Help with my Judgement Day clone recipe.

[dukeredhair]

Hello all,
I'm trying to put together a clone of Lost Abbey Judgment Day. So that I can have it ready and perfect by the colder months. I've found the ingredients Lost Abbey uses online and worked out this recipe based on my own (heavenly) experiences with Judgment day. If anybody out there who has tried the beer or has an ideas I would love to hear them.


Original Gravity
1.104
(1.093 to 1.109)
Final Gravity
1.023
(1.020 to 1.025)
Color
44° SRM / 86° EBC
(Black)
Mash Efficiency
75%
hops
Bitterness
20.3 IBU / 15 HBU
ƒ: Tinseth
BU:GU
0.20
yeast
White Labs Abbey Ale (WLP530)
ale yeast in liquid form with medium to high flocculation
Alcohol10.8% ABV / 8% ABW
Calories
341 per 12 oz.

59% 8lbs 0 Light Dry Malt Extract 45 8
7% 1lbs 0 Corn Sugar (Dextrose) 46 0
7% 1lbs 0 Belgian Special B 30 220
7% 1lbs 0 English Crystal, 95-115 L 33 105
7% 1lbs 0 English Crystal, 50-60 L 34 55
7% 1lbs 0 Wheat Malt 39 2
4% 0lbs 8oz Chocolate Malt 34 475
Batch size: 5.0 gallons

boil 60 mins 2.0 Challenger pellet 7.5
boil 5 mins 1.0 East Kent Goldings pellet 5.0
Boil: 3.0 avg gallons for 60 minutes
secondary 16 ounces Raisins

Any help would be great!

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Outstanding recipe. It should produce 342 calories and 33 carbs per 12oz bottle. At 10.8% abv and a real attenuation of 62% I would rank this one as a nice barley wine.

Screwy Brewer

 

[KyleWolf]

I think the recipe looks good. I have never had the Judgment Day, but I thought Belgian candi sugar was an ingredient common to just about all abbeys, but looking at the website, I guess it doesn't say anything about it.

Only thing I see is that your recipe is a bit "bigger" than the recipe on their site, where their OG is 1.092 and FG 1.014.

It also looks like you use hopville for your beer calculator. Just be careful that you are actually using 3gal for your boil, as the IBU will change significantly if you up the boil volume.

The White Labs Abbey Ale yeast will do just fine, but if you can get your hands on a bottle of judgment day, why don't you try your hand at culturing up the mini-yeast cake in the bottle and use their actual strain? It can be a bit of a PITA, but just throwing it out there.

Otherwise, it looks like you have a good recipe. The only criticism is you may want to consider bumping up your base malt extract, and pulling down the specialty grains just a smidge, when I converted this to all-grain to see your base malt %, it was right around 70%, where most beers are at least 75%. Though you are very close to that so feel free to ignore this, it is a small detail in the greater scheme of things.

 

[Oldsock]

I think the recipe looks good. I have never had the Judgment Day, but I thought Belgian candi sugar was an ingredient common to just about all abbeys, but looking at the website, I guess it doesn't say anything about it.

Only thing I see is that your recipe is a bit "bigger" than the recipe on their site, where their OG is 1.092 and FG 1.014.

It also looks like you use hopville for your beer calculator. Just be careful that you are actually using 3gal for your boil, as the IBU will change significantly if you up the boil volume.

The White Labs Abbey Ale yeast will do just fine, but if you can get your hands on a bottle of judgment day, why don't you try your hand at culturing up the mini-yeast cake in the bottle and use their actual strain? It can be a bit of a PITA, but just throwing it out there.

Otherwise, it looks like you have a good recipe. The only criticism is you may want to consider bumping up your base malt extract, and pulling down the specialty grains just a smidge, when I converted this to all-grain to see your base malt %, it was right around 70%, where most beers are at least 75%. Though you are very close to that so feel free to ignore this, it is a small detail in the greater scheme of things.

Agreed, I would back down on the crystal, I wouldn't call Judgment Day a dry beer, but it certainly isn't that sweet. I also think you've got too much chocolate malt, the beer is dark, but it isn't roasty.

In the actual beer the raisons are heated with some of the first runnings and then pureed and added near the end of the boil. They use a keggle and an industrial stick blender , but you should be able to do something similar with some of the wort a blender, food processor, or home stick blender.

The clear Belgian candi sugar is a bit of a ripoff (difficult to dissolve chunks of sucrose). If you just want to add fermentability cane/corn sugars work fine. The dark syrups are great, but with the raisons and crystal malts I don’t think this beer needs it. I might even up the sugar a bit, with all that malt extract it will be tough to get a really dry beer.

I'd also skip trying to culture yeast from a bottle of ~11% yeast, all that alcohol isn't great for the litte guys (Tomme actually uses 530 for this beer, or at least did when he was brewing back at the pub).

 

[dukeredhair]

Thanks for all of the outstanding help everybody. I Am really excited to get this going. I think I'll up the base malt and decrease the crystal and chocolate a bit since Judgment day really isn't a very roasty beer. I appreciate it!