My wisconsin folks…
If I were to try to make a spotted cow clone (extract) what would you recommend?
Either from the NB kits or a combo of extract syrups and grains and hops.
Any ideas?
NB makes one called Speckled Heifer. They say it’s close but not quite the same.
I’ve also designed my own recipe, which I will share later when I get home from work if I can 1) remember and 2) find the extract version of it…
Dave, can you also share your AG? The speckled heifer is close but I think the problem lies in the way New Glarus ferments their beer. It says it’s “cask conditioned”…
I LOVE moon man and wish I could have a clone of that.
Okay… here are both the extract recipe for 5 gallons, and the all-grain version for just 3 gallons (sorry – you do the math if you want 5).
OG=1.047
ABV=4.6%
IBU=16-17
SRM=4
Extract
5 gallons
3.5 lb Briess Light Dry Malt Extract
1 lb corn sugar
0.75 lb Crystal 20
0.5 lb flaked barley
0.56 oz Northern Brewer hops (6.9% alpha, 45 minutes)
0.38 oz Saaz hops (3.5% alpha, 10 minutes)
Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast
Steep flaked barley and crystal malt while heating 5.5 gallons distilled water for about 20 minutes. When it hits 168 F, discard the grains and add all the extract and sugar. The unmashed flaked barley helps ensure it will turn out cloudy, which is one of the primary features of this beer. The other defining characteristic to Spotted Cow is the corny, DMS type flavor. If you use light extract and only do a really weak boil (as opposed to a strong rolling boil), with the lid on, for a maximum of about 45 minutes, this will do as good a job as possible to try to keep DMS flavors in the finished product. Add hops per schedule. For even more DMS, don’t use a chiller or cool the hot wort, just let it coast down to room temp overnight. Ferment at 64 F for about 10 days. Do NOT rack to secondary at all. Bottle/keg as normal.
All-Grain
3 gallons
2.8 lb Briess 2-row
1 lb flaked corn
0.5 lb flaked barley
0.5 lb Crystal 20
0.5 lb Briess Munich
0.38 oz Northern Brewer hops (6.9% alpha, 45 minutes)
0.25 oz Saaz hops (3.5% alpha, 10 minutes)
Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast
Mash at 148 F to improve attenuation. After the mash and sparge, add 2 Tbsp flour to ensure the final beer turns out cloudy, which is one of the primary features of this beer. The other defining characteristic to Spotted Cow is the corny, DMS type flavor. If you only do a really weak boil (as opposed to a strong rolling boil), with the lid on, for a maximum of about 45 minutes, this should help to assure a little DMS will remain in the finished product. Add hops per schedule. For even more DMS, don’t use a chiller or cool the hot wort, just let it coast down to room temp overnight. Ferment at 64 F for about 10 days. Do NOT rack to secondary at all. Bottle/keg as normal.
If anyone tries either one of these, please let me know how it is. I had a friend try it and he liked it, but I have yet to brew this myself. Should turn out pretty close though as far as I can tell. I’ve done a little research into it so the ingredients should be close… or, close enough.
This is incredible!
Thanks for sending it along.
I plan on making it soon!
Dave, I appreciate you posting that recipe. I will brew it eventually but my wife is prego and she is the main ‘cow’ fan. I like it too, but feel I should wait.
I have done a take on the speck hef with both kolsch and am ale. The kolsch was MUCH more authentic, but still missing something. I again wonder if it has to do ih the cask conditioning…
[quote=“Loopie Beer”]I have done a take on the speck hef with both kolsch and am ale. The kolsch was MUCH more authentic, but still missing something. I again wonder if it has to do ih the cask conditioning…
[/quote]Isn’t spotted cow a farmhouse ale? Maybe try it with a Belgian yeast.
It is NOT a farmhouse ale, not in the traditional French/Belgian sense of the term. It is technically a cream ale – nowhere close to a saison.
Loopie!
I totally get that. I’m making for my wife before she gets pregnant. It’s a race – my swimmers vs. brewing time.
And thanks for the advice on the Spotted Cow clone.
I ended up going to the NB here in Milw. and they advised me to use their partial mash kit. I was not quite up for that, so I went with:
- 1 lb of flaked maize
- .5 lbs of flaked barley
(both steeped at 155ºF for 40 min)
6lbs of Pilsen extra
1 oz of culster hops.
Wyeast 1056 (I should have gone with the Kolsch…!)
It clearly needs the 2Rahr. But it’s been fermenting like mad (my first blow-off!) and looks like spotted cow. We’ll see about taste!
Thanks.
[quote=“dmtaylo2”]Okay… here are both the extract recipe for 5 gallons, and the all-grain version for just 3 gallons (sorry – you do the math if you want 5).
OG=1.047
ABV=4.6%
IBU=16-17
SRM=4
Extract
5 gallons
3.5 lb Briess Light Dry Malt Extract
1 lb corn sugar
0.75 lb Crystal 20
0.5 lb flaked barley
0.56 oz Northern Brewer hops (6.9% alpha, 45 minutes)
0.38 oz Saaz hops (3.5% alpha, 10 minutes)
Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast
Steep flaked barley and crystal malt while heating 5.5 gallons distilled water for about 20 minutes. When it hits 168 F, discard the grains and add all the extract and sugar. The unmashed flaked barley helps ensure it will turn out cloudy, which is one of the primary features of this beer. The other defining characteristic to Spotted Cow is the corny, DMS type flavor. If you use light extract and only do a really weak boil (as opposed to a strong rolling boil), with the lid on, for a maximum of about 45 minutes, this will do as good a job as possible to try to keep DMS flavors in the finished product. Add hops per schedule. For even more DMS, don’t use a chiller or cool the hot wort, just let it coast down to room temp overnight. Ferment at 64 F for about 10 days. Do NOT rack to secondary at all. Bottle/keg as normal.
All-Grain
3 gallons
2.8 lb Briess 2-row
1 lb flaked corn
0.5 lb flaked barley
0.5 lb Crystal 20
0.5 lb Briess Munich
0.38 oz Northern Brewer hops (6.9% alpha, 45 minutes)
0.25 oz Saaz hops (3.5% alpha, 10 minutes)
Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast
Mash at 148 F to improve attenuation. After the mash and sparge, add 2 Tbsp flour to ensure the final beer turns out cloudy, which is one of the primary features of this beer. The other defining characteristic to Spotted Cow is the corny, DMS type flavor. If you only do a really weak boil (as opposed to a strong rolling boil), with the lid on, for a maximum of about 45 minutes, this should help to assure a little DMS will remain in the finished product. Add hops per schedule. For even more DMS, don’t use a chiller or cool the hot wort, just let it coast down to room temp overnight. Ferment at 64 F for about 10 days. Do NOT rack to secondary at all. Bottle/keg as normal.
If anyone tries either one of these, please let me know how it is. I had a friend try it and he liked it, but I have yet to brew this myself. Should turn out pretty close though as far as I can tell. I’ve done a little research into it so the ingredients should be close… or, close enough.[/quote]
Noobie here and big Spotted Cow fan!!! I bought everything for the extract recipe today and it will be my first 5 gallon brew.
I know this is an old thread, but has anybody tried this and can you give your review/thoughts?
They have a proprietor yeast that is kept at the collage in Madison it is a Kolsh type yeast. The other thing is they use a lot of corn sugar in it you might want to try and increase that and it is cask conditioned with yeast added to the bottle. I don’t know if it’s the same yeast they use for primary but if you look at a bottle you can see it in the bottom. We tried to build up a starter with it but with no luck.
Not too dead set on recreating the Cow spot on…just something in the ballpark and tasty. It seems like an easy enough recipe to tweak as I learn.
The kit will treat you just fine then.
For the record, I made that modified kit – and it was great. I would try it with kolsch yeast if I tried it again…
Unfortunately, my wife never got to try any. 
I bought the Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast. I actually have the posted recipe exactly with the exception of the Northern Brewer hops being 9.6% alpha vs 6.9% alpha.
How do you guys feel about the overnight cool down versus cooling the wort quickly?
Also, will the 5.5 gallon boil yield close to 5 gallons of beer or should that be increased some?
[quote=“jrsdws”]I bought the Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast. I actually have the posted recipe exactly with the exception of the Northern Brewer hops being 9.6% alpha vs 6.9% alpha.
How do you guys feel about the overnight cool down versus cooling the wort quickly?
Also, will the 5.5 gallon boil yield close to 5 gallons of beer or should that be increased some?[/quote]
First you don’t say how many oz of the NB hops and the min of boil time.
You should cool the wort as fast as you can, my opinion .
As far as boiling 5.5 gallons to yield 5 gallons I personally would start the boil with 6.5 gallons of course you can always top up it with water.
[quote=“chuck”][quote=“jrsdws”]I bought the Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast. I actually have the posted recipe exactly with the exception of the Northern Brewer hops being 9.6% alpha vs 6.9% alpha.
How do you guys feel about the overnight cool down versus cooling the wort quickly?
Also, will the 5.5 gallon boil yield close to 5 gallons of beer or should that be increased some?[/quote]
First you don’t say how many oz of the NB hops and the min of boil time.
You should cool the wort as fast as you can, my opinion .
As far as boiling 5.5 gallons to yield 5 gallons I personally would start the boil with 6.5 gallons of course you can always top up it with water.[/quote]
As per the original recipe, 0.56oz of NB hops (6.9% alpha, 45 minutes).
I have to clean an oxidize my turkey fryer pot so I figure I can get a decent idea of boil off when I do that. Thanks for the start, though. My pot holds 7 gallons.
6.5 gals in your 7gals pot will be tight. If you’re careful and watch your boil you should be fine.
Not that this applies much to the beer in question but to comment on the overnight chill versus chilling right away, I’ve found that in a light “delicate” beer such as this it is best to avoid large amounts of finishing hops (10 minutes or later) when chilling overnight. Depending on your variety of hops, you may be extracting more bitterness and flavor compounds than you want in your final beer. I last used just over an ounce of Cluster (AA% unknown) at flameout in addition to a bittering charge and chilled overnight. I still think there’s too much Cluster after 2 months cold in the keg (a bit harsh). It was a bit of an experiment but I know for my next cream ale I’ll either remove/reduce late hops, choose a different variety, chill right away or age it before I start drinking, the latter of which I’m not always willing to do. Never thought just 2 ounces of hops in a 5 gallon batch would dominate the beer as much as it did.
Resurrection of ancient thread… why? Well, I have a smack-pack of 2565 bubbling away right now, and am finally going to brew my own recipe myself, tomorrow!!! So we’ll see how it turns out. I think it will be good. I’m making a few minor substitutions with hops, and Carapils instead of Crystal 20, and German Vienna instead of American Munich, just because I have those on hand to use up anyway, but by & large, it will be almost the same, and in any case, this is going to be a nice little batch to be drinking this summer. Plus I’m motivated by my club because next month we’re having a cream ale competition… and I fully intend to win. :mrgreen:
I swear the cream ale comp was NOT my idea. Seriously. The president came up with an idea to come up with some simple recipe that could easily be made by either extract or all-grain brewers, that we could experiment with, add fruit to, whatever, and call it sort of “the club’s own base beer recipe” for all sorts of brewers and experiments. So that’s what’s going on. Cream ale just seemed a logical choice for something simple for all brewers, yet delicious, and easy to experiment with. Most of the other guys are making Jamil’s recipe. I’m making mine.
And I’m going to win. :mrgreen:
:cheers:
