Arrogant Bastard Clone

This weekend I'm brewing the Arrogant Bastard Clone from The Jamil Show. This is the re-brew recipe that the hosts agreed was very close if not identical to the commercial version.

This is a pretty popular brew among beer enthusiasts and clone recipes are highly sought after by homebrewers; just search some message boards and you'll see tons of requests and attempts at brewing this beer. I've seen a couple recipes where it looks like brewers are throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. That's one of the reasons why this one is so surprising; because it is so simple...it seems too simple.

For this brew I made a 1.6 liter yeast starter on my DIY stir plate. I'm using a 70 minute mash at 148 F. The boil is a 90 minute boil. This recipe utilizes quite a few hops so I'm mixing in some RO water. This isn't something I normally do, but Utah has very hard water and I want to avoid overly sharp bitterness that can happen when pairing lots of hops with water that has high mineral content. I'm shooting for about 30% RO water and 70% carbon filtered tap water. Speaking of water, I'm going with a water to grain ratio of 1.3 quarts per pound. This helps ensure my mash isn't too thick so I'm able to recirculate. This also puts me at max on my Hot Liquor Tun as it's capacity is right at five gallons and I need 20.67 quarts for my strike water.

The recipe is as follows:

14.30 lb Rahr Pale Malt

1.60 lb Special B Malt

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (85 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (45 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (15 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (0 min)

1 Pkgs Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)

Brewing Notes:

I believe Tasty's SG was 1.077. Utah is very dry so I always tend to have a lot of evaporation. Most my boils are 60 minutes so the 90 minute boil had even more evaporation than normal. I ended up topping with some water to bring the volume up. Before topping off, the refractometer read 22.6 brix (SG 1.095). After topping off my refractometer read 20.8 brix for a specific gravity of 1.087. I forgot to mention, I also added one Whirfloc tablet and 1/2 teaspoon of Wyeast Yeast nutrient.

Fermentation Notes: This has been an extremely active fermentation. My youngest daughter came upstairs last night (2/13/2011) and told me "Daddy, there are bubbles coming out of your beer." I went to check on it and the airlock was plugged and foam was pushing out around the lid seal. I pulled the airlock and a few seconds later a little plug of hops shot out of the drilled stopper and splashed against the ceiling. Ahhh, good times. I swapped out the airlock for a blowoff tube running into a mason jar filled with sanitizer. I checked it this morning and the mason jar was overflowing with foam. Given the low mash temperature, I figured this would be a highly fermentable beer, but it still caught me by surprise.

Tasting Notes:  I wasn't able to do a side by side because AB isn't sold in Utah, but this pours and tastes exactly as I remember AB.  This is a very tasty beer that will be part of my regular rotation.  It's also very drinkable considering the high ABV.  It has a very nice malt profile and is very balanced with the hops.  I'd rate this beer an A+