Dear Replicator,   

I have been making the two-hundred-mile trip up to Canada just so I can buy a traditional Canadian ale called Warthog Cream Ale. Warthog Ale  is brewed by Big Rock Brewery in Calgary, Alberta. It would be great if I could get a good clone recipe for this beer so I can try to replicate this excellent Canadian brew at home.

Tim Kober - Great Falls, Montana

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Big Rock Brewery in Calgary was established in 1984 and has evolved into one of North America’s premier breweries. Big Rock went all the way to Switzerland to hire its brewmaster, Bernd Pieper. Bernd had brewed Guinness in Africa and then became the head brewmaster for Löwenbraü in Zurich. Fortunately, I was able to get some hints from him.  According to Bernd, Warthog Ale is a crossbreed of a British mild ale and an American cream ale. It’s a lighter-bodied beer, with some crystal malt for a bit of a malty flavor and relatively low hop bitterness. The description on the Big Rock Website also states that this beer has some resemblance to British brown ales, with a nutty finish.    

To keep the lighter body in an all-malt beer, I suggest using a high- attenuation yeast that will ferment a higher percentage of the malt sugars. A lighter-bodied beer needs to be extremely clean to allow the delicate flavors to come through. Try to keep a close eye on the fermenting temperature. Don’t allow this beer to ferment above 68º F. For more information about the Big Rock Brewery and its beers, go to www.bigrockbeer.com or call (403) 720-3239.

Big Rock Warthog Cream Ale
(5 gallons, extract with grains) OG = 1.045  FG = 1.011  IBUs = 14 to 16

Ingredients:
3.3 lbs. Coopers light malt syrup
2 lbs. Muntons extra-light dry malt extract
0.5 lb. crystal malt (40° Lovibond)
3.75 AAUs Willamette hops (0.75 oz. of 5% alpha acid) (bittering)
4.4 AAUs Centennial hops (0.5 oz of 8.8% alpha acid) (flavor)
1 tsp. Irish moss
Dry English Ale yeast (White Labs WLP007) or Thames Valley Ale (Wyeast 1275)
3/4 cup corn sugar for bottling

Step by Step
Steep crushed crystal malt in 3 gallons of water at 150º for 30 minutes. Remove grains from wort, add malt syrup and dry malt extract to wort, and return to a boil. Add Willamette hops and Irish moss and boil for 60 minutes. (Adding Irish moss at this time is purely for convenience reasons.) Add the Centennial hops for the last 3 minutes of the boil. When done boiling, strain out hops, add wort to 2 gallons of cool water in a sanitary fermenter and top off with cool water to 5.5 gallons.  (I always use filtered water.)    

Cool the wort to 80º F with a wort chiller or in an ice bath. Aerate well and pitch your yeast. Allow the wort to cool over the next few hours to 68º to 70º F, and ferment for 7 to 10 days. Prime and bottle your beer, then age for 2 weeks and enjoy!

All-grain option: Replace light syrup and dried malt extract with 8 pounds of milled pale malt, and mash your grains at 150º to 152º for 45 minutes. Collect enough wort to boil for 90 minutes and have a 5.5 gallon yield (approximately 7 gallons).  Decrease bittering hops to 0.6 ounces of Willamette to account for increased hop extraction efficiency in a full boil. The remainder of the recipe is the same as the extract recipe above.