Has anyone made Desperados

[fximpact25]

hi all don't know if this can be done at all but has anyone made like a clone of desperados the tequila beer im curious to try something like this thanks ste

 

[Northern_Brewer]

hi all don't know if this can be done at all but has anyone made like a clone of desperados the tequila beer im curious to try something like this thanks ste

Those kinds of industrial beers are some of the hardest for homebrewers to clone exactly as they rely so much on chemical products that we don't have access to. You can get an idea from the official stats :
ABV Split
Alc. 5.9% vol.
(Beer 99.4%, agave spirit 0.6%)

Ingredients
Water, malted barley, glucose syrup, sugar, hop extract, acidity regulator: citric acid, natural flavouring (contains agave spirit 0.1%).

Nutritional Values per 100 ml:
Energy 237 kJ/ 57 kcal, fat 0g, of which saturates 0g, carbohydrates 5.6g, of which sugars 2.3g, protein 0g, salt 0g.

So it's the equivalent of less than 1 shot of "tequila" in 20 litres of beer. But I guess they're adding to the flavour with flavourings - if you don't have access to those flavourings then you will just have to add more tequila, which means using a weaker beer as a starting point, so that beer has to be a bit more robust than their version, I'd sub in a bit of ordinary pale malt for the pilsner or extra pale that they are using as the main base malt. OTOH they're probably using 20% glucose syrup, which you don't need to. And they're almost certainly brewing high-gravity and diluting.

So the first thing I would do is just try adding tequila and lemon juice to an "ordinary" macro beer like Carling, just to dial in how much you need of each, then you can reverse engineer it.

But as a first approximation, let's say you start with a 1.050 beer of 60% pilsner/extra pale, 30% UK pale, 10% Carapils (not the Briess carapils which is something different). So for 20 litres at 70% efficiency that would be 3kg pilsner/extra pale, 1.5kg pale, 500g Carapils. Maybe a splash of Vienna or Munich to help the colour? With a standard lager yeast like 34/70, that will give you 5.1% or so, and half a bottle of tequila added after fermentation will take you up to 5.9%, then also add some Jif-style lemon juice.

Hops don't matter much - the clear bottle implies they're using a hop product like tetrahop which isn't easily obtainable at retail level. You could use Strisselspalt as a nod to its origins in Alsace, but any cheap "lager" hop will do. You won't need much - only 10-15 IBU, so ~35g of a 3% alpha hop in 20 litres.