Pliny the Younger Clone

Here a question for the Pliny Heads - What is the perfect water treatment for PTY? Specificly, what is the appropriate sulfate to cloride ratio. Scott, if I read your blog correctly, I understand you use an even balance (1:1). I used a 2:1 ratio, and thinking of bumping it to 3:1. I've read that Mike McDole uses as much as 7:1 for similar recipes. Scott, please correct if I'm wrong, and what do others think?

Jim

I prefer 4:1 sulfate to chloride for pale hoppy ales. So, within reason, this equates to about 250 ppm sulfate 62.5 ppm chloride. I've tried "almost" even levels of sulfate and chloride in IPAs (125 & 90 respectively) and they have tasted less hoppy without that clean, crisp bitter edge.

Be cautious about your alkalinity, too. You usually want it to be as low as possible in hoppy ales or things can get too malty. Gypsum and Calcium Chloride can both moderately boost alkalinity. I know Vinnie uses Phosphoric Acid to keep his alkalinity in check.

I used mostly gypsum to bring up my sulfate and calcium levels for this beer to bring out that bitter edge. (2:1), and 2% acid malt in the grist to get the mash pH in check. I start with RO water though, so it's going to differ for you if you use tap water.

I think it was like 2tsp gypsum and .5tsp calcium chloride per 5gal of water

scottland,

I have a 2 part question for you as I'm considering this for a brew day tomorrow.

I have only 15ml of hop extract on hand. However, these are Northern Brewer Amarillo Hopshots.
I notice a lot of hop extracts are not varietal specific but these are.

1. Do you think the amarillo vs generic will make a difference?
2. Since I only have 15ml's, that translates to about 150IBU's. So is your recommendation another 150'ish IBU's of some pellet @90 minutes? Suggestions on variety?

Don't think in IBUs, think in terms of AAU. You need 70AAU of bittering hops at 90min. AAU = (oz of hops) * (the AA%)

1ml of hop extract is 2AAU. So you already have 30AAU, you need 40 more. Find something very high in AA% like Apollo or CTZ. Divide it's AA% into 40, and you'll get how many oz are needed. e.g. Columbus @ 16%. 40/16 = 2.5oz.

The 45min addition is much smaller. 10AAU. So 1oz of a 10% hop, or .62oz of our aforementioned Columbus.

The Amarillo will be ok, but pair it up with an aggressive bittering hop.
2. It's going to seem like a crap load of IBUs. My calcs came out at 340.

Thanks!!!

FG came out to 1.020

I’m brewing PTY again tomorrow after doing a bit of fine tuning of the recipe/process with the helpful feedback from this thread. My first attempt finished with a gravity of 1.010. I’ll bump the dextrose up to 1.5 lbs from 1.33 with half added late in fermentation. I think the last question I have pertains to the mash temperature schedule. On my last attempt I did a single infusion at 148. Scott, on your first attempt you used 148, and then multiple temperature mash on the second attempt. I don’t have a REMS system, but I could do something like a simple two-step infusion. Maybe 45 minutes at 145 and 45 minutes at 148. The intent would be to increase the fermentable sugars. Any thoughts?



Jim

Jim, It's not a bad idea, but in retrospect, I'm not sure the step-mash accomplished anything. I think a nice long 90min rest at 145-146 should work just fine. 1.5lbs Dextrose is a good move. That should turn out pretty awesome.

On a semi-related note, my keg of Younger kicked yesterday. It was a sad moment...

My gravity has been consistent the past few days so I think I finished. 1.014. Not bad since I overshot my OG:1.094. I tried the sample and It is a little sweet. I think if I were to brew this again I would go with 1.5# dextrose instead of 1# and drop a few pounds of 2-row. The sample tasted awesome and I will start the dry hopping schedule today. Thanks for the recipe.

Cheers

I was planning to do a Pliny The Younger clone as a BIAB and figured I'd do a gallon first since this will be my first batch using grain.

For a gallon batch, the grain bill is about 3 pounds, but I need to hit 70% efficiency to get the proper OG. I'm assuming I'll need to use 1.2 gallons to have 1 gallon make it to primary. Here are my questions:

Is a 9 quart cooler is big enough to handle 1.2 gallons of water with 3 pounds of grain in a 29" x 29" mesh bag?

If I plan to do a 90 minute rest at 145, what temperature should I heat the water up to (I'll put a towel around the cooler)?

If after my 90 minutes of mashing, I do a dunk sparge at 170 and let the bag continue to drain during the 90 minute boil, will I hit 70% efficiency?

Obviously no one can perfectly answer my questions, but I wanted to see what people thought. I might also just do a PM with 1.5 or 2 pounds total grain because I'm sure a 9 quart cooler can handle that, and then I can measure the OG after the dunk sparge and know how much extract I need to add to get the proper OG regardless of what my efficiency is.

scottland said:

On a semi-related note, my keg of Younger kicked yesterday. It was a sad moment...

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I feel your pain. My 5 gallons ended about 2 1/2 gallons prematurely when the keg tap (picnic tap) unknowingly got catch in the frig door and drained the remaining PTY inside the vegetable compartment. In any case, today’s PTY brew session went flawlessly. I ended up mashing at 147 for 100 minutes. The last fifteen minutes I increased the mash temperature back to 147-148 range with a heat stick. Heat sticks do a pretty good job of maintaining temperatures on a long mash. The numbers looked really good. I added 3/4 lb of dextrose during boil with another 3/4 lbs that I will add near end of fermentation. The OG was 1.084 into the fermenter which should give me a final final OG of around 1.090 after adding the second dose of dextrose. I am thinking about playing around with the dry hopping to cut down the total time needed.

Jim

bobbrews said:

I prefer 4:1 sulfate to chloride for pale hoppy ales. So, within reason, this equates to about 250 ppm sulfate 62.5 ppm chloride. I've tried "almost" even levels of sulfate and chloride in IPAs (125 & 90 respectively) and they have tasted less hoppy without that clean, crisp bitter edge.

Be cautious about your alkalinity, too. You usually want it to be as low as possible in hoppy ales or things can get too malty. Gypsum and Calcium Chloride can both moderately boost alkalinity. I know Vinnie uses Phosphoric Acid to keep his alkalinity in check.

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Bobbrews, when you mention that the alkalinity should be as low as possible, how low to you mean?

I say that because I have a pretty soft and flat water (most salts lower than 1 ppm, except HCO3 which is 3 ppm) and I can keep alkalinity (following the "brewing water calculator" from Brewersfriend.com) as low as 2.

Considering their "Hoppy Bitter Profile" tells me to get the alkalinity at 45 (which I can get by adding some baking soda), what do you think my alkalinity should be?

Cheers

Guilherme said:

Bobbrews, when you mention that the alkalinity should be as low as possible, how low to you mean?

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Palmer's spreadsheet will show you more. Hardness, alkalinity, pH, desired color are all related in a way.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html

You really have to know the full range of Calcium, Chloride, Sulfate, Sodium, Magnesium, Hardness, and Alkalinity before you attempt to adjust your water. But for this style of beer, I wouldn't add any baking soda. If you have soft water, AIPAs will typically only require gypsum additions.

Bobbrews,
Thanks! I'll do that!

pH is also significantly affected by CO2. Most selter water has a pH less than 3, and was most likely between 6.5-7.0 before the CO2 was added. That means the CO2 increased acidity by a factor of 10,000.

Hey ya'll, I have this clone currently sitting in a secondary keg during the third dry hop phase. Temps reached about 80 degrees in my apartment and I am sure the clone reached at least 76 if not closer to 80 degrees...what are some possible side effects / off flavors I am going to experience because of this temperature spike? It was fermented at ~64 and slower raised to ~68 before going into keg.

Secondly, should I just throw the whole keg in my fridge as soon as possible and throw the 4th dry hop in the keg and let it sit in the fridge for a few weeks instead of letting it sit in 75-80 degree heat? Thanks for any feedback!

The warmer temps will help the beer absorb the oils from the dry hops faster. When I attempt of this I push heat pads on the keg to warm it up to the 70 deg range because my basement is only about 50 deg

Yea but mine certainly got closer to 80f and when I tasted it, it had a slight diacetyl taste (buttery). I am not sure if it is best to chill it immediately or let it continue to stay at this higher temp (I have no fermentation chamber and it will be about 75-80 from now on).

jglazer said:

Yea but mine certainly got closer to 80f and when I tasted it, it had a slight diacetyl taste (buttery). I am not sure if it is best to chill it immediately or let it continue to stay at this higher temp (I have no fermentation chamber and it will be about 75-80 from now on).

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I do not think a couple of days in the high 70s would hurt much, but I would expect the dry hop extraction to be greatly accelerated. Perhaps it's time to shift to the next hop phase. And I wouldn't let it sit around a long time in the 70's and 80's either. You could move it to the frig, but that will extend the time needed for the final dry hopping. I'm not sure what to make of the diactyl taste, could be something else at work. If it is infection related, then the higher temps aren't helping and it sounds like you had a sufficient diacetyl risk already...

Ok that makes me feel a little better. I'd be surprised if it was an infection because my sanitation standards are very high, but this was the first time I used the keg, also the first time I dry hopped in the keg with hop bags, and the first time brewing this recipe so there are some unknown variables there. The beer also has 10.6% abv and tasted good before going into the keg so thats why I thought it would be the heat that started to cause the buttery taste.

What I will probably end up doing is throwing the last dry hop addition in with the 3rd dry hop addition (the third has only been in for 1 day) and throw it in the fridge and let it sit for a week or two to. Then carb (maybe even carb only a week or so after I put it in the fridge) and let it sit for another week then hopefully it will start to mellow out. Thanks for the quick responses!

According to someone over in the 1-Gallon thread, beersmith shows that 3 pounds of grain will displace a little over a quart of water, so it looks like a 9 quart cooler will easily cut the mustard for a 1 gallon batch. And http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/ says I need a strike temperature of 155 to mash 3 pounds of grain in 1.2 gallons of water at 145. If I receive my morebeer.com order by Sunday, I think I'm going to do this. As far as the initial 90 minute hop infusion, I'm going to use Apollo (18%). I might try small batches with both CTZ and Bravo as well to see if I notice a difference. I'm also substituting CTZ for Chinook in scottland's recipe. In fact, I'm not sure why scottland used Chinook as he didn't have good things to say about Chinook in his previous blog, he didn't use Chinook in his first PTY clone, and I haven't seen anything that suggests RRB uses it in PTY.

Just a follow up from my previous post about temps being too warm and it tasting buttery (possibly diacetyl), I threw it in the fridge with both dry hop #3 (which was already in) and dry hop #4. After 2 days it taste awesome again, so not sure what happened in the keg but all the off flavors are gone. I'll prolly leave it in the fridge about 2 weeks before tapping.

Cheers

So I brewed this on 4/5, hit 1.085 so a bit light. Mashed initially at 145, raised it up but in reality probably did not cross 151 during that last 10-15 minutes.
90 seconds of 02 and pitched a 2L starter of 001 at high krausen.
Started fermentation at basement temps, so 63-65'ish after a few days, I slowly started raising it up. I'm currently at 70. So I'm 8 days in and only sitting at 1.047. fermentation is still active, but definitely not crazy active.

I'm very worried this is not going to bottom out anywhere near 00 levels.

Any advice?

I did a 1.5 gallon PTY clone on Saturday night. I did a partial mash. I only got 48% efficiency from my grain. I didn't lose as much water to boil off as I thought I would and my newly bought packet of WLP090 only had 40 billion cells based on the exp date, so I decided to use an 11.5g packet of S-04. That brought the gravity down even further so I added more sugar to get it up to 1.088. Here are the details: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/pliny-angry-young-man-405293/#post5112284

While the hops may be like PTY, it has way more sugar and an English yeast, so I'm calling it Pliny the Angry Young Man. It is currently fermenting at 66* and is down to 1.033 after less than 3 days.

Today, I transferred my PTY to a keg for dry hopping. This batch has been fermenting for ten days. The last 4-5 days of fermentation included the first dry hopping addition. The final gravity was 1.007 and it tastes awesome. This gravity is a drop from the previous batch that finished at 1.010. The changes from the earlier batch that I believe made the difference in the final gravity are;

· Added extra dose of oxygen 15 hours into fermentation
· Increased starter from 2 liters to 2.5 liters
· Awaken starter on the morning of brewing by adding 500-700 ml of fresh wort into starter
· Lowered mash to 147 and extended mash time to 100 minutes (90 minutes should be adequate)
· Increased dextrose to 1.5 lbs (1.33 previously) and decreased 2-row an appropriate amount
· 1/2 of dextrose added to boil and 1/2 added as sterol syrup (boiled) near end of fermentation (five days)

Jim

Nice work Jim! That should be amazing when it's done.

Just poured the first glass out of my keg of this pliny clone (I used the partial mash recipe in this post)....WOW, how am I not supposed to become an alcoholic with this in my fridge??? Absolutely amazing, bursting with dankness and fruitiness and everything in between.

With using extract my OG was 1.0907 and FG was 1.016 (9.84% abv). Not sure I could have gotten a lower FG with extract but to be honest this taste damn near close and still absolutely amazing.

One technique that I like to report on with PTY is a change in the dry hop schedule. Rather than four discreet additions, I added the first addition in the carboy near the end of fermentation for 5 days. After cold crashing (50 degrees) for 24 hours, I transferred to keg and added the remaining 3 additions as a single addition using a dry hopper for 5 days at room temperature. Additionally, I evacuated the keg with CO2, and twice a day for the 5 days, I would gentle inverted the keg to re-suspend the hops. This approach cut out 8-9 days to drinking your first Pliny and reduced the dry hop additions. If there is a difference in taste with this approach, I can't detect it.

Jim

Wow...so I finally had my first cup of this, such a great beer. Thanks everyone that helped. The only thing that was wrong with it was the bits of hops that are floating in the beer, so maybe next time i'll try the gelatin to clear it more

So I ended up getting this brew down to 1.007 and followed the dry hop schedule 4x4 days IIRC...and oh my god this beer is amazing! I would put this on Cheerios in the morning!

Thanks for the best recipe I've made to date!

I think I may brew this with Conan yeast, anyone have experience with a PTY clone with Conan?

jglazer said:

I think I may brew this with Conan yeast, anyone have experience with a PTY clone with Conan?

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Ill also be doing this next. Gonna try one with the conan yeast first then maybe the next with us05 unless the conan/pliny is crazy good.

Just mashed in, Conan starter has been in the fridge, using Scott's PTY 2.0 recipe exactly, should be good

I'll be doing this tomorrow! Splitting 7 gallons in half and going to do one half with Conan and the other half with WLP001.

Scottland when you used the syringes did you just suck up the extract? Also did they come with the caps?

Brewed 4.0 yesterday and my efficiency was lower than usual, I think because of the crush at the LHBS, it came under at 1.079 instead of the 1.089 target. Its been fermenting for 1 day so far, extremely active, does anyone recommend adding some dextrose during the fermentation to boost the abv? Will it need that extra ABV to balance the bitterness? Anyone have experience doing this and can recommend a process for adding dextrose?

Thanks y'all

Brewed this yesterday, 2 packs of rehydrated US05, I have some crazy stratification going on right now, and no activity just yet... I may have cold crashed it too much, or too much ferm caps....heres to hoping it picks up...

Anyone else have some nasty floaters from the hopshot?

The hop shots I used did cause some dark/black stuff to float around in my boil, almost oily like. I haven't tasted any off flavors though and I am in the dry hop stage now.

Good to know, it's taken off since my post...

Appreciate it!