Blonde Ale Centennial Blonde (Simple 4% All Grain, 5 & 10 Gall)

ttokar, I did the same this weekend! First batch of all grain in that hot south Texas sun! Went well except for a chiller failure that turned it in to a no chill batch. Just hosed the outside of the keggle for a while and straight in to the ale pail. Pitched US-05 Monday afternoon and its bubbling heavily through the blow off. Can't wait to try it!

This must be a popular brew in Texas! It was my second AG batch in the hot Houston sun. No less the day after attending the complete and utter failure that was the Houston Beer Fest. But i'm proud to report my batch is fermenting away. I'm hoping to have a short turnaround on this one.

BierMuncher said:

****5 Gallon Batch****

Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.57 gal
Estimated OG: 1.040 SG
Estimated Color: 3.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 21.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amount
7.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
0.75 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (55 min)
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (35 min)
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (20 min)
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (5 min)
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) (Hydrated)


Mash at 150 degrees for 60 minutes.

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How do I determine how much water to mash and sparge with?

dgoldb1 said:

How do I determine how much water to mash and sparge with?

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Just plug the recipe in beersmith or similar. The program will do the calculations for you.

dgoldb1 said:

How do I determine how much water to mash and sparge with?

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A quick and dirty method. Multiply the total grain bill by 1.5. That's your mash amount. Drain that and whatever your total boil volume is, subtract what you got out of the mash, divide the remainder and sparge twice more with that amount. I did this several times and it worked well but whether it's a proper method I don't know.

I brewed this as my second AG, just put it in the keg for force carb and conditioning. I tried to use Beersmith to calculate my water volumes, but I did something wrong and ended up boiling off way too much water. My OG was 1.052 and Notty chopped it down to 1.004! It's a much bigger beer then I had originally planned for at over 6%, but a sample after 3 weeks in the primary tasted fantastic. Going to have to be careful swinging back pints of this one. Can't wait for it to carb and chill for a couple more weeks, thanks for the recipe!

sigurdur said:

Just plug the recipe in beersmith or similar. The program will do the calculations for you.

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There is a program out there called BrewTarget, which has this recipe as one of the default recipes in the program.
It's designed by a HBT member called rocketman768 and it's free and open source.

If you don't have a brewing program yet, you can check this program out, http://brewtarget.sourceforge.net/

Best of luck.

Brewed this AG - BIAB a while back, added some Cherry extract and vanilla beans during boil and a but more in the secondary. Tried it last night.....the extract unfortunately has that medicine taste. Bummer. i should have heeded the warnings I saw regarding that.

It's drinkable, but I'm already planning on doing this again and sticking to the straight recipe.

Just ordered the ingredients for the extract recipe last night! Going to be brewing this one next weekend hopefully! I'm thinking about splitting this batch and letting half sit on some strawberries for a few week or two.

Only a week in the bottle and this brew is very tasty. I brewed, let it sit in the primary for 2 weeks and bottled and this is the clearest, cleanest beer I have ever brewed.

Thanks for the recipe BM. Many gallons of this brew to come!

Brewing this one up today! I do this at least once a year and every time it's fantastic. This time will be even nicer as it'll be the premier running of my new freezer-turned-fermentation-chamber. S-04 at a constant 60*F? Yes please. Gonna be the best one yet!

blip01 said:

Brewed this AG - BIAB a while back, added some Cherry extract and vanilla beans during boil and a but more in the secondary. Tried it last night.....the extract unfortunately has that medicine taste. Bummer. i should have heeded the warnings I saw regarding that.

It's drinkable, but I'm already planning on doing this again and sticking to the straight recipe.

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any thoughts on smoothing out the extract taste at this point? It's kegged and chilled. Maybe brewing another batch and mixing them together?

blip01 said:

any thoughts on smoothing out the extract taste at this point? It's kegged and chilled. Maybe brewing another batch and mixing them together?

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Time cures many ales. Let it sit a while and I bet it cleans up nicely.

BierMuncher said:

Time cures many ales. Let it sit a while and I bet it cleans up nicely.

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good advice. Honestly though I'll likely power through this 5 gallons to free up the keg! haha!

Mine is not a success so far. Probably just needs more time in the keg. Only kegged it a week ago, but it seems to be developing an astringent quality, more so than when it was in the fermenter. Don't know what could be wrong. Hit all temps and gravity readings dead on. Fermented for two weeks at 68 degrees. Then I filtered and kegged.

This happened the last time I made this as well, only that time my sparge water got the mash way too hot, up to 180. That time beer was astringent going into the fermenter and never changed. I wound up dumping half of it.

Hopefully this will mellow out. I just dry hopped half with more centennial.

BierMuncher said:

This should get you a very similar beer:

Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.57 gal
Estimated OG: 1.044 SG
Estimated Color: 3.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 16.8 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amount Item Type % or IBU
5.00 lb Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM) Dry Extract 83.3 %
1.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 16.7 %
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (45 min) Hops 7.8 IBU
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (20 min) Hops 5.1 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min) Hops 2.5 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (5 min) Hops 1.4 IBU
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

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OK, I followed the above recipe except that I did a 3.5 gal boil and topped to 5.25 gals to quicken the cooling phase as my chiller was not quite finished. As I planned for the brew, I learned that with partial boils, the hop additions need to be upped.

Can someone who knows what they are doing in that aspect please let me know what the adjusted hop additions for a 3.5 gal boil need to be. I wanna know how bad I screwed up and what to adjust next time. (I'll reveal my numbers after)

My batch seems to be a bit more bitter than it should be.

Thanks

You probably won't notice much of difference by leaving the hop additions the same. You definitely didn't screw up the beer.

My extract seems to be a little bitter (I did full boil) but I can't tell if it's bitterness from the hops or something else. It just has some sort of aftertaste.

Just brewed up 10 more gallons of this beer over the past couple weeks. The first two batches I made several months ago were a bit off but since then I've worked toward lowering my fermentation temps and this brew is tasting awesome now! Hopefully Revvy won't see this but I was out of brew and cracked one after 4 days in the bottle just for the hell of it and it's even an awesome flat beer!

BierMuncher said:

Time cures many ales.

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MAN, I love puns

Got this bad boy in the brand new freezer-turned-fermentation-chamber at it's chugging away nicely at a constant 62* :rockin:

Sadly, I wasn't able to check OG considering the tube I use for gravity readings got a crack in it. Oh well, I can always get one in time to take FG and calcuate OG based on average attenuation of S-04 at 62*F. SCIENCE!

I just bottled this one up yesterday. Fermented 19 days in primary.

Got 58 12 oz out of the batch and hit the gravity numbers dead on. Hydro sample was delicious. Looking forward to this one. I am leaving on a 2 week plus road trip so this will be waiting for me upon my return. Think it will be carbed by July 4? That will be 4 days shy of 3 weeks.

smokewater said:

I just bottled this one up yesterday. Fermented 19 days in primary.

Got 58 12 oz out of the batch and hit the gravity numbers dead on. Hydro sample was delicious. Looking forward to this one. I am leaving on a 2 week plus road trip so this will be waiting for me upon my return. Think it will be carbed by July 4? That will be 4 days shy of 3 weeks.

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I think you'll be good to go. I don't really think this beer needs the full 3 weeks although I'm sure it gets better with time.

Dgonza9 said:

Mine is not a success so far. Probably just needs more time in the keg. Only kegged it a week ago, but it seems to be developing an astringent quality, more so than when it was in the fermenter. Don't know what could be wrong. Hit all temps and gravity readings dead on. Fermented for two weeks at 68 degrees. Then I filtered and kegged.

This happened the last time I made this as well, only that time my sparge water got the mash way too hot, up to 180. That time beer was astringent going into the fermenter and never changed. I wound up dumping half of it.

Hopefully this will mellow out. I just dry hopped half with more centennial.

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Just an update, a few more days in the keg and this is already mellowing and smoothing nicely. Not sure why it seemed so astringent upon first filtering and transferring to kegs, but now it's tasting nice and only getting better.

I'm too impatient with all these stories of 3 weeks grain to glass. I think 5 weeks is usually a better plan. Must learn patience! Not sure why this is an issue. I have four other beers on tap. LOL.

Dgonza9 said:

Just an update, a few more days in the keg and this is already mellowing and smoothing nicely. Not sure why it seemed so astringent upon first filtering and transferring to kegs, but now it's tasting nice and only getting better.

I'm too impatient with all these stories of 3 weeks grain to glass. I think 5 weeks is usually a better plan. Must learn patience! Not sure why this is an issue. I have four other beers on tap. LOL.

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I agree.. I thought that once I started kegging I'd be drinking beer that much quicker. Sure it's carbonated, but it NEVER tastes like it should. I'm always disappointed when I drink it green, but once it's had 2 weeks in the keg, it's like a different beer.

Just brewed two batches of this with about week in between. The first one has been in bottles for a little over a week now. When I racked the first to secondary it had a very sulphury smell but now after a week conditioning it has lost that smell (tried one just recently) and tastes good. The second batch didn't seem to have that sulphury smell. I'm going to bottle the second batch in a few days so I should be able to get a sneak peek at that one. This is the first time I've ever used Nottingham so I'm not sure what caused the sulphur.. they both fermented kinda high (72/73) though. I've mostly used Safale 05 in the past.

Kaewan said:

Just brewed two batches of this with about week in between. The first one has been in bottles for a little over a week now. When I racked the first to secondary it had a very sulphury smell but now after a week conditioning it has lost that smell (tried one just recently) and tastes good. The second batch didn't seem to have that sulphury smell. I'm going to bottle the second batch in a few days so I should be able to get a sneak peek at that one. This is the first time I've ever used Nottingham so I'm not sure what caused the sulphur.. they both fermented kinda high (72/73) though. I've mostly used Safale 05 in the past.

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I usually get the sulphur smell with Nottingham. It's normal and fades quickly. You really want to ferment under 70 though.

Huh, I've never had sulfur from Notty before. But was your ambient temperature 72/73 or was that the temp of your wort? If that's ambient temp then during the height of fermentation you're probably at something like 80*F. That will cause some off flavors.

Reno_eNVy_446 said:

Huh, I've never had sulfur from Notty before. But was your ambient temperature 72/73 or was that the temp of your wort? If that's ambient temp then during the height of fermentation you're probably at something like 80*F. That will cause some off flavors.

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Ambient. Fermentation temp was probably much higher as you say, unfortunately.

Well at least it's vanished. I've had sulfur action from a different yeast that never went away.

I'm brewing this up for my brewclub's Summer Club Brew (for our eventual Summer Club Party) and adding in a little meyer's lemon zest from 2-3 lemons. Stoked!

Just got done brewing my first batch of this as my third brew ever. Everything went well until I pitched my yeast. I received my ingredients today from AHS and when I opened the box my Wyeast was already swollen so I immediately decided to brew today rather than on Friday. When I pitched my yeast I was expecting to see the inner bag popped but it wasn't. I went ahead and popped the inner bag and dumped what was in the inner bag into my cooled wort. I hope I didn't screw anything up by doing this but I guess I will see in the morning. Right now she is sitting comfortably at 65 in a 67 degree closet.

Just brewed my second batch of this. Thsi was my first brew this year (the last batch was done Sept. 2010). I made a few tweaks to my system but nothing major. I don't know what I did or how I achieved it but I managed 90% efficiency.

I'm curious to see how this batch turns out compared to the first one whioch came in at 75% eff. One thing is for certain...this batch opf Nottty was a hell of a lot healthier. When I brewed this last year is when teh bad batch of Notty was making the rounds. When I tried to rehydrate that packet, it looked like rice grain in the bottom of teh measuring cup. This time around...a cloudy, slurry mess!

John

cmw6300 said:

Just got done brewing my first batch of this as my third brew ever. Everything went well until I pitched my yeast. I received my ingredients today from AHS and when I opened the box my Wyeast was already swollen so I immediately decided to brew today rather than on Friday. When I pitched my yeast I was expecting to see the inner bag popped but it wasn't. I went ahead and popped the inner bag and dumped what was in the inner bag into my cooled wort. I hope I didn't screw anything up by doing this but I guess I will see in the morning. Right now she is sitting comfortably at 65 in a 67 degree closet.

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Quick update. I went home at lunch and checked on my batch and thankfully the blow-off tube I have attached to it is chugging away steadily. It definitely isn't a vigorous fermentation by far but I'm assuming that is since it is sitting at about 65-66 degrees right now.

I'm cleaning out a keg about to throw in a batch of this to get carbing underway. This is after seven days. It may not be as great as it could be but hey the pipeline is dry and this beer is usually not too shabby this young. A few sulphur notes linger but that will fade in a week or so I'm sure.

OK, from my previous thread, you may know I brewed the extract version of this. Last week, it had a strong bitter aftertaste. (Reminder: I love hoppy beers but this was a different kind of bitter). Wife got me a few beers for Father's Day and had a busy working weekdn so the homebrew sat in the keg untouched all weekend. Poured one last night and WOW! Huge difference! Now it is much more the summertime session type beer everyone keeps describing. I can see how this stuff can disappear quick.

Gotta figure out how to mount a small kegerator on my lawnmower!

OK, made an all grain batch (my second AG), fermented for 2 weeks at 72, 3 day cold crash, then force carbed in the keg. Simply outstanding. Easy to see the wild appeal. The color is great, but I do still have a bit of chill haze that should clear up, if the beer lasts that long!

I bottled this ~3 weeks ago after leaving it on the yeast cake in 18°C for almost half a year.
I tasted this yesterday and man.. it may be old, but it's good (not a hint of yeast autolysis even).

Guidry said:

OK, from my previous thread, you may know I brewed the extract version of this. Last week, it had a strong bitter aftertaste. (Reminder: I love hoppy beers but this was a different kind of bitter). Wife got me a few beers for Father's Day and had a busy working weekdn so the homebrew sat in the keg untouched all weekend. Poured one last night and WOW! Huge difference! Now it is much more the summertime session type beer everyone keeps describing. I can see how this stuff can disappear quick.

Gotta figure out how to mount a small kegerator on my lawnmower!

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This was my experience as well. The beer can be bitter/astringent when first kegged, but it mellows very quickly. Maybe just a characteristic of the Centennial hops.

Brewed up an extract version of this yesterday. I had a pound of Munich 10l that I needed to use up. I paired it with 1/2 lb of Lt. Carastan (17L). I left out the carapils and used 3.5 lbs DME.

I went all Centennial. Hit 21.8 IBU's. I was a little darker than the original at 5.5 but still within style guidelines for a blonde. I'm really looking forward to drinking this one.

Does anyone have this recipe in BeerSmith format?

VApatriot said:

I bottled my first batch of this on 5/27, I'll let you know how mine came out in about a month or so.

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Update: I tried my first bottle of this yesterday (6/26) after not quite two full days in the fridge. The only word I can use to describe the flavor is FANTASTIC! I think that a little more time in the fridge will clear up the chill haze but other than that, this one's a definite keeper. Great recipe BM! I'll definitely be making this one again, and again. Absolutely delicious!