Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale Clone Recipe

As most of you know that read this blog, Sierra Nevada was one of the first micro-breweries to gain widespread distribution and therefore has become one of the more popular breweries in the States.  They brew really great beers and I’m partial to their Porter, but I think their Celebration Ale is their best beer.  It has an incredible mouthfeel and the balance of this beer is wonderful.  The bad part is that it’s only available during the winter and well, that’s not long enough for this chap.  So, here’s a recipe that I think is pretty close.

Yields

5 gallons/19L, all grain
OG = 1.064
FG = 1.014
IBU = 60
SRM = 12
ABV = 6.4%

Ingredients

Grain

11.5 lbs – 2row pale malt
1.0lb – crystal (35 °L)
.5lb Carapils malt

Hops

11 AAU Chinook hops (60 mins) = 1.0 oz of 11% alpha acids
8.5 AAU Cascade hops (30 mins) = 1.7 oz of 5% alpha acids
0.66 oz Cascade hops (for the dry hop)
0.66 oz Centennial hops (for the dry hop)

Extras

1 teaspoon of Irish moss (15 mins)

Yeast

Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or White Labs WLP001 (California Ale)

Process

Mash at 156 °F for 60 minutes.  Boil wort for 90 minutes, adding hops as indicated above next to the specific hops.  Ferment at 66 °F.  Dry hop in a secondary for 5 days at 60 °F after primary fermentation is done.  Bottle/Keg.

Extract Options

If you don’t want to bother with the all grain version (although you should) you can replace the 2row malt with 5.5 lbs of dried malt extract and 1.5 lbs of 2row malt.  Steep the crushed grains in 120 fluid ounces of water at 156 °F for 45 minutes and then follow the rest of the process above for the boil and fermentation.