Hello all.

I offered to brew 5 gallons of whatever for my buddy's wedding. He said "GUINESS!"... >sigh<

I've done the research, I know about the 3% soured, fully dry taste, nitrogen/CO2 gas mix etc. However, I haven't found a solid all-grain recipe that makes sense. Has anyone successfully cloned this iconic brew? I'd LOVE a solid recipe!


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Tags: guiness clone five gallon, guiness homebrew, guinness draught clone

I've seen this recipe for a Guinness Clone floating around a little bit. I haven't tried it and therefore can't vouch for it's accuracy.

Ingredients:
9 lbs Brit pale ale
1 lb flaked barley
18 oz roast barley
12 oz carapils
1.5 oz No. Brewer hops (60 min)
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops (60 min)
Instructions
First, get the "tang" the way Guinness does: Sour about 24 oz (2 bottles) of stout (pref.
Guinness) by leaving it out in a bowl a week or more & then freezing it.
While brewing, thaw the sour stout & heat it to 180-190 F for 20 min.
Mash-in at 155F, hold for 1 hour, boil 1 hour & 15 minutes.
At end boil, add the sour stout.
At 70F, pitch 2 packs of Wyeast #1084.
A month or so of cold lagering (<40F) after bottling or kegging will help.

A certified beer judge could not tell this from bottled Guinness.



If you come up with another recipe, tell me about it, I'd be interested in making some Guinness! I love that stuff.

Brian

I've read this recipe as well. I am going to use it as a basis, I decided. The issues I have with it are:

"Cara-pils"...I understand the importance of head retention, but Guinness is VERY dry and needs to be completely fermented. I AM going to use Nitrogen/CO2 to push it which will help offer the classic head.

"Guinness on the Counter"...This seems VERY unstable and uncontrollable to me. My plan is to "sour" 20oz of the wort by adding malted barley to it at room temp. After primary is complete (7-10 days), I'll boil it and add it at secondary rack.

"Mash in at 155 degrees"...once again, we're going for full flavor and DRY...I plan to step infusion mash at 135 for 30min (protein rest for head retention), and 149 degrees for 90min.

Does all this sound logical? I hope so. I'm running out of time for an April wedding!

Sounds good. Keep us posted on the progress.

I just bottled yesterday with honey for carbonation (THANKS STIHLER!). I grabbed my first taste, and it was spot on! This is turning out to be the batch I'm most proud of. I just hope the head is decent. I chose to bottle since I have to drive the whole batch to Vegas for the wedding.

Here's the actual recipe I used:

8# Pale Malt
1.5# Roasted Barley (350l)
.5# Flaked Barley
1.5oz E.K. Goldings (5%alpha) 60m
.5oz E.K. Goldings (5%alpha) 30m


Mash at 133F at 1:1 ratio for 30m
Add boiling water to increase to 149F for 60m

Sparge to collect 6.5 gallons wort

I yielded 5.5 gallons - Reserve 20oz, set out with loose cover and a few crushed malt grains
Ferment 1 week in primary @ 68F
Transfer to secondary with (BOILED) sour wort and gelatin finings
Secondary @ 35F for 30 days.
Bottled with 2/3c honey

O.G. 1.048
F.G. 1.008
Alc%: 5.26 (a little high for guiness, but I won't complain
I'll let everyone know the final carbonated verdict, but like I said, flat it was spectacular!

Every recipe I have seen for Guiness ends up with a high alcohol, yours is actually the closest to the real deal I think. I have a book of recipes and the one in that apparently ends up as 7.5% though I havent made it myself yet. This might be an Australian mistake?

It's hard to find a stout recipe with a low starting gravity. That's strange to me since the most famous stouts are less than 5%! Also, the "dry" stout should be low final gravity for that easy-drinking all night long experience.

I think I hit on something here. I'll update again after the bottle-conditioning is complete.

Ok, So here's my final assessment:

Side-by-side, you can tell a difference. Mine has a more prominent roasted-malt flavor. Other than that it was great. I'm glad I soured the 20oz, it most definitely has that "Guinness Twang". In any case, I made a great dry stout, and will probably duplicate it for my first 10 gallon batch (perhaps with nitrogen?). So there you go. I actually created a successful recipe (thinking of entering in Stihler's contest....never competed before).

Joseph wrote:Every recipe I have seen for Guiness ends up with a high alcohol, yours is actually the closest to the real deal I think. I have a book of recipes and the one in that apparently ends up as 7.5% though I havent made it myself yet. This might be an Australian mistake?

....aaaaaaaand that is a bad thing? Check out this site at the very bottom. They think it was up there in the 7%s back in the day.
http://www.ivo.se/guinness/specs.html

I might be interested in trying this concoction out. Sounds pretty tasty.

That's very interesting. I noticed it was the "Strong" Guinness Stout that was at 7.5%. I've never seen any of that before. I would love to try it, though! My recipe was gearing between Guinness Draught and Extra Stout. I really wish I'd used Nitro.

I've taken a shot at curlyfat's recipe and my brew is currently fermenting nicely in my primary. I'm wondering if I've made a mistake with the sour though. I've taken 20 oz of my chilled wort and placed it in a glass bowl with some of the crushed malt and covered the bowl loosely with some plastic wrap. I'm now on day five and I have a pretty hearty green fuzz growing on top of my sour. Before I go and prepare to pitch this into my secondary I wanted to see what anyone else's experiences are with the sour. Is this normal? Do I just skim this stuff off the top, boil for 20 minutes, and add it to my secondary, or should I dump it down the drain? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, there was green fuzz involved. I did just that, skimmed it off (along with the grains), and boiled for about 15m to sterilize. I'm sure it's not the exact sour that guinness uses, but it added the appropriate subtle "twang".

It seemed like that would be a natural result, but I was really worried about ruining my batch. Thanks so much for the feedback! I'll let you know how things come out.

I am planning on doing an extract version of Guiness:

5.5 lb Pale Malt Liquid Extract
2 lb Carapils
0.75 lb Roasted Barley
3 oz EKG (60 min)
Irish Ale Yeast

Also, I read that the roasted barley should be unmalted, is this right? What type of malted grains do you use to sour the chilled wort then?

Any comments or suggestions I could get would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

curlyfat, I just wanted to update you on my results. This recipe turned out great. As you noted, it's not exactly Guinness but it does have a nice twang. I think specifically mine has a stronger chocolate taste to it. Regardless, I'm enjoying it and think my St. Patty's day party guests will as well.

Thanks again for the recipe and your advice!