Two Hearted Ale (the Binghamton Chronicles)

A few weeks back (May 16th, to be specific), the fam and myself went to visit some brewer friends in Binghamton, NY.  The trip was dual purpose as they were throwing a birthday party for their daughter, and we could bring our kids, let them run til they drop, then brew to our hearts’ content the following day.

It was a true brewing party.  RYWBC showed up from Hilton with our van packed with brewing gear…and one small bag for each of us because that was all the room I had left for “non-essential” items.  Al and his neighbors also had brews planned for the day.  In total, the goal was to brew two 5 gallon batches and one 10 gallon batch all while redirecting children and tending to the barbeque grills.  For my part in the brewing, I decided to pull a trusted favorite recipe out and brew my version of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale.  As this beer is not distributed into New York, this is really the best way for me to get my hands on it (legitimately…).

As a bit of back-story, let me explain how I came to brew my Two Hearted Ale clone.  Just about four and a half years ago, the wife and I found out we were expecting twins, much to our shock and eventual joy.  I decided that I had to brew something to commemorate their impending arrival.  My first thought was a barleywine to be cellared until they were of legal drinking age.  Then Stacie had this great idea to brew a beer, make a label for it, and hand them out as birth announcements.  Fantastic, thinks I… so… what do i brew?  I had heard of this beer called Two Hearted Ale, but I could not find any to samplle and try to dissect the recipe.  That left “the Google“.  I found quite a few recipes on various forums, and even a clone recipe that Northern Brewer sells under a different name to avoid trademark issues.  Finally, I found an old thread on the hbd.org boards that had a scaled down recipe submitted by David Bell himself (*note I have long since lost the link to this particular recipe, and it is deep deep within the Google machine at this point).

So, I had my base recipe, which I tweaked a little along the way based on what I could buy locally.  I brewed that first batch, and it was good.  Delicious… Mouth-gasmic.  I still by that point had not had the pleasure of sampling the commercial beer,and would not have that opportunity for almost a full year.  As luck would have it, I had brought a bottle of my homebrewed example to a UNYHA meeting the same week that another club member had brought in a case of Bell’s version.  I was finally able to do a side-by-side tasting.  My version was a bit aged, having been brewed the year prior, but the main points were still very much there.  I was overjoyed that I have cloned a beer on the first attempt successfully without ever having tasted the beer I was attempting to clone.

I’ve brewed the recipe a few times since, though never quite as successfully.  I was looking to change that in Binghamton.  My good friend Al proposed a great idea in that he would get the ingredients for me and provide the fermenter if I brought my gear down and actually brewed the beer.  That sounds easy enough.  Down to brass tacks now, this is what I brewed in Binghamton:

The recipe, for 5 gallons (brewed on 5/16/2010):

• 10lbs Rahr 2-Row
• 4lbs German Vienna Malt
• 1lb Biscuit Malt
• 1lb Victory Malt
• 3/4oz Centennial pellets(9.2%AA) as First Wort Hops
• 1 oz Centennial pellets (9.2%AA) added at 60 minutes
• 1oz Centennial pellets (9.2%AA) added at 10 minutes
• 1 – 1/2oz Centennial pellets (9.2%AA) added at 5 minutes
• 2oz Centennial Pellets added to secondary for 10 days prior to bottling
• White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale yeast

OG was 1.071 with 4.87 galls in primary (calculated OG was 1.069 at 5.5 gals, efficiency = 60%)

IBU was 70

color was 16-ish SRM

Now, a few things went a bit squirrelly with this batch.

• First of all, I was supposed to bring the yeast.  My preferred yeast for this recipe is WYeast 1084, as that was in the recipe that David Bell posted eons ago.  I mistakenly left the yeast in our fridge… in Hilton… and did not realize this until we were half the way to Binghamton.  A quick call to Al, and a prayer that he could get to his homebrew shop in time, and we had what I hope to be a suitable replacement.
• My volume was much lower than expected… This was due to a misread line on my brewing spreadsheet when we were measuring the strike water for the mash.  Rather than measuring out the 5 gallons as calculated, I told Al to measure out the 3.52 gallons that would be lost in the grains due to absorption.  Rookie mistake on my part.

So, Beer Gods willing, I will have a slightly stronger beer in the end.  I will just have about 6 less bottles of said beer when all is said and done (the 2 ounces of hops added in the secondary will suck up about 4 bottle worth of beer, plus the .14gallons I was short to begin with.  I should be lucky to get 4 full gallons out of this batch.  That is, of course, provided Al saves some for me.

We will update this post with some final numbers and tasting notes.  Keep an eye out for this in late June, early July.

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