Magic Hat #9 ideas

My wife loves #9, me not so much. I thought about brewing an extract that tastes something like but not necessarily exactly the same. Looks like some extract a little crystal malt and not much hops from the recipes I found. Some kind of neutral yeast, I have Kveik that works well for the climate here.

The question is the apricot flavor. A long time ago I tried apricot flavoring. It was awful. Had a chemical taste. The recipes I found call for one 3lb can of puree for 5 gallons in secondary. Apricots have a subtle flavor I find so that doesn’t sound like enough. Fresh ones are not available here so that is out.

Ideas?

I think it’s supposed to taste awful

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#9 or the apricot flavoring?

9 I’m sorry but I can’t drink that stuf

I’m no fan either but she likes it. Kind of hoped I could brew something better.

Probably could find a brand of apricot flavoring that tastes better. I think that would work. I don’t think magic hat is adding fruit

Maybe play with dried apricots

I don’t even remember what #9 tastes like (I know I didn’t like it), but I do remember the Dry Dock Apricot Blonde kit behind very tasty.

@hd4mark I’ll look thru my notes but I remember brewing this clone as 1 of my first brews. For some reason, I thought I was tough $h!t whenever I ordered a #9 back in the day. Lol. I may have to revisit my old flame now that were talking about it.

I also made a clone for this as my 2nd extract beer ever. I remember having to buy a 20$ extract can of apricot puree. Used safale 05. Was decent. But then again that was 6 years ago and almost no palate

I would echo the Dry Dock Apricot kit. I make it at least once a year. Very good, very subtle.

Had a #9 a long time ago. Don’t remember hating it but I don’t think I had a second…

Mosaic and galaxy hops throw a kind of stonefruit flavor if you wanted to try and get the fruitiness from hops. I did an IPA recently with them. Bittered with magnum for 29 IBU, 1/2 oz each of mosaic and galaxy at FWH, 5mins, 2mins, Whirlpool 20 mins at 170 and 1oz ea for 5 days DH room temp. This was a 1.063 OG beer that ended at 6.8 ABV according to BS2.

You could probably bitter it less and get a super fruity pale ale. It was lots of stonefruit and tangerine flavor and great aroma. I’ll probably double the DH next time.

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Do a simple American wheat- 5 lb 2 row, 4lb wheat malt, 1lb flaked oats. Hop to about 20 IBUs with a noble hop. At packaging time, add the LD Carlson Apricot extract, 1 oz. per gallon. Result= light apricot flavor, really quite tasty. It did earn a 1st place in a competition last year (can’t remember which one). The LD Carlson Apricot extract is the only extract that I’ve found to actually be OK.

This is an old post that came up in the past

I fell off my barstool…:joy:

I’m sure you can. Are there any hop combinations that can push it toward that flavor. We make grapefruit tasting beer without grapefruit so perhaps something apricotish?

05 will throw some stone fruit when used at the low end of its range-around 58-60*

Cheers,

Ron

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@jimrmaine is right on target with what my recipe looked like.