Dark Star Hophead

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Dellboy78lfc

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Does anyone have a good recipe for a clone of Dark Star Hophead?
It’s the father in law’s favourite pint and would love to be able to make some for him.
Any help greatly appreciated.
 
See the last post of this thread for a brewsheet of the Azacca version they did recently :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...als-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/page-3

That should get you most of the way. Conveniently Dark Star have always used blends of standard dry yeasts, so there's nothing "clever" on the yeast front which is usually one of the harder things to replicate.

Personally I prefer their APA...
 
Ths
See the last post of this thread for a brewsheet of the Azacca version they did recently :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...als-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/page-3

That should get you most of the way. Conveniently Dark Star have always used blends of standard dry yeasts, so there's nothing "clever" on the yeast front which is usually one of the harder things to replicate.

Personally I prefer their APA...

Thanks for this. I’ve not drunk Hophead for a long while, and I know they have changed the recipe a bit. Not sure if this is down to cost cutting since they got bought out maybe? But I have heard it’s not quite as good as it used to be...
 
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Just looking through the Greg Hughes book and the cascade single hop ale doesn’t look a million miles away from the original Hophead if you swap the carapils for Caramalt and reduce the grain bill to get the lower abv. Keep the hop rates the same maybe?
 
@Dellboy78lfc just checking my notes on BF. My first attempt was very passable and as per your post was just MO with caramalt as 7% of total grain bill, bittered to 34 IBU with cascade at 60, 10 and turn off. I used mix of equal amounts of us04, us05 and Notty which I am sure I read somewhere was what they use.

I think on their website they now reference using Amarillo so I tried similar recipe using 50 50 cascade and Amarillo for each addition. Didn't come out as good but looking at it I seem to have used much more cara and also a bit of wheat. Also I think it suffered from oxidation - it was the brew that saw my autosiphon permanently retired.

So for next go would revert to 1st recipe maybe with amarillo just at glamour.
 
So I’ve been messing about in Brewfather and assuming I’ve done this properly the link for the recipe should be below. Any thoughts appreciated!

https://share.brewfather.app/2k42Li7bDnGypV

Personally if I was trying again, I would stick with using a blend of yeasts - at least some Wilkos notty to supplement the us05.

Also would drop the cascade at flame out both based on my first attempt and to round it to a nice 100g pack.
 
So, I was talking to the head brewer at Dark Star via Twitter earlier and he said use a little bit of warrior at beginning of the boil and then cascade in the whirlpool to 50IBU. He also said for the whirlpool to let it stand at 100 degrees C in order to maximise utilisation.
 
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