Heady Blunder tasting notes

I brewed my Heady Topper clone about two months ago now. The first pulls were tasty, but too resiny and harsh. It's been hitting its stride for about three weeks now.

First, as far as closeness to Heady Topper, it's close. It's quaffable, dank and close. Dangerously quaffable at 9.5% abv. It is not a clone of Heady Topper. I think much of that has to do with it being 10 points over gravity - 1.08+ instead of 1.075 or so - and a final gravity ten points over my target final gravity - 1.020 instead of 1.010. But it is certainly in the spirit of Heady Topper. I think the hop bill is pretty damn close. As far as changes, I would make more process changes than recipe changes. It took three weeks or so for the Conan yeast to clear out enough for me to get a clean taste of it. Next time I'd add some fining agents. Secondly, I've found that hop extract seems to come off harsh for a few weeks and then mellows. The first tastes that I had of this beer were incredibly bitter. Then, after some conditioning, it mellowed out and became perfect. Third, I need to get it to attenuate closer to 1.010. I wonder how much the residual sugars are getting in the way of the hop flavor or allowing sweetness to compete with the hop bill. Finally, I might switch up my dry hopping method. For this two-stage dry hop, I added the first round of hops when I transferred the beer to a purged, sanitized keg. Then I added the second round right into the top of that keg. I think it is important to actually remove that first round of hops and dose it with the second so that you get real layers and that the hops don't clash with each other.

Appearance: pours a deep amber with a thick head that clings to the side of the glass. It's finally cleared out to the point where it's much clearer than HT and near commercial quality. Darker than HT, on account of the extra malt.

Smell: intense floral, grapefruit and peach. Tropical.

Taste: mostly peach, with a supporting cast of dankness and grapefruit. The bitterness comes in at the middle and then kind of cleans the palate.

Mouthfeel: creamy. Finishes dry, despite the residual sugars.

The other big takeaway for me in this beer is in using Conan. Close to HT or not, Conan really sets this beer apart from other DIPAs. I'm going to maintain this culture and potentially use it in some other brews and, who knows, brew another HT clone. This is probably one of my best beers to date.



He loves hoppy beers.

Fun side note: I took a growler to this beer to give to American Aquarium last week. I saw them in Pittsburgh a few months ago and talked to them about beer. I casually mentioned that I had thought about bringing them a growler, but didn't. BJ, their lead singer said, "man, we would have drank the shit out of your growler." In Cleveland last week, I brought them a growler, which I believe they sampled backstage. I talked to their slide guitar player, Whit, about the beer after the show. He's a hop head and of course asked which hops were in it. I told him. He still had a quizzical look on his face. I told him that I was trying to clone Heady Topper and he said, "THAT'S IT!" The man had had Heady Topper somewhere and he remembered it. Heady Blunder was in the ballpark.

Call it cloned enough?