Once upon a time, Brew Dude John had a late lunch at a restaurant in Braintree, Massachusetts, USA. They had an NEIPA on draft called Blue Comet from the Widowmaker Brewing Co., located in the same city. John had a great experience with that beer and he looked up more information about it. He found little – just the name of the hops used in the beer: Simcoe and Comet. Since our own beers brewed with these hops weren’t super, John took out an insurance policy of sorts and fermented this year with Omega Yeast’s Cosmic Punch Ale Yeast. Using his memory, he create a plan to clone this beer. Learn more about the recipe and how this beer turned out:

Can your NEIPA get juicer? Uh, yeah.

Blue Comet Clone Recipe Details

Here’s the recipe I came up with for the Blue Comet NEIPA Clone. I used only Comet and Simcoe hops along with the Mike Warren patented grain bill for this style.

Ingredients:

11 pounds (5 kg) of Briess Pilsner Malt
2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) of Flaked Wheat
0.5 pounds (225 g) of CaraPils Malt
0.5o ounces (14 g) of Comet hops – added at 60 minutes to go in the boil
3 ounces (85 g) of Simcoe hops – added as a whirlpool hop with the wort chilled to 185° F for 20 minutes
3 ounces (85 g) of Comet hops – added as a whirlpool hop with the wort chilled to 185° F for 20 minutes
1 ounce (28 g) of Comet hops – added as dry hops at day 3 of fermentation and removed after 3 days of contact
1 ounce (28 g) of Simcoe hops – added as dry hops at day 3 of fermentation and removed after 3 days of contact

Yeast: OYL402 Cosmic Punch

Instructions:

Create a one liter for the yeast a couple of days ahead of time. I use the 1 gram of dried malt extract to 10 ml of water ratio (100 g DME into 1 liter of water). I boiled it for 10 minutes and let it cool. Then, I poured it into a sanitized 1 gallon jug and added the packet of yeast to it.

Crushed all the grains and then mashed at 150° F (66° C) for an hour, boiled for 90 minutes. Fermented at 68° F (20° C) for 10 days. Kegged and forced carbonated.

Outcome:

Original Gravity: 1.068
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV: 7.1%

How Did This Beer Taste?

John can’t say he made an exact clone of it but the flavors he got out of it reminded him of this underrated beer. Mike picked up on the large amount of mushy fruit flavor which included pineapple and other tropical fruit notes.

We were amazed that these hops produced these kinds of flavors. The yeast strain really came through and delivered for this beer. The lack of heavy dry hopping probably caused this beer to be clearer than the original. Maybe next time more dry hops can be used.

Main Takeaways For You:

  1. This yeast strain is great – strong fermenter after being roused in a starter. It made a little bit of a mess. Keep an eye on it
  2. Revisit Comet hops as a variety to be used late in your beer brewing process
  3. Try out Mike’s NEIPA grain bill and ask the question if oats matter..

BREW ON!