Anyone have the recipe for Fullers "Wild River"?

[BrewBoyJoe]

Dear Friends,
What is your favourite summer ale? I’m a big fan of Fuller’s brewery in general, but even more so after tasting their fantastic summer ale “Wild River”. It’s ultra-hoppy with a citrusy aftertaste and just the right amount of bitterness. I would like to clone brew an all grain version. I looked online to see a general recipe from the manufacturer and all the hops are listed, but I don’t know where to begin working out the quantities required or guessing at speciality grains like crystal malt? Does anyone have a recipe or suggestions how to work this out / reading material?
Many thanks for listening.
Joe

PS http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/1 ... d-pale.htm

[seymour]

We know from Fuller's website that Wild River is an American Pale Ale at 4.5% ABV and the specific hops cultivars used. I don't claim to know the brewery's true recipe; I filled in the blanks based on tasting notes and style guidelines. This clone recipe should get you awfully close:

FULLER'S WILD RIVER (2012 SUMMER SEASONAL)
all-grain clone recipe
6 US Gallons = 5 Imperial Gallons = 22.7 Liters

90% = 9 lb = 4.08 kg, Two-row pale malt
7.5% = .75 lb = .34 kg, CaraPils
2.5% = .25 lb = .11 kg, Dark Caramel/Crystal (≈120L)

Bittering hops: 1 oz ≈ 28.3 g, Chinook, 60 minutes
Flavor hops: .5 oz ≈ 14.2 g, Willamette, 30 minutes
Aroma hops: .5 oz ≈ 14.2 g, Liberty, 10 minutes
Aroma hops: .5 oz ≈ 14.2 g, Cascade, at flame-out
Aroma hops : 1 oz ≈ 28.3 g, Chinook, dry-hops added to secondary fermentor one week before bottling/kegging

Mash at 67° C until converted, 60 minute boil

OG ≈ 1.047
ABV≈ 4.5%
IBU ≈ 45
COLOR ≈ 8°SRM/16°EBC

Pinch of calcium carbonate in mash, pinch of gypsum in boil kettle to make the hops pop. Irish moss near end of boil for clarity. Ferment with Sierra Nevada/Chico yeast: available as Safale US-05, White Labs WLP001, Wyeast 1056.

[dave.wilton]

90% ≈ 9 lb ≈ 4.08 kg, Two-row pale malt
7.5% ≈ .75 lb ≈ .34 kg, CaraPils
2.5% ≈ .25 lb ≈ .11 kg, Dark Caramel/Crystal ≈ 120L
.

Seymour are you sure about 120L crystal? Isn't that over 230EBC? I think they use 150ebc in London pride and ESB and whilst you have less (2.5% as opposed to 5%) I seem to remember this is quite a pale beer without much crystal character. I really have no idea, just wanted to flag it up.

[seymour]

Seymour are you sure about 120L crystal? Isn't that over 230EBC? I think they use 150ebc in London pride and ESB and whilst you have less (2.5% as opposed to 5%) I seem to remember this is quite a pale beer without much crystal character. I really have no idea, just wanted to flag it up.

I double-checked my calculations, and this would likely be a bit darker than Wild River, but not much. My recipe should come out around SRM ≈ 8 which, while not exactly "pale", is in the "amber" range on the light end of true-to-style IPAs. By comparison, London Pride and ESB are SRM ≈ 15 or 16 in the "copper" range.

From BJCP.org:
Color Descriptor: SRM Value
Straw: 2 - 3
Yellow: 3 - 4
Gold: 5 - 6
Amber: 6 - 9
Deep amber / light copper: 10 - 14
Copper: 14 - 17
Deep copper / light brown: 17 - 18
Brown: 19 - 22
Dark brown: 22 - 30
Very dark brown: 30 - 35
Black: 30 +
Black, opaque: 40 +

120L is a dark caramelized malt, for sure, but at just 2.5% of the grainbill, the color and flavor contributions should be subdued. With regards to flavor, keep in mind a true-to-style American Pale Ale has elevated hops bitterness, flavor and aromas, all of which offset maltiness. You're onto something, though: I bet 120L as 2.5% of the grainbill in a standard Bitter would be pronounced.

I've been wrong before. I'm confident my same recipe, substituting something like 60L caramel/crystal would still be good (and would result in a paler SRM ≈ 6, drier, almost no caramel flavor beer).

[BrewBoyJoe]

Hi Seymore & Dave,
Your comments are much appreciated. London pride and ESB, both fantastic beers, but I agree, much darker than Wild River. Looking at your scale, I would say Wild River is gold ish in colour. I will follow your recipe, using your amended grain bill in the second post. I will make this my next recipe perhaps in a months time, after my girlfriend and I have polished off the majority of the Exmore ale, my previous batch. I should say, I had no idea about the specialty grain bill and just randomly suggested the crystal with no prior knowledge of the recipe. This will be my 3rd all grain brew. Love this hobby! Looking forward to giving you guys some feedback.
Cheers,
Joe

PS. I always boil for 90 minutes. Is 60 sufficient? I guess your hop bill is suited to 60 mins boil so this is what I will do.

[Barley Water]

Well certainly we will not see that beer over here but I can tell you just looking at the proposed formulation that water chemistry is going to play heavily in the final flavor of the brew. If you are brewing with hard water, those Chinook hops are going to come off as being pretty harsh. After tasting the beer, I would ask myself, how is the bitterness? If the beer seems pretty smooth I would suspect that the Chinook hops are all used late, otherwise I would expect a pretty big bite from those suckers. Also, the beer has almost a 1.00 ratio of IBU's/gravity points so it should seem pretty bitter, that is IPA territory. If the beer has decent mouthfeel, I would suspect they are using lighter crystal malts since the beer itself is really not all that dark and you could use more to increase the body without increasing the color. Finally, I would expect the flavor to approximate a combination of grapefruit and pinetree with similar aroma, if you dry hop with 1 ounce of Chinook hops, that beer is going to be extremely agressive tasting to say the least.

[seymour]

I always boil for 90 minutes. Is 60 sufficient? I guess your hop bill is suited to 60 mins boil so this is what I will do.

You can boil for 90 minutes, but there's no need. In fact, depending on the geometry of your boil kettle, the lengthier boil could make your beer darker and more caramelly, which would defeat the changes we made. If you do boil for 90 minutes, wait 30 minutes then start my hop regime at 60 minutes remaining. But I'd just stick to 60 minutes this time.

[BrewBoyJoe]

Hi Barley water,
Thanks for your comments. Yes it’s an interesting point you make about the water. At my place in Harrow, London UK, the water is off the scale in terms of hardness. 320mg/l of Calcium carbonate is the published figure! For this reason I boil the night before, adding about 8gram gypsum for 30 litres and one of Epsom salts once cooled, and often end up making some more next day with CRS as well! I also add gypsum to the boil as well 5 gram. (23 litre batch) All as per guidelines from UK beer oracle Graham Wheelers, stated in his classic CAMERA book written about 8 years ago now! After the above, my pH sticks for last two brews show just below 5 at start of the mash! (range 4.6 to 6.2) I’m inclined not to believe them! If anything the pH should be a bit high, say 6.0! (Appreciate it should be (5.3 – 5.6 or so) The sticks I use were recommended and by no means the cheapest! From TheHomeBrew shop UK which has served me very well so far! Not having the yardstick of a reference solution, it’s hard to know what to do! Still, my all grain Deuchers IPA was fantastic, if I do say so myself!

In response to your recipe comments… iIndeed, Wild River is not overpoweringly bitter although has a bit of kick. It has a lot of character / citrusy /"combination of grapefruit and pinetree with similar aroma" sums it up well. If you could suggest some numbers for the hops and grains, this would be great as I find it's useful to gather a few opinions before taking the plunge. I' a relative novice and not used to tinkering with recipes in this way. Indeed, perhaps medium crystal malt for the reasons you suggested. I've used this quite a lot and it hasn't overly darkened my beers, and many have come out well (extract to all grain). A book showing recipes for similar American style IPA’s / hoppy summer ales would be really useful but I haven’t seen one out there! Also, although you won’t find Wild river in the US, it is based on recipes from the US craft brewing scene according to their blurb, so I thought it could be useful to post on US based forum.
Cheers
Joe

[seymour]

...A book showing recipes for similar American style IPA’s / hoppy summer ales would be really useful but I haven’t seen one out there!...

I don't own North American Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for Your Favorite American and Canadian Beers by Scott R Russell, but it's fairly popular.
http://www.amazon.com/North-American-Cl ... 1580172466

Another great (FREE!) resource is the Northern Brewer online store website. If you search through their beer kits, then click on the Additional Information tab, they have a downloadable PDF recipe sheet for each one, even the all-grain kits! I have no idea why, but it doesn't seem to be hurting business. For instance: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documenta ... aleAle.pdf

One last thought. Not to nit-pick Fuller's (who almost certainly makes better beer than almost any US brewer) but Wild River is only loosely based on the American Pale Ale style, since I've never seen a 4.5% one.

[Barley Water]

Well I would love to help you out but having never tasted the beer it's kind of hard to do a decent clone. Also, my point of reference is likely different than yours because over here we generally make bigger beers, APA's I bet average maybe 1.055 or so. Concerning the amount of crystal malt to add, I would look at the beer's color and consider the mouthfeel, if it tastes big for it's gravity I would guess there is a relatively high percentage of low color crystal. Also, if the toffee flavor is low, that is another clue you can use to figure out what lovobond crystal to employ. Finally, my attitude about cloning is that it's a great place to start but I rarely end there, I almost always screw around with clone formulations to push things the way I want them to go.

I rather expected you would report that you brewed with pretty hard water. I wonder what they have over at the Fuller's plant? Hard water will tend to be alkaline so when brewing especially light colored beers I would use a buffer (I use that 5.2 stuff all the time). By the way, water like that makes really good dark beers, that would be why the best Porters for instance were made in London, just something to think about (and yes, Fuller's makes one of, if not the best, in my opinion).

Anyway, my idea of a good APA is a beer with about a 1.050 O.G. which is about 40IBU's bitter. Some guys use say as much as a pound of medium crystal in a 5 gallon batch but frankly I like it dryer so I don't add any at all. I would consider adding as much as 1/2 a pound or so of some lightly roasted specialy malt like amber, bisquet, special roast or whatever to help the base malt (we use American 2 row over here which is not as flavorful as the good stuff you guys use). Most of the beers are late hopped as well as dry hopped and of course we use American Northwest hops. Now this is the part you migh not want to pay attention to because frankly, I won't use Chinook hops in any beer I make. The reason is that I find Chinook to be extremly harsh and it will be more so in a hard water situation. To be fair, the guys at Stone brewing in California are making a fortune using that hop but I just don't care for it myself (they also use alot of crystal malt which doesn't do anything for me either in a hop bomb). Anyway, I am an advocate for using low cohumolone hops so I like Warrior, Amarillo and Simcoe. If you hop late or dry hop, high cohumolone hops should be ok since you are not isomerizing the alpha acids. I used some Centenial (along with Simcoe and Warrior) in a hop bursted American Wheat beer that worked out really well. By the way, I dry hopped with 1 1/2 ounces of pellets in a 5 gallon batch for 10 days and the beer stinks like a hop garden, just what I was hoping for. Anyhow, have fun and good luck with your beer.

[kebabman]

Its 100% pale malt according to roger protz, IBU 51

http://protzonbeer.co.uk/news/2012/06/1 ... style-beer

I haven't tried the beer but that seems pretty bitter/ high BU:GU for Fuller's, so I was interested to read some people saying it was lacking in hops which seems strange.

[seymour]

Good find, kebabman! I'd say that's even less based on American Pale Ale than I thought. And thanks for the yeast clarification, weiht. Here's a redo:

FULLER'S WILD RIVER (2012 SUMMER SEASONAL)
all-grain clone recipe
6 US Gallons = 5 Imperial Gallons = 22.7 Liters

100% = 9.75 lb = 4.42 kg, Two-row pale malt

Bittering hops: 1 oz ≈ 28.3 g, Chinook, 60 minutes
Flavor hops: 1 oz ≈ 28.3 g, Willamette, 30 minutes
Aroma hops: .5 oz ≈ 14.2 g, Liberty, 10 minutes
Aroma hops: .5 oz ≈ 14.2 g, Cascade, at flame-out
Aroma hops : 1 oz ≈ 28.3 g, Chinook, dry-hops added to secondary fermentor one week before bottling/kegging

Mash at 67° C until converted, 60 minute boil

Pinch of gypsum in boil kettle to make the hops pop. Irish moss near end of boil for clarity.

Ferment with Fuller's own strain: available from a bottle-conditioned culture, White Labs WLP002 or Wyeast 1968.

OG ≈ 1.047
ABV ≈ 4.5%
IBU ≈ 51
COLOR ≈ 4°SRM/8°EBC

[BrewBoyJoe]

Barley Water:- Thanks for the warning about the Chinook. I may consider splitting the beer in two and dry hopping with chinook in one container and perhaps high cohumolone in the other as suggested. I definitely want to recreate the recipe with some of the beer for comparison reasons. I previously dry hopped one of my extract beers, Young's special with Target, and loved what it did. The hard water is a concern! I'm sure not an issue for Fullers as they have access to god knows what technical wizardry and chemicals. I'm very confused by the low pH reading after 30 litres boil with 8 gram of gypsum, cool and add 1 gram epsom salt leading to early mash pH of 4.9 ish. Far as I'm aware, the Epsom is the acidifying factor and one gram shouldn't really do a lot! Not sure if I believe the reading. May get some other sticks and also consider the five star buffer in addition to previously described treatment regime. As you say, with the hard water / and pale hoppy ale combo, could lead to disaster so important to get the water treatment right.

Kebabman: Great find. Many thanks

Seymore:- Excellent. Thanks for the re-do. Looking forward to reporting back and will take some pics of the finished product.





.... better get back to work

[Barley Water]

Well, just because it's not my thing doesn't really mean that much, after all, nobody died and made me King.

[BrewBoyJoe]

For Wild River, 4.5%, John uses pale malt only, with no darker crystal malt for colour or flavour. The four hops are Cascade, Chinook, Liberty and Willamette from the West Coast of the United States. They are added at different stages of the copper boil and also in the fermenting vessel. John Keeling says he uses Cascade sparingly as a result of its extreme bitterness and citrus character: “I use a lot of Liberty as they are more subtle. I use just pale malt as that allows the hops to shine through.”

This is a quote from the source Kebabman kindly found in which a journalist discusses the recipe with Fuller's lead brewer

Looking in particular at the discussion of the cascade and liberty hops. Do you think I should perhaps amend the suggested hop bill above and either include more liberty, or perhaps dry hop with some liberty in addition to the chinook.

I appreciate it's difficult to tell, but as I have no experience tinkering with these types of recipe's thought I'd ask the question. BTW, I bought all the ingredients from the malt miller online, inlcuding WLP001, and am ready for brew day early on Sat morning. I was planning to follow the suggested recipe above, but wondered if based on the above the hop bill should be amended? Comments please.

Also, I'm not familiar with brewing software. Presumably you can work out how to achieve particular number of bitterness units from the hops, taking the percentage alpha and beta off the hop packets?

Here's hoping for a successful brewday. I've got some homebrew Exmore ales in the fridge already to smooth things along!