Has anyone made a clone of Billy Carter’s Billy Beer?

[Randomnoob]

At a garage sale recently, I obtained a few cans of Billy Beer and they told me that since it’s over 40 years old not to open the cans and drink them, the guy said it’d probably taste like rust. Since I was born a few years after Billy Beer went out of business, has anyone who had it remember what the flavor was like and what a clone recipe would be like? I figure it would just be a bunch of two row and maybe some corn sugar to increase ABV, some German noble hops at 60 minutes and a lager yeast or US-05 since my lager fridge died on me. What do you all think?

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

I was an undergrad when it came out. My recollection is that it was more gimmick than flavor. Looks like the breweries are still in biz - why not ask them? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer

 

[SEndorf]

Yes... Unfortunately I do remember.
Pure Presidential hype. A light lager. Somewhat yeasty. Unremarkable.
This beer had no redeeming qualities, other than the fake endorsement of President Carter who... incidentally enjoyed Pabst... Not Billy Beer.

 

[BigEd]

After the obvious question of, why would you bother?, the beer was just an adjunct-heavy, light American lager. If the information in the other post is correct about the brewery still being in operation, perhaps the most import aspect of of making a replica is to use the same yeast strain. A lager yeast is necessary here, IMO, because even a relatively clean ale yeast like 05 is going to produce some ale/estery qualities that will be apparent in such a low flavor profile brew.

For the beer itself I'd suggest 60% domestic 2-row malt, 35% flaked maize, and 5% very light crystal ~10L. Bitter with Cluster and maybe add a small amount of Hallertau type in the middle. Shoot for an OG 1.048 and IBU of 14.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

After the obvious question of, why would you bother?, the beer was just an adjunct-heavy, light American lager. If the information in the other post is correct about the brewery still being in operation, perhaps the most import aspect of of making a replica is to use the same yeast strain. A lager yeast is necessary here, IMO, because even a relatively clean ale yeast like 05 is going to produce some ale/estery qualities that will be apparent in such a low flavor profile brew.

For the beer itself I'd suggest 60% domestic 2-row malt, 35% flaked maize, and 5% very light crystal ~10L. Bitter with Cluster and maybe add a small amount of Hallertau type in the middle. Shoot for an OG 1.048 and IBU of 14.

I would say the only reason is to commemorate the liberation of homebrewers by Jimmy [emoji1]

 

[kh54s10]

Why would you want to brew that. You can get something similar for way cheaper than you could make it. They buy the ingredients in mass quantities at tremendous discounts and sell the swill for something like $.80 a can.