I’m giving percentages and IBUs instead of weights so this can be scaled to any size you want.

Ingredients

• Rahr Pale Ale (85%)
• British Crystal 60 (15%)
• Hops: Fuggles, East Kent Goldings, Spalt
• Yeast: White Labs WLP008 East Coast Ale Yeast
• Water: Residual Alkalinity 61, 1.5 Chloride/Sulfate Ratio, 100+ ppm Chloride, 50+ ppm Calcium

Target Profile

• Original Gravity: 1.053 SG
• Final Gravity: 1.014 SG
• Color: 13.2 SRM
• Bitterness: 25 IBUs
• Alcohol by Volume (Est): 5.08%
• Carbonation: 1.8-2.0 Volumes

Process

• Mash @ 154°F for 60 minutes
• Boil for 90 minutes
• Late Hop with equal parts of all varieties @ 10-15 minutes to achieve IBU of ~25
• Dry Hop with equal parts of all varieties for 3 days (~1.5oz total for 5 gallons)
• Ferment at 60°F and allow to rise to 68°F after primary fermentation is complete
• Carbonate to 1.8-2.0 volumes using dried malt extract (ideally, krausen, but DME is fine)
• Age for 4-6 weeks @ 60°F
• Drink @ 50°F-55°F

I’m pretty confident that you’ll end up with a beer very close to Boston Ale if you use these methods. As I mentioned, I did attempt to create an homage to Boston Ale before, and it was close enough that the aforementioned recipe should be very similar to a clone of Samuel Adams Boston Ale. Cheers!

I decided I’d go for a simple recipe for my brew session this weekend. So, I figured it was time to try to pay homage to Samuel Adams Boston Ale, which is a delicious Stock Ale. The lovely thing about trying to clone a Sam Adams recipe is that they provide you with a lot of useful information to start with.

From the website, we know:

Color: Red to Amber
Original Gravity: 13 Plato (1.053 SG)
Alcohol: 5.1% ABV / 4.0% ABW
Malt: Two Row Pale, Caramel 60
Hops: Spalt Spalter, East Kent Goldings, Fuggles
Yeast Strain: “Top-fermenting ale yeast” (theirs is proprietary)

“Keeping with the Stock Ale style, Samuel Adams® Boston Ale is fermented at cooler almost lager like temperatures and conditioned much longer than most ales. It also is Krausened and dry hopped.”

It also has fruit and ester notes with a smooth, round finish.

Okay, time to start paying homage (I’m saying “homage” because I don’t know if it’s a clone just yet)!

We know they krausen (add freshly-fermenting wort to carbonate) and dry hop. We’re going to dry hop this sucker for a week, starting after a week of fermentation (at least a day after primary is complete). This will probably produce more hop flavor and aroma than Boston Ale (which I’d think is more like 3 days), but I want that flavor myself, and this is an “homage.” As for adding freshly-fermenting (or unfermented) wort to carbonate, I don’t want to brew a mini-batch of beer to do it, so I’m using corn sugar or DME.

As for the yeast, we know they ferment at “almost lager like temperatures.” What this means to me is that they ferment around 60 °F using an ale yeast that can handle it, but they probably let the temperature rise to get some additional ester production. So, we’re looking for a yeast strain that has a fruity character and can cover a wide range of temperatures, starting around 60 °F. To me, that means Wyeast American Ale II, which has an impressive range of 60-72 °F and the character we want (I started the search with White Labs East Coast Ale Yeast, but it can’t handle the low temperatures).

On to the malt. To me, it tastes very English on the malt end. So, I’ve chosen Maris Otter and a British Crystal 60. Knowing that I don’t want to go over about 15% on the crystal malt and our target gravity, the proportion was rather quick to determine, especially because Boston Ale looks to be in the 12-16 SRM range. If you want to go darker (15 SRM instead of 12.9 SRM), you could remove 0.5 lb of the base malt and add 0.5 lb of crystal, which brings the crystal malt up to 20% of the grist.

Finally, the water profile. This beer is somewhat malty and has a smooth, round finish, so I’m going for at least 100ppm of chloride and a ratio of around 1.5 chloride/sulfate. Given the color (12.6 SRM), a Residual Alkalinity of ~61 is appropriate. If you decide to go darker (14.7 SRM), you’ll want to hit an RA of ~86.

Without further ado, I give you Mad Alchemist New England Stock Ale (5 gallon all-grain recipe):

Ingredients

• Maris Otter (8.5 lbs)
• British Crystal 60 (1.5 lbs)
• Hops: 1 oz Fuggles, 1 oz East Kent Goldings, 1 oz Spalt
• Yeast: American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272), 2000 ml starter
• Water: Residual Alkalinity 61, 1.5 Chloride/Sulfate Ratio, 100+ ppm Chloride, 50+ ppm Calcium
• Alternate (Darker) Prep: 8 lbs Maris Otter, 2 lbs Crystal 60 yields 14.7 SRM instead of 12.6. You might want to adjust your RA to 86 instead of 61 if you do this, but it’s fine if you don’t.

Target Profile

• Original Gravity: 1.053 SG
• Final Gravity: 1.013 SG
• Color: 12.6 SRM
• Bitterness: 20 IBU
• Alcohol by Volume (Est): 5.19%
• Carbonation: 2.3-2.4 volumes

Process
I’m going to do a single step mash at 154 °F for medium body in the beer. I will boil the wort for 90 minutes. The first 0.25 oz of each variety of hops will be added with 45 minutes left in the boil. 0.5 oz of each variety of hops will be added with 10 minutes left in the boil. 0.25 oz of each variety of hops will be added to secondary after one week of fermentation, and will be allowed to dry hop for one week.

When I add the wort to the fermentor, it will be at 60 °F. I’ll allow it to rise naturally to 68 °F. After fermentation is complete, I’ll add 4 oz corn sugar when bottling to achieve carbonation of ~2.35 volumes at 68 °F. I’m going to let this ale age for at least a month before drinking, and more likely two months. I would age it at cooler temperatures (55-60° F) if I had the ability to do so.

I’ll let you know how it turns out!

It’s a dark, sweet, full-bodied, and deceptively dry sweet stout with chocolate, coffee, and hazelnut flavors due in large part to additions in the secondary. The ingredients I’m listing are for a 5 gallon all-grain batch, but it can be easily converted to extract (with specialty grains) by replacing the Maris Otter with an English extract.

Ingredients

• Maris Otter (7 lbs)
• Caramel/Crystal Malt 40L (2 lbs)
• Chocolate Malt (12 oz)
• Roasted Barley (3 oz)
• Lactose (1 lb)
• Hops: East Kent Goldings
• Yeast: Irish Ale
• Water: Residual Alkalinity (~200), Bicarbonate (~250), 2 to 1 Chloride/Sulfate

Ingredients in Secondary

• Cacao Nibs (8 oz)
• Hazelnuts (8 oz)
• Coffee Beans (8 oz)

Target Profile

• Original Gravity: 1.054
• Final Gravity: 1.014
• Color: 38 SRM
• Bitterness: 20 IBU
• Alcohol: 5.22%
• Carbonation: 2.0 Volumes