I'm thinking of brewing during the game tonight. Y'all don't bust my balls too much, but I'm thinking of doing an Andygator clone. From the homebrewer that came up with the recipe:

quote:
Here is the original recipe as best I can remember it, I have lost my notes from 1988 when it was originally made. It competed through to Best of Show in the Crescent City Homebrewers competition in New Orleans back in the day. Then because of a kind offer from the then-owners of Abita, it went to Abita Springs and we brewed her up again. It was supposed to be a one time brew up, the rest is history.

For an original gravity of 1.080, we used 95 percent Ireks Pilsener malt and 3% Carapils and 2% Munich. This is a triple decoction beer as in keeping with German tradition, so that is what we did. The hopping would have been Hallertau pellets and Saaz pellets, for an IBU of about 25. The hopping would have been Hallertau dependant, probably 3:1 Hallertau:Saaz. Other German noble hops will do.

The yeast is Wyeast 2206. It was a great lager yeast back in the day and I think still is a great yeast, but my last conversations with Dave Logsdon at Wyeast suggested that over the years, 2206 has changed slightly and become less able to throw protein off of itself as good as it used to. Make a nice starter. I am sure we ran the yeast at somewhere near 55F, no warmer.

The key to the original Andygator, and the thing you have to factor into the grain bill, is the runoff cut off. We stopped the runoff at 6 Plato so as not to pull anything but sweet wort and leave the tannin behind. This was the idea of my brewing partner, Guy Hagner, who still rocks.

A historical note. The original name of the beer was not Andygator, it was Alligator. We were struggling with a name for a Louisiana dopplebock, and my wife Sally said "hey, if it needs to end in =ator, call it Alligator." Brilliant. While fermenting, strange things happened. Rush Cumming and Jim Patton called up and said "Dude, it mutated". And I said what? because I thought something was wrong with the beer. They said "no man, the beer is fine, the name mutated. We think it should be Andygator. " And so that is how it got done back in the day.

Ciao, let me know how you get on. Andy Thomas

I'll add some melanoidin malt as I don't feel like doing a triple decoction mash. I have everything else on hand. I'll use 34/70 for the yeast. Abita's site lists the beer as a Pilsner/Perle SMaSH, but I like Andy's recipe more.