Bell's Two Hearted Clone

Ernest Hemingway's fishing failure

Gather 'round whilst I regale you of my recent infatuation with Bell's Two Hearted. It all started a few months ago at the Beer 1k in Crystal City. This was a really cool event during which Julie, I, and some friends were able to sample small pours of 20+ beers over the course of a few hours. I sampled some hits and misses but nothing that really rocked my world. For those familiar with the event, the 1k ends at the top level of a high rise building in Crystal City. The entire floor is unfinished and very industrial looking.

After taking an elevator to the top the doors opened to reveal a sensory overload of loud techno beats, hundreds of half drunk 1k-ers, and another dozen beer vendors. Upon entering this state of sensory overload I spied her from across the room. Twas' a Bell's Brewery booth done made it all the way from Kalamazoo to our little neck of the woods. I was already a big fan of Bell's Brewery - A) It's from Michigan B) Oberon is like capturing Michigan summers in a bottle, and C) all the beers are brewed almost exactly the way a homebrewer would do it. It's unfiltered, unpasteurized, bottle carbonated, and quite literally a living entity.

After a ten minute line for the Bell's booth I discovered they were sampling a beer I hadn't had yet but probably should have - Bell's Two Hearted. It has a color somewhere between amber and orange but the most in-your-face quality of Two Hearted is by far the aroma. I wasn't very familiar with Centennial hops at the time but it was love at first smell. It had a nice but not overpowering citrus smell with a grapefruit quality and a muted but persistent floral tone. If Two Hearted aroma was a band, Sinister Grapefruit would be shredding it up on lead guitar but Floral Garden would be rockin' a solid but not showy drum beat that pulls it all together.

I remember savoring that small sample of Two Hearted for ten minutes. This turned out to be a couple of minutes too long because the booth had just been cleaned out of all samples by the time I got in line again. The following day and a short time afterward, acquiring a six-pack of Two Hearted became my solitary grocery goal. It's not impossible to find in VA but it's not too common. After a second taste confirmed my original opinion and refuted my working theory that Bell's slipped some ecstasy into their samples, I decided to try brewing it myself. The recipe below and the next six weeks are my power ballad love song to Bell's Two Hearted.

Brew Recipe

Looks like 3.5 Michigans

Brew Date: 3/31/2013
Style: American IPA
Batch Volume: 4.2 gal.
Type: All Grain
Boil Time: 60 min.
Color: 5.5 SRM
Target Bitterness: 47.2 IBU
Target OG: 1.071
Target FG: 1.018

Grist
8 lb. American Two-Row Malt
1.6 lb. Vienna Malt
0.4 lb. Crystal 20L Malt
0.4 lb. CaraPils Malt

0.8 oz. Centennial Pellet Hops (60 min.)
0.8 oz. Centennial Pellet Hops (15 min.)
0.8 oz. Centennial Pellet Hops (5 min.)
0.8 oz. Centennial Pellet Hops (1 min.)
0.4 oz. Centennial Pellet Hops (Dry Hop)
1 pkg. Safale S-04 Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 152
Mash Time: 90 min.
Pre-Boil Volume: 4.75 gal.
Post-Boil Volume: 4.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 71.9%
Measured OG: 1.061
Measured FG: 1.007
ABV: 7.1%
Calories: 198

Crushed grain again at 0.030" gap setting. Filled brew kettle w/5.5 gal. of hot tap water. Mash in at 157. Dropped temp to 152. Doing a 90 minute mash on this one for more conversion a lighter mouth feel. Finished mashing at 149 with sleeping bag method. Was surprised to get a low gravity reading pre-boil but thought maybe it was a fluke. Post boil gravity was still 10 points under target. Low mash temperature? Combination of more water volume than expected and lower efficiency. Hopefully doesn't affect the taste too much. New target ABV is 6%.

Used new wort chiller to cool but didn't have the proper hose connection gender. Held two ends together for 10 minutes. It worked but I got soaked in the process. Need a female garden hose connection on one end and a male faucet connection on the other.

After pitching yeast and letting brew settle there appears to be a LOT of sediment forming. Some can probably be attributed larger hop additions but looks pretty grainy. Must try a wider gap setting for next brew.

Update 4/6/13 - Pulled a gravity sample and holy cow is it low. It's at 1.008 down from 1.061 after only a week. It tastes and smells great too.

Update 4/7/13 - Racked into secondary today. Collected about 3 1/3 gallons. It has a nice orange color very similar to Two Hearted. All signs pointing to awesome!

Update 4/14/13 - Pitch 0.4 oz. of Centennial pellet hops directly into secondary fermenter. Swished the beer around for 10 seconds or so to mix them in and prevent them from just floating on the top the whole time. Hopefully they will settle out before next weekend when it's.... bottling time baby!

Update 4/20/13 - Finally time to bottle this motha'. Appropriately Julie's mom was here to help supervise and photograph the process. Had 3 1/3 gal. of beer in secondary so used 1/2 cup of priming sugar for bottling. Yielded 35 bottles in total. FG ended up at 1.007 which I believe is the lowest I've ever had a beer finish. I'll attribute that to the lower mash temperature I suppose. The gravity sample tasted fan-frickin'-tastic, albeit a little thin. Maybe the carb will body it out. Good color too. Seems like almost the perfect shade of Two Hearted orange.

I tried a new method for racking beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket. I rubber banded a hop bag to the output end of the auto siphon. There was a lot of hop material floating around after dry hopping and I definitely didn't want that in the bottles. (Sorry centennial hops, I still love you.) It worked out really well! Caught a thin layer of hop particles in the bag and toward the end of bottling noticed almost no sediment/material in the bottling bucket. I'll certainly be doing this every time I rack from a dry hopped fermenter.