Tweason'Ale clone

[mergs]

Why? My wife challenged me to clone Tweason'ale by Dogfish Head, a strawberry pale ale (GF). She's also GF and loved Tweason'ale (she's a cider fan and before going GF a wheat-beer girl). I like a challenge at times.

Tweason'ale seems like a pretty simple recipe but I haven't found an outright clone anywhere online so based on the label ingredients (sorghum, buckwheat honey, strawberries and hops), here's what I came up with.

-6lb Briess White Sorghum Syrup (1/2 at boil and 1/2 late boil)
-2lb Raw Unfiltered buckwheat honey (late boil)
-1/2 lb of Maltodextrine* (late boil)

(*I'm not sure that Maltodextrine is used at DFH but I don't want this beer "paper thin" on mouthfeel either, since i am sure i'll drink most of it).

-1 whirlfloc (boil 15 min)
-1 tsp gypsum (boil 15 min)

Hops:
Cascade (US) 0.5 oz 45 min
Cascade (US) 0.5 oz 5 min

The hops are a guess but I think a bad one (maybe its wishful thinking). I'll take any suggestions here. I chose them because I like them and I saw a GF Strawberry blonde recipe on Brewtoad that had this schedule.

Edit: I did see this post before (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/dfh-tweasonale-recipe-guesses-362554/) but somehow I missed Igliashon's recommendation on using 1 single addition of millennium or magnum hops. Maybe 1 oz of either at 30 mins would be better than cascade at 45/5?

Yeast:
-1 sachet Safale US-05
-1 Servomyces yeast nutrient

And last but not least, the star of the show:

-5 lbs (edited from 10 lbs) fresh strawberries into secondary and rack onto that from primary at 7-10 days.

Throw me any constructive comments. This is my 2nd gf batch and first clone attempt on my own. its also my 1st attempt at racking onto fresh fruit. Talk about fun!

 

[Osedax]

Seems like how DFH does it. They probably use different hops but, the hops are very minimal in this beer. Tweason is paper thin and I doubt they use maltodextrin. Bump it to half a pound.

Also, they use strawberry juice and not whole fruit. I have no idea if it will make a difference but, I am willing to bet yours will be more red.

Last but not least is the yeast. US-05 is probably the best choice. DFH uses a house strain so your clone won't be exact. It should be close.

Let use know how it comes out! :beer:

 

[mergs]

Well, I saw this in another thread here:

Make sure you mark maltodextrin as unfermentable in Beersmith. That will raise your FG.

Oh boy, I just learned something new there. I'm using brewtoad for my TweasonAle clone and I set Maltodextrine to sugar (fermentable). Setting it to adjuct, dropped my gravity a few points. No biggie there... but, when fixing that, then I noticed I added my buckwheat honey as an adjunct so I changed that to sugar and my OG jumped up 1.061. I was targeting 1.052.

Well, this is going to be closer to 6+% abv when all is said and done. Depending on how much this us-05 dives into the strawberry's sugars, we could be looking at an Imperial Tweasonale.

I took a sip of it today and it was only at 1.022 and I could def taste the alcohol. Not much of a twang either. Actually quite nice tasting... and a good baseline wort for strawberries. I think this is going to be a good batch.

Off to wash and blanch some strawberries. Stoked. :rockin:

 

[mergs]

I did a gravity and temp check yesterday: it was at 1.016 at 66F. I tasted the hydrometer sample and this thing is done. Its boozy with plenty of strawberry notes. My wife tasted some and she gave me a high five.

Its about 5.9-6.0% abv so I have the alchohol target hit but I think my final gravity is higher than DFH so this might be a little sweeter that the original but I think it will balance out OK.

Into the keg it went and we'll see how she tastes carbed up and cold later this weekend. Optimistic this will be a good batch in 1-2 weeks just in time for the hot days of summer.

One lesson learned with fresh fruit. Place the fruit in a grain bag would have helped racking out of secondary. I had trouble siphoning the bottom 3/4 gallon out and that got left out of the keg unfortunately so we're looking at a 4.25 gal final batch. but, i did pour most of the contents of the dregs into 2 growlers and I'm sipping it like a cocktail, over ice in red wine glasses. Its too good to waste. i thought about pouring that into the kegs but I was getting worried about infecting or aerating the keg beer so I felt it was safer to have 4.25 gals of good beer rather than risking the whole batch getting greedy.

 

[mergs]

This batch has been a success. Its not a perfect clone (its actually a little drier than Tweasonale, and a little more sour) and its still pretty young (3-4 days in keg) but its tasty right now and the wife said "omg, this is delicious".

Here's a quick sip I just took out of the keg.

Final recipe here:

https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/tweasonale-strawberry-blonde-gluten-free