Introduction
I brewed the recipe kit without using RO water, reading the mash pH or measuring the pre-boil gravity and used the water ratio defined by the manual. The purpose of this was to test how the beer will taste if a beginner makes it
The content of the package:
Manual: Instructions for the whole brewday and empty places where you can measurements. Contains every important information and some extra, like pre-boil gravity and carbonation volume.
Hops: packaged by schedule.
Malts: The malt mix which can be ordered crushed or unmilled.
Yeast: The website provides the ability to choose between different yeast strains (I went with US-05 as the original uses this yeast too).
Brewday
While stirring the water, I added the crushed malts.
I mashed, sparged and boiled in accordance with the manual. During the boil, I added the hops.
After the boil I chilled the wort and measured the original gravity. The OG was 0.002 points higher than expected (after temperature correction).
After the fermentation finished, I added the dry-hop package to the beer. The beer was dry-hopped for 3 days and after I measured the final gravity and racked the beer to a keg. The FG came out at 1.008 which resulted in an ABV of 5.78% instead of the expected 5%. It’s important to mention that even though the manual states an ABV of 5%, the label of the beer you buy at the stores will indicate an ABV of 5.6%.
Because this is a clone recipe, I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the real deal. Few of my friends came over to help me out with the A/B testing. It’s important to note that I was the only one who know which beer was which and I did the test blindfolded.
Test
Original: The smell was sweet, with aromas of pineapple and tropical fruits. In its taste, the beer showed the same notes, but was complemented with the spiciness of the hops. The malt profile was hidden beneath the hops.
Clone: The smell of the beer was full of tropical fruits and bread like maltiness. The bitterness was stronger and the bready notes were more prominent. We were unable to find any pineapple flavor in the beer.
Conclusion
Everybody agreed that both of these beers are delicious and we would drink them any day of the year. However, it was clear these were two distinctly different beer. The original is a lighter summer drink, while the clone is a more balanced ale, but lacking that hop punch. What’s interesting is that as the website of Főzőház shows, the kit is based on the recipe shared by Monyo.