Anyone have the recipe for Fullers "Wild River"?

[seymour]

Again, I don't claim any special knowledge to the brewer's true hopping schedule, but I believe my recommendation still satisfies his description. He did emphasize Liberty, but didn't specify whether that's for bittering or aroma or both. If, for instance, you bought 1 oz Liberty (not just the 1/2 oz I called for) you could do something like this, also dialing back the Chinook a little to pacify Barley Water Note, Chinook was by far our highest alpha-acid percentage, so I switched to a 90 minute boil to increase extraction of the others:

Bittering hops: .5 oz = 14.2 g, Chinook, 90 minutes
Bittering hops: .5 oz = 14.2 g, Liberty, 90 minutes
Flavor hops: 1 oz = 28.3 g, Willamette, 45 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

There are a million different combinations you could try. Regardless, I think you're going to end up with a really tasty American aroma IPA.

[jmc]

......

Ferment with Sierra Nevada/Chico yeast: available as Safale US-05, White Labs WLP001, Wyeast 1056.

-OR- did they use their own Fuller's English ale yeast strain?

I've had issues with WLP001/US05 settling so for this sort of recipe I use WLP002, but ferment it cooler at 18C to minimise ester production and let hops come through.

It probably ends up a bit sweeter due to lower attenuation of WLP002 compared to WLP001, but I don't mind that, as I really appreciate the much better flocculation of WLP002.

[weiht]

They used the fuller's strain. I asked the brewer.

Its gonna be a very different beer with the Chico strain. With a low strength beer like this, u want the residual sweetness n body that the wlp002 gives. It does mute the hops, so u can rest easy on worrying that the citrus hops may over power.

[seymour]

They used the fuller's strain. I asked the brewer...

Great points jmc and weiht, thanks for clarifying. I've updated my recipe above.

[BrewBoyJoe]

Edited by Admin - invalid image url was causing pop-ups to appear when opening the thread.

[BrewBoyJoe]

Appreciate everyone's guidance with the recipe. Brew day went well with no major errors or boil overs. Efficiency was above what I was expecting so I diluted the wort out and increased all the hop additions proportionately. Original gravity ended up at 1.046! Equipment set up shown above! The whole day took from 8:30am until about 5pm, mainly because I’m too tight to buy a copper coil and made a Heath Robinson contraption so it takes 2 hours to cool! £6 including delivery so can’t complain too much. Too lazy to make a starter so just pitched the WLP001 directly into the fermenter! For the first time I used all dried hops and no pellets! I may consider bagging them up to stop the syphon blocking next time! In the end it just meant a lot more wastage! Flame out hops added at 80 degrees! What do you think about that? Maybe would have extracted more fruity flavour adding them sooner?

I used Grahams calculator and set to dry pale ale, and then autotune, adding the suggested amounts. Just added gypsum the mash and also to the boil (no epsom salts in the mash!). Salt solubility issues led me to do it this way rather than adding all the salt at the start. Can't see it's too much of a problem although it does leave the sparge water untreated! The mash pH came out at 4.9 after 10 mins of stirring in! I don’t understand this! Only added 1ml per litre of CRS as suggested by Graham! No option but to buy a Salifert alkalinity test prior to next brew!

Preliminary tasting of the wort prior to fermentation shows huge bitterness and not too much fruity flavour! Perhaps it's pointless tasting at this stage as it doesn't tell you anything! What do you guys think? Perhaps the flavors will come out after fermentation and chilling! If not then may try hop tea! The dry hop may add a lot as well!
I’ll keep you guys posted on the post fermentation / pre dry hop taste in a few day’s time!

[seymour]

Interesting notes. If you get a chance, can you post the finalized hop recipe you ended up using?

[BrewBoyJoe]

I used your hop bill / recipe, calculated up for 33 litre boil volume.

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 White Labs WLP001

[BrewBoyJoe]

I bought Tess and Mark Szamatulski’s Clone brews book some time ago and have just gotten to the first couple of chapters in which they show how to calculate IBUs.

For the Wild River clone I’m fermenting with the following hop bill!

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

These respectively have 13.8, 6.3 and 5.9 % alpha. I guess the Chinook I bought came from a year with high % alpha! Calculations aided by Real Beers gadget http://realbeer.com/hops/bcalc_js.html indicate a total of 68 IBU’s generated from the above hop bill (48, 17 & 4 respectively), exactly 25% above Fullers claims. This doesn't sound wildly out. It could still work well. At the end of the day it’s about personal taste and I like a beer with a kick, so long as it’s balanced out with other characteristics. Looking forward to the taste in a few days!

[BrewBoyJoe]

Didn't get chance to make a starter, although will make sure I always do from now on as perhaps took 48 hours to begin bubbling! Reading some things on this forum suggest that more esters will be generated, and indeed with some brewers underpitching is intentional for this reason! Not sure what this would add? WLP001 seems to like a hotter temperature and consequently the fermentation is taking a lot longer than any other yeast has. Also, after steady bubbling for perhaps 3 days it suddenly went into overdrive and overwhelmed the airlock! Never seen anyting like it in terms of fermention profile! Thought it should have been slowing down at that point! So read the gravity this morning, 1.014 but still bubbling every three seconds!

Pleasantly surprised by the flavor! Although lingering bitter aftertaste, perhaps too strong to make it a session beer (although still early to tell), more interesting hoppy notes have been uncovered by the increase in ABV / reduction in sweetness! Looking forward to tasting it tomorrow when it might be 1:011 or something and the dryer beer may reveal some more hop flavour! Getting more sure it's not the disaster I feared upon tasting a few days ago! The dry hop may go some way to further balancing out the beer! Here's hoping! All in all I've learned a lot with this brew!

[BrewBoyJoe]

Thanks to Seymore for providing the amended hop bill and comments but I didn't see this post prior to brew day. Also appreciate Weiht asking Fullers about the yeast, but already had the WLP001 delivered. I may try to lay my hands on the Fullers strain for future since I'm such a big fan of this brewery!

[BrewBoyJoe]

Transferred to the keg to dry hop with 31 grams of chinook for 26 litres of beer 4 days ago now! The beer has slightly carbonated in the keg and developed a frothy head despite being unprimed and in the keg for just a few days! The dry hop has added a gorgeous floral / citrusy aroma, which combined with the other hop flavours and light carbonation, balances out the bitterness really well! It's officially a really nice beer and not far off Wild River! The dry hop adds a hell of a lot and looking forward to this adding more over the next few days! I may even leave it hopping for 2 weeks! Good job guys! Will prime with perhaps half the normal amount since its slightly fizzy already and transfer into bottles, then chill and perhaps do a side by side comparison with authentic Wild river! Who'd have thought it'd work out with 68IBUs! The real test will be how it feels to sink a few in one sesh!
Cheers
Joe

[Barley Water]

Generally speaking, I usually contend that much of the fancy equipment we end up collecting to brew with is over-kill at least in terms of the quality of the beer produced. There are however a couple of exceptions one being a decent wort chiller. The reason I say that is because if you add late hops to a beer and it takes alot of time to get the wort cool you end up losing some the the more volotile hop aromas. I think that the quality of my beer improved when I started concentrating on dropping the temperate of the wort quickly after I turn off the gas. I currently use a counterflow chiller that I made with copper tubing, garden hose and some fittings (and yeah the copper was expensive). What I do is start pumping the wort through the chiller and returning it to the brew kettle so that I decrease the temperature in the entire batch quickly. If I'm doing lagers, I will usually switch to ice water once I get a decent initial temperature drop using just ground water. Besides trapping hop aroma, you also get a better cold break which should help out with beer clarity.