One Gallon Negra Modelo Clone Recipe
Negra Modelo is a dark, Mexican lager. It’s very nicely balanced - not too hoppy, not too bitter and not too malty. It’s got enough of the Crystal and Chocolate malts to ratchet up the flavor and color when compared to a more conventional lager. Hopping it with German hops also seems like a nice touch here.
This was heavily influenced by Clawhammer Supply’s recipe, just scaled down for a one gallon batch.
Ingredients
Grain Bill
Pilsner Malt - 26 oz (79%)
Vienna Malt - 5 oz (15%)
Crystal Malt 60L - 1 oz (3%)
Chocolate Malt - 1 oz (3%)
Hops
Tettnang - 11 g
Hallertau - 6 g
Yeast
White Labs Mexican Lager Yeast (WLP940) - 1 package
Instructions
Click here to review full instructions for your brew day
Heat 0.8 gallons of water to 170 degrees F. Add grains and mash at 150-155 degrees F for 60 minutes. During the last 10 minutes of mashing, fill a second pot with 1 gallon of water and heat to 170 degrees.
After 60 minutes, heat the mash up to 170 degrees F and hold for 10 minutes. Strain the mash into a large container. Sparge the grain in the strainer with the 170 degree water until you collect about 5 quarts of wort.
Bring wort to a boil and add all of your hops - this recipe only requires this one hop addition.
After boiling, cool the wort down to about 70 degrees. Pitch your yeast and let ferment at 65-70 degrees for three days with a blow-off tube. After three days (the bubbling should have subsided by now), replace the blow-off tube with an airlock and let it sit in the carboy for another 11 days (14 total days ).
Bottle or Keg and enjoy!
Optional - Water Chemistry Adjustments
Total water needed for this recipe is 1.8 gallons. To start, I measure that out into one pot and then dissolve in half of a Campden tablet and let that sit for 15 minutes
After that, I add in the following to the water:
Gypsum - 0.9 grams
Calcium Chloride - 3.4 grams
Epsom Salt - 1.6 grams
My resulting water profile looks like this:
Please note: These results are unique to my specific water profile.
After making these adjustments, then I split my water into two pots - 0.8 gallons to be used for mashing and 1 gallon to be used as sparge water.
The only other addition was about 0.25 ml of Lactic Acid added after the first 15 minutes of mashing to lower the pH to 5.45