Im trying to make a partial mash moon man clone recipe. So far what im thinking for the grain bill is 5lbs 2row, 3lbs gold LME, and 1lb crystal 40L. The hops i was thinking are Amarillo, Motueka, Pac Gem, and Cascades. Any one have any ideas?
I think that’s a good start on the type of hops. If you want to match color, I’d back off on the 40L crystal malt and either split it with a lighter one, replace what you took with more pale malt or keep the pound but go with a lighter crystal, maybe 10-20L.
I detect crystal 20 in a lot of NG beers, including this one. And I’ve heard in interviews that he’s a fan of the stuff. Sorry, I’m no help on the hop bill.
I made an all-grain version that was close. Here’s
http://www.free90free.com/peshchat/viewtopic.php?t=3768
a link to the conversation on our local board. Sorry that I can’t help with the partial mash but I will say this… everything should be “pale” except for about 4-5 ounces of C60 in a 5-gallon batch. The color from that is about the same as Moon Man. I chose C60 just because but you could experiment with other Lovibond colors. On the hops, their site says that it’s 4 Pacific NW hops along with one NZ hop. I chose Amarillo, Simcoe and Citra from the US and because I couldn’t decide what else to try, I went with Motueka and Nelson Sauvin from NZ. The hop character is very close. The only thing I messed up was the bitterness. The commercial version is not very bitter at all… all the hops seem like late additions. I took about 7.2AAU of a mixture of all 5 hops and added that as a FWH addition. It was too much. I added more of the blend at 10, 5, 2 and then as dry hop additions… one for 14 days and more for about 4-5 days. The hop flavor and aroma are excellent but there’s a little more bitterness in mine. There is either a very small FWH or 60-minute addition in the commercial version or possibly NO bittering hops. I’m going on the NG hard hat tour on 12/14 and plan to ask Dan Carey for some direction. Cheers.
I’m thinking about cutting the # of c40 to 8oz and adding 8oz of c10. As for the hops I was thinking of not adding any bittering hops and make my first addition at 30 min. You got any ideas for the amounts and timing for the hops.
Hey Ken I think I’m gonna go with your recipe but not going to use any fwh and make my first addition at 30 min.
A few people mentioned that as an option too. I just put mine on tap last night. The first few glasses were cloudy so tough to tell on the color but the hop character is outstanding and the bitterness seems a little better now. I would either lower the FWH addition (down from 7.2 AAU to 5 or so) or go with the 30 minute addition as you suggest. My hop combination of Simcoe, Amarillo, Motueka, Nelson Sauvin and Citra is very nice and really close to the commercial version although I know it’s not what NG uses. Cheers.
Ken, do you have any comments/opinion of FWH versus a 15-30 minute boil addition? My FWH attempts have either failed or have been muddled by other additions (heavy late or by dry-hopping).
I like doing FWH additions because I feel like you get a decent amount of bitterness with some amount of the edge shaved off. Some people say that a FWH addition is like a 20-min addition in terms of IBUs. Not sure on that but I have made beers where a good amount of hops were added as FWH (8-10 AAUs) and then just a flameout addition and that’s all. You get balanced bitterness without a sharp bite. Clearly, this is not good for every style but I love it for something like a Festbier, Vienna or other beer where the hops don’t necessarily have to be in your face. I thought it would work for Moon Man because there is very little bitterness. I will say that I considered a 30-min addition as well as all hops added at 20 and later so we’re all probably on the same page with what we’re trying to accomplish. I do like my German styles and they’re big on the FWHing so that’s probably why I like it. Occasionally someone comes up with a new way to use hops. The latest trick I tried was a “whirlpool” addition where you bring the temp down from 212° to about 175°, stop the chill, add your hops, stir for 15 mins and then resume the chill. Clearly the temp of the wort when the hops are added plays an important part. Fun stuff, for sure. Cheers.
I got everything but the nelsons. I was thinking of subing pac. Gem what do you guys think?
A local brewer here used Pacific Gem to make something similar to Moon Man (or was it Pacific Jade? Hmm, I forget) and he said it came out very nicely. Nothing wrong with trying it.
Not sure if you’ve decided on your recipe or not, but I was researching this just this past week. I am limited to extract for now, but based on Ken’s recipe and some others I found out trolling the web, I did the following. Obviuosly it could be converted to AG easily.
6 lbs pilsner DME
45 oz crystal 60
1 oz nugget @ 30
.4 oz pac gem @ 15
.4 oz motueka @ 15
.6 oz pac gem @ 5
.6 oz motueka @ 5
1 oz pac gem at flame out
1 oz motueka at flame out
1 oz pac gem dry for 5 days
1 oz motueka dry for 5 days
1 oz amarillo dry for 5 days
Ended up with a OG of 1.056. Just brewed Tuesday so I can’t say how its going to taste, but that combination of the pack gem and motueka smelled specatacular.
I will note that my dry hop schedule is short as I don’t want it overpowering. This is for the family Thanksgiving, and the girls just want something easy to drink thats not too hoppy.
I was drinking my version (Man In The Moon 
) last night while watching the World Series and the football game. I concluded that the commercial version works so well because all of those late hops work nicely with the low bittering rate (I’ve mentioned this already). My version is good but it has quite a little bite to it. Many, many brewers, craft beer lovers and general beer geeks wouldn’t think my beer was overly bitter but if they compared it to the commercial MM, they would agree that mine has more bitterness to it. I also don’t think that mine has as much of the tropical, guava, passionfruit thing as MM does. Mine has more grapefruit from the Amarillo so I might adjust that next time as well. More Citra, less Amarillo and less bitterness. Also, mine is slightly darker than MM so a little less crystal as well.
I’ll be giving mine a sample this weekend.
Fingers are crossed for you, my friend. I’m headed up to NG on 12/14 for the hard hat tour and hopefully a conversation with Dan Carey about all things beer. Cheers.
Thanks for the recipe! My wife is a huge fan of Moon Man (I think she likes how it skews heavily toward aroma vs. bitterness) and I’m hoping to make her day with this one. I just have a couple questions:
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45 oz crystal 60 Is this a steeping grain? And did I read that right–you’re suggesting 2 lbs, 13 oz? That just seems like a lot to me.
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I plugged the hops into Brewing Assistant, and it calculated the IBU at 77. That seems really high, considering Moon Man is not particularly bitter. How did it turn out?
Looking forward to your response–I’ll try it as soon as I hear back from you!
I just saw the thread as you brought it back and when I was reading his post, I saw that and had to guess he meant 4-5 oz of crystal as that makes sense.
Also the thread was from Oct 2012 and I haven’t seen that poster around lately. Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’s still around. If nothing else just back off the nugget or other bittering additions and taper it back to 30-40IBU maybe. 77 would be excessive as I dig MM and its bitterness feels to me as being slightly under 40. From what I read here I would do some 20-0 minute flavor/aroma additions that give you around 30IBU and dry hop the holy hanna out of it. Instead of 1oz use 4oz. In the description he lists around 1.10 oz of hops for every gallon of wort he makes of MM so 4-5 oz would be on target. Also he states the following: “Finally utilizing 5 varieties of hops, of which three are not commonly used in American style ales” Is he referring to types like palisade or others?
Ken you got any more input on this.
See for descriptor:
http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/index.c ... y/headlineThanks for the reply, ITsPossible! I actually brewed it, and the color was definitely a lot more intense than MM when I moved it from primary to secondary last night (it was also way more bitter than MM). Next time I’ll adjust as you suggest, and thanks again for the help!
