INFERNO HELP....

[jubby]

Thought I would attempt a clone of Oakham Ales Inferno, but having a few problems. Can anyone help?

It's not listed in my copy of The Real Ale Almanac so I phoned Oakham Ales and the only info I could get was the hops. This is ok because I assume the grain bill is light MO with a good percentage of wheat malt, same as JHB & Bishops Farewell.

Anyway, the hops are as follows: Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Amarillo, Pearl (US), Sterling.

Anybody got any idea as to which would be bittering and aroma???

I would guess at Pearl and maybe Chinook for bittering.

Any help towards creating a recipe for this mouth puckering brew is appreciated.

[tomU]

wow, I'm not sure how easy it'd be to even get hold of all those hops right now...

I'm not sure how necessary the non-C hop varieties would be - sterling and perle would get pretty lost in there I'd imagine. Amarillo and Centennial are both around 9% AA so they'd make sense for bittering, I'm not sure about chinook - I've never used them but I've heard good things about their dry hop potential. If I was to attempt this one I'd use a equal mix of all the citrussy american hops for the aroma stages and see how that turns out.

As for malt, while I'm sure Oakham do use a straight MO grist with a bit of wheat, I'd be tempted to add some light crystal or carapils to leave a little sweetness and body, especially if you use a high attenuating yeast like US-05.

[jubby]

Cheers tom. I have most of the hops already, in pellets. Don't have any pearl or Sterling but I was thinking about Mount Hood to sub sterling and Northern brewer for Pearl.

As for the sweeter malts, I like the dryness of the Oakham beers and I use WLP001 which I think is very similar to US-05.

I think you might be right about the Chinook dry hop because Inferno has a very strong grapefruit aroma.

[yashicamat]

This is a beer I'd love to brew and although I have a slightly different list of used hops (I did do a thread on this a while back somewhere), the basis I think is the C hops.
I recently did a 1045 beer with 45 ibus using mostly chinook but also some cascades and tbh it wasn't even close in either bitterness or hoppiness (for hoppiness in this case, read grapefruit). I think I must be missing something as I find it hard to believe they use much more than 100g of hops per 23 litre (equivalent rate) as it would get very expensive with C hops.
I have some stock of chinook remaining so might try a much more highly hopped version at somepoint and see how that goes.

Let us know how your efforts turn out though! Inferno is a fantastic beer, especially given it's 4.0% abv.

[jubby]

I thought the same, regarding the weight of hops used and assumed that a small hand full of each might do it. I have never used Chinook but from their description, it does seem that these might be the most prominent.

although I have a slightly different list of used hops

What list hops do you have yash?

It might be a while till I brew this, as there are too many variables with so many hops. I will try and get a bit more info from the brewery with a different approach.

[yashicamat]

The list of hops I had were Sterling, Amarillo, Cascade, Chinook and Centennial so pretty much the same really. This was the thread I originally produced: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18493&p=214970&hili ... NO#p214970

Personally, I am going to try and master single hop beers first (one less variable to try and control) and see if I can get very very good versions of those, hopefully something like the Pictish single hop beers, before I attempt something as complex as Inferno. I believe that JHB and Bishop's Farewell both use challenger for bittering (pretty sure I read that here somewhere) but whether or not that is suggesting that Inferno also might have something similar or not, I don't know. Sounds like probably not if the brewery gave you that info though.

I reckon they have a secret up their sleeve with either the grain or the liquor settings as I always find Oakham beers very dry (which is to my taste), but I've not yet managed to adjust my liqour to get it quite that dry. Perhaps this is why they were cagey about the other info . . . .

[jamesb]

I reckon they have a secret up their sleeve with either the grain or the liquor settings as I always find Oakham beers very dry (which is to my taste), but I've not yet managed to adjust my liqour to get it quite that dry. Perhaps this is why they were cagey about the other info . . . .

Another small brewery I know produced a beer that's usually as dry as JHB. Try a 65deg mash with a 2.5l:1kg water:grist ratio.

[yashicamat]

I reckon they have a secret up their sleeve with either the grain or the liquor settings as I always find Oakham beers very dry (which is to my taste), but I've not yet managed to adjust my liqour to get it quite that dry. Perhaps this is why they were cagey about the other info . . . .

Another small brewery I know produced a beer that's usually as dry as JHB. Try a 65deg mash with a 2.5l:1kg water:grist ratio.

I do generally mash at those temperatures and liquor ratios normally (although recently I've been increasing the water:grist to 4.0L:1kg), but I think Inferno is a lot drier than JHB. That might be the extra hoppiness though that is giving an impression of an even drier beer . . . ?

[jubby]

The list of hops I had were Sterling, Amarillo, Cascade, Chinook and Centennial so pretty much the same really. This was the thread I originally produced: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18493&p=214970&hili ... NO#p214970

Thanks for that reminder. I had forgotten about that post

[smp465]

St Austell's Proper Job (another beer i grab if i see it) is one that i would put in the Inferno bracket and that uses Chinook hops. I reckon those are a big part of the hit you get with Inferno.