[flbrewer]

Hi everyone! It's been a while mostly because it's been HOT in Florida which means less brewing for me. Anyways, the last few 1-2 gallon extract batches I tried were not very good. Not sure if it's because smaller batches leads to less room for error or these just aren't great recipes. FWIW, these were all listed in Beersmith as decent recipes, which I either converted from All Grain and/or scaled down. I've posted them below, sorry for the long posting. Cheers and hope to be brewing again soon.

Modern Times Fortunate Island Clone (2 Gallon)
0.5 oz    Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)    Dry Extract    1    1.2 %
2 lbs 13.1 oz    Wheat Liquid Extract (8.0 SRM)    Extract    2    98.8 %
0.42 oz    Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min    Hop    3    25.6 IBUs
0.40 Items    Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)    Fining    4    -
0.14 oz    Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min    Hop    5    5.0 IBUs
0.28 oz    Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min    Hop    6    5.0 IBUs
0.14 oz    Centennial [10.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 30.0 min    Hop    7    4.5 IBUs
1.0 pkg    American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 ml]    Yeast    8    -
1.40 oz    Citra [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days    Hop    9    0.0 IBUs
0.36 oz    Amarillo [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days    Hop    10    0.0 IBUs

Two Hearted Clone (One Gallon)
1.3 oz    Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)    Grain    1    5.1 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz    Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM)    Dry Extract    2    94.9 %
0.50 oz    Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min    Hop    3    49.7 IBUs
0.75 oz    Centennial [10.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min    Hop    4    0.0 IBUs
0.5 pkg    Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml]    Yeast    5    -
2.00 oz    Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days    Hop    6    0.0 IBUs

Three Floyds Gumballhead Clone (2 Gallon)
5.3 oz    Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM)    Grain    1    8.2 %
1.00 oz    Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - First Wort 20.0 min    Hop    2    27.8 IBUs
2 lbs    Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)    Dry Extract    3    50.0 %
1 lbs 10.7 oz    Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)    Dry Extract    4    41.8 %
1.00 oz    Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 min    Hop    5    0.0 IBUs
0.4 pkg    California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35.49 ml]    Yeast    6    -
1.00 oz    Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days    Hop    7    0.0 IBUs

[Stevie]

What are you using for water? You might want to use a good filtered drinking water versus tap. Deer park/crystal geyser/ozarka/whatever is in your area.

[flbrewer]

Howdy Steve! I'm using distilled water at this point.

[klickitat jim]

What are ya doing for fermentation temp control?

[HoosierBrew]

The Gumballhead recipe is off - Gumballhead is an American Wheat beer (and a really good one). So I'm assuming the 'extra light DME' should actually be wheat DME.

[flbrewer]

What are ya doing for fermentation temp control?

I've kept it very close using a big cooler with cool water and ice surrounding the glass fermenters. Generally staying within +-3 degrees of target temps.

[flbrewer]

The Gumballhead recipe is off - Gumballhead is an American Wheat beer (and a really good one). So I'm assuming the 'extra light DME' should actually be wheat DME.

Fixed, not sure why it didn't paste earlier.

[HoosierBrew]

The Gumballhead recipe is off - Gumballhead is an American Wheat beer (and a really good one). So I'm assuming the 'extra light DME' should actually be wheat DME.

Fixed, not sure why it didn't paste earlier.

Looks more like some of the clone recipes out there now.

[Kinetic]

All you said was they didn't taste very good.  What was wrong with them specifically? 

[flbrewer]

All you said was they didn't taste very good.  What was wrong with them specifically?

That's hard for me to express. They were simply not pleasant to drink. No off-flavors specifically like dactyl or cider, etc. I just assumed they were lackluster because of the simply malt and hop bills associated.

[klickitat jim]

Try adding a few grams of gypsum and see if it brightens them up a bit. When you say lackluster thats what comes to mind.

[Kinetic]

I'm not familiar with the Modern Times beer, but have consumed plenty of the the Bells and 3F beers.  Both of them are single hop beers with uncomplicated malt bills.  Some of the best beers in the world have simple recipes.

The only time I brew a small batch is for weird experimental recipe beers.  The recipes you posted aren't making complete sense to me since I think in terms of 5 gallon batches.

Let's focus on Two Hearted.

Look at this recipe provided by a Bells employee:

http://imgur.com/r/Homebrewing/bfITU9X



As you can see, a recipe some random guy uploads to the Beersmith cloud isn't always a good clone recipe.

[reverseapachemaster]

I agree that you have to be careful about trusting alleged clone recipes floating around the internet. Sometimes they are replicated from published clone recipes that come from the brewery through BYO or Zymurgy but other times it's just some guy's attempt at a recipe that got posted to a website.

[flbrewer]

So I took the above scanned Bell's Two Hearted recipe and scaled down to one gallon attempting to see the differences in that recipe and mine. Looks like I added an absurd amount of hops (1.25 ounces vs. .25 ounces and 2 ounces dry hop vs. .67 ounces) and used a little less total malt. That might explain what I was tasting! I'll give this one a try, thank you again!

[majorvices]

I'm not familiar with the Modern Times beer, but have consumed plenty of the the Bells and 3F beers.  Both of them are single hop beers with uncomplicated malt bills.  Some of the best beers in the world have simple recipes.

The only time I brew a small batch is for weird experimental recipe beers.  The recipes you posted aren't making complete sense to me since I think in terms of 5 gallon batches.

Let's focus on Two Hearted.

Look at this recipe provided by a Bells employee:

http://imgur.com/r/Homebrewing/bfITU9X



As you can see, a recipe some random guy uploads to the Beersmith cloud isn't always a good clone recipe.

hmmmmm .... common clone theme I have always seen has 2 Hearted using some Light Munich in base malt.... interesting/