few points, but I still had the right amount of "total gravity points" (last two digits of SG times volume) as the recipe, which means it was a problem with the boil, not the mash. One of my elements wasn't working so I didn't get the boil off I needed. However, the FG finished lower too, giving me the same ABV (5%) as the recipe. It's currently in dry hopping.

[krockett]

You're probably right - it should have been 25 g Nelson Sauvin. Ah well. Next time!

The mash was fine. I normally do a 45 min mash, but this time I let it go 75 mins, which is what they recommend. It passed the iodine test and tasted sweet. I missed the postboil gravity by a few points, but I still had the right amount of "total gravity points" (last two digits of SG times volume) as the recipe, which means it was a problem with the boil, not the mash. One of my elements wasn't working so I didn't get the boil off I needed. However, the FG finished lower too, giving me the same ABV (5%) as the recipe. It's currently in dry hopping.

I made a clone of this a year or so ago based on a recipe on the web which wasnt too far off. I bought a bottle of Brewdogs original for comparison purposes and they were very similar. The malt backbone was stronger than I remembered  - suspect this is why they mash at 62 - there's enough residual sugars in the crystals and complexity with the 5 malts that if you mashed high it would be too sweet and the hops would fade further into the background.

I've been mashing pretty low myself for a while now - left it at 64 for yesterdays pale (didnt bother bringing it up to planned 65). Reading up on it afterwards yesterday the consensus seems to be that for Pale ales ( as opposed to IPAs) you're better off mashing higher to carry more flavour and for better mouthfeel.

[biertourist]

Definitely interested to hear how the 5am saint came out as I can't get this beer in the Pacific NW at all.

So miss just popping into Against the Grain and grabbing a 5 Am Saint or two.


My thoughts are also that the HUGE quantity of specialty malts is why they have you mashing low.  -I've made some high % specialty malt beers and they always end up with the weird clumpy collapsing foam that 5 Am Saint has--- from the first moment I drank that beer I was guessing that it had a HUGE specialty malt load.  Now we've got the recipe to confirm it.


Adam

[Beermonger]

So the 5 am Saint clone has been gone a while, but I can say how it came out.

It was nice except for a harshness, which may have come from an unnecessary gypsum addition. I'm on the mostly soft Dublin water, and I have come to think the gypsum is probably only necessary for certain beers (Burton-style beers, as Peter Dudley said at BrewCon).

I tried it side by side with a bottle of 5am Saint: the Brewdog beer was a little bit less caramelly and also a bit more fruity-hoppy. I thought the commercial beer was the more interesting one, but my nonprofessional tasters preferred mine, saying it was more drinkable. (Still, hard to rule out eagerness to please; it wasn't a triangle test, and it would be hard to do one, as mine was a little darker.)

I didn't have temperature control on this one, and it was brewed in a partially insulated room at perhaps 12-16 degrees. So on balance, it might have been a little bit colder-fermented, and hence a little bit less estery, than the commercial product.

I think it's always hard in crystal-focused beers to match the exact malts used by the brewers. Here's what's in the recipe and what I used:

"Extra Pale" - I used Minch Pale Ale 3.6 EBC
"Caramalt" - Chateau Cara Blonde 20 EBC (not sure where I bought it)
""Munich" - Weyermann Munich II
"Crystal 150" - Bairds medium crystal (about 150 EBC) from GEB
"Dark Crystal" - Bairds dark crystal (about 210 EBC) from GEB

(I've since found low-colour (15 and 25 EBC) British crystals from Fawcett on HBC that I'd preferred to have used over the Belgian Chateau Cara.)

I also added 30 g of Carafa Special III to this batch (16.5 l to the fermentor) for colour, though it turned out a bit darker than the commercial version.

Things that could be done next time to improve the beer generally:
Cut the gypsum addition (and this is in water with only ~20 ppm sulfate)
perhaps add the crystal and carafa special III at the end of the mash


Things that could be done better next time to clone 5 am Saint:
Ferment warmer
If fermenting at lower temps than recommended, then perhaps ferment open? Supposed to enhance esters - probably not necessary if you can ferment at the right temp...
For colour: Cut the Carafa Special III to 10 g in the batch (16.5 l to fermentor)

Also, there's a ton of hops in this beer, but I don't think that either the commercial beer or the version I made really tasted like there was that much in it. The effect wasn't bad at all, but you have to wonder why 6 different dry hops are needed.

The recipe suggests that 2.5 g each of Cascade, Amarillo, and Nelson Sauvin are needed respectively at the start, the start, and in the middle. They seem a bit small, and especially pointless in the case of the the Nelson Sauvin in the middle. It may have been meant to say 25 g. As for the "start" hops - I think once you hit the IBUs neither the number of grams nor the variety matters a lot, though to keep to the recipe, you could split the IBUs between Cascade and Amarillo...

Overall, it was a very tasty beer, not quite the same as the Brewdog beer, but very drinkable. It was marred by a certain harshness at the end of the taste. Gordon Strong suggested that this was due to the gypsum addition, so I'll try removing this next time. Less likely, it could be down to the fact that I added the crystal to the mash, rather than the Vorlauf.

Definitely worth making, and it gives me a guide how to brew other beers in the recipe book!

[Cambrinus]

And now the update for 2017 is out! -- updated with 27 new recipes.

https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/diy-dog-2017

[Qs]

Cool. I didn't taste it but interested to see what they did with the cloudwater NEIPA collab

[Leann ull]

Anybody done any of their recipes to the letter and were results good?

[LordEoin]

And now the update for 2017 is out! -- updated with 27 new recipes.

https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/diy-dog-2017

Ah balls. I have it printed and bound already.
First World Problems...

[Ciaran]

Anybody done any of their recipes to the letter and were results good?

Cocoa Psycho RIS almost to the letter but needed more cacao and coffee in secondary.  Got bronze this year.