Blue Moon Clone

i have been following this thread and finally brewed it per Wayne1, as is -- except i used the zest of 4 oranges/ juice steeped in vodka and added to primary.

we are crushing this keg! make this beer.



btw, i made 8 gallons: 4 g became true Blue Moon & 4 went in another primary with wit yeast wl400, fresh ginger &orange in vodka. i wanted to see which one we liked better. i will be bottling the wit yeast one soon (tasty).

All right. I've spent years brewing before I ever visited a homebrew forum. I looked at one thread, and I'm already posting. That didn't take long.

I love blue moon, and so does my wife. It might be my favorite all time beer. So when I saw this thread, I was hooked. I spent the last week trying to convert this recipe into an extract recipe. I've never done anything other than extract. But then I talked to a brewing buddy who said he would happily help me brew my first all grain recipe. So I brewed it today. I just checked the O.G. before pitching the yeast, and am extremely nervous. The O.G. was 1.020. How is that possible? My lowest O.G. in any of my dozens of extract brews was something like 1.036, but it was usually more like 1.046. Did I do something wrong?

Here was the recipe I used (5 gallons):

5 lbs 2-row
4 lbs white wheat
1 lb flaked oats
1 oz Hallertau (90 min)
3 tsp ground coriander (10 min)
3 tsp ground valencia orange (5 min)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale)

I mashed (is that the right term?) the malt for 1 hour at 155 degrees.

However, I was overly ambitious, and tried a few other things for the first time today, including...

• just bought a new 30 quart brew pot and brewed the full 5 gallon batch
• brewed in my garage using propane on a turkey fryer (in order to get 5 full gallons boiling)
• 1st time using a wort chiller (again, no other way to get 5 full gallons cooled quickly)
• and, of couse, first time doing all grain
• it's also my first time using my new glass carboy, but i don't know how that could affect the O.G. (I marked 5 gallons on the carboy and it is right at that mark)

I'm not overly concerned about alcohol content of my beer, but this won't even qualify as 3.2 beer. I'm mostly just nervous that it won't taste very good. I've found that my extract batches usually end up with a lower O.G. than it "should", but the beer still turns out good (and with plenty of alcohol). But 1.020 is incredibly low and much lower than the "expected" 1.052 I've heard from previous posters. I don't understand it.

Any ideas?

I would look at your mashing temps and procedures. Can you provide more details about the steps you used starting with the grain.

Was the grain fresh?

Was it ground?

How did you mash? In a cooler or just steeping?

Did you sparge and bring the mash temp up to 168F at the end of your hour at 155F? How did you get the wort into the kettle to boil? Without using rice hulls did you have issues with draining you mash tun like a stuck sparge? I usually need to use Rice Hulls to get my tun to drain freely.

Lastly you took the OG reading at 72F I presume?

Since you are starting out brewing AG I would suggest that you measure the OG prior to boiling to decide if you need to add any DME in case you get a low OG for whatever reason. You will need to recalculate the true OG if you measure when the wort is hot. (When you measure hot wort at say 170F you will get a low OG reading that needs to be corrected)

When I went from Extract brewing to AG I did a few partial mash brews to get the hang of mashing without having to totally rely on the AG conversion process to fermentable sugars. This took several batches to get the temps down right and I still have most of my problems with hitting my mash temp correctly without having to do fine adjustments.

Your new processes with a larger boil shoud not affect your OG readings except for the final volume which you say was 5 gal.

I would say that you should be using a 90 minute boil for this batch and your starting boil volume should be close to your kettle size capacity... I boil close to 7.5 gal for this but I shoot for a 5.5 gal final batch size to take into accound that I want at least 5.25 gal in my carboy to finally get 5 in my corny keg (I use a 15 gal kettle to do 5.25 gal batches so Im not sure you are going to be able to safetly boil without boilovers when you get your hot breaks using a 30 Qt kettle. You could do partial mashes in this however.)

I finally would suggest getting Beersmith software which helped me tremendously with making the transition to AG.

ekjohns:

I am going to be brewing Blue Moon AG this weekend using several variations suggested in this thread namely Weyermann Vienna in the place of 2 Row pale but I am also going to use organic Orange Extract in place of the Valencia peel to get more Orange flavor. Have you decided whether the amounts you used were OK or too much? I believe you used 4/6 of an ounce?

The recipe I came up with using Beersmith and a bunch of suggestions in this thread:

4.75# Weyermann Vienna
3.75# Weyermann White Wheat Malt
1.50# Flaked Oats Briess
0.25# Weyermann Carafoam (If I can find it.. Carapils otherwise)
0.16# Crystal Malt 40L

1.25 oz Hallertauer Hops at 60 Min
1.25 oz Ground Corriander - McCormicks at 10 min
0.50 oz Organic Orange Extract at 0 Min

Pitch with Wyeast American Ale (Chico) yeast at 72F
(I make a yeast starter 2 days ahead of brew day)
Ferment at 66-68F for 21 days

Single Infusion Mash, Meduim Body Profile
Mash at 154F for 60 min
Mash Out at 168F for 10 min

Beersmith calculates OG at 1.054 using 70% efficiency
20.8 IBUs and a color of 5.6 SRM
Starting Boil Volume is 7.9 Gal
(Considering 1.25 gal trub loss in my 15Gal Megapot kettle)

Suggestions are welcome

Thanks for the reponse, Bob. Let's see if I can answer some or all of your questions...

I bought the grain from the homebrew store the day I brewed, and I ground them at the store.

We kept the procedure very simple for my first AG brew... maybe too simple? I used my buddy's cooler for the mashing. We put all of the grains in a big bag, and put them in the bottom of the cooler. We heated 3.5 gallons of water up to about 165 degrees and poured it over the grains in the cooler. Once it was all settled, the temperature of the mash in the cooler was right at 155. We closed the lid, and it maintained 155 fairly well. We kept about a gallon of water on the side at 170F (or lower) and twice over the course of the hour, we had to pour a little of the extra hot water over the grains to bring the temp back to 155. It never got below about 152. We kept the temperature as close to 155 as we could for the entire hour, and I thought we did a decent job. At the end of the hour, we drained the contents of the cooler into the brewpot. We poured maybe 1 more gallon of water slowly over the grains to get the last bit of goodness out of them (I assume that is what is meant by sparging). We never brought the temp up to 168 before sparging. When it was all said and done, we used 6 gallons of water so the boil started with 6 gallons minus whatever the grains soaked up. I would guess it was just over 5 gallons. The final amount after the boil was just under 5 gallons. I didn't have any issues with draining freely because we put the grains in a bag. My buddy says he always does it that way, and I know he's made some tasty AG brews.

I did a 90 minute boil on this batch. As I said, the pre-boil volume was probably a little low (5.25 to 5.5 gallons probably), but I was okay with that for this batch. In the future, I will bring it up to 6 - 6.5. In the end, I think I only lost about 0.5 to 0.75 gallons on the boil because my final volume was just a touch below the 5 gallon mark on my fermentor. If anything, this should have increased the OG.

After the boil, I used the wort chiller to bring it down to pitching temp. Once in the fermentator, it was 70F so I took the OG and pitched the yeast.

The only things I can think of that I did wrong were:
1) Maybe I should have done the mash for longer than 60 minutes
2) I didn't bring the temp up to 168 for mash out

I wouldn't think that those two things could account for such a low OG, but maybe there was something else that I'm missing.

Thanks for your other tips. I will definitely take them into account for future brews. At this point, I may retreat back into my shell and do some more extract brews before I try another AG brew. I've been nervous about trying AG, and now I'm a little gun shy. But I would like to figure out what I did wrong so I can fix it the next time I go AG.

DougE,

Welcome to HBT!

Your low gravity could be the result of many things. The crush of the grains might have been a bit coarse. If the grains were not ground much the water could not get in to convert the starches to sugar.

Your rinsing of the grains might have gone too fast. I am old school when it comes to sparging (rinsing). I fly sparge. Which is constantly keeping 2" of so of hot water on top of the grain bed when draining. I take about 45-60 minutes to run the entire amount of water through the grains. I usually start with close to 8 gallons in my kettle and evaporate off 1.5 gallons or so over a 90 minute boil.

I am not sure when I might brew a Blue Moon again, but I should be brewing something in the next couple of weeks, weather depending. Drop me a PM if you would like to travel to the SW Denver suburbs to help me do an all grain batch. Hopefully you might be able to pick up something you can use in your brewing.

A link to my rig in in my signature. I may have some more stuff in my system to make it easier for this old man to do things, but the principle is the same in all grain brewing.

i think the big things are:
1) how well you ground the grain. The finer the grind the better in most cases (you can go to fine though)

the big problems I see is the sparge.

1) 1 gal is not nearly enough. Usually you would mash with about 3 gal of water for 10 lbs of grain then add 4 gal to sparge. With only a gal i think you left alot of sugar behind do to too little of a sparge.
2) i think the bag idea while nice for clean up doesnt all for a good mixture and you can get a lot of dry pockets of grain. Thus the water cant get to them to convert and disolve the sugar so you dont get anything out of them.

Bob: I havent tasted the beer yet since its gone in the keg (i brewed it for a friend this time, but I will be trying it this coming weekend). I added the extract late in the ferm. so I wouldnt blow off all the aroma. At kegging day the orange smell was strong which is what i wanted. I could taste the orange and I got zero bitterness. If anything the flavor was a bit bland but this was because of the yeast. I used US-05 and kept it down into around 64-65F so i dont think I got any flavor from the yeast at all. The color using 2-row with the crystal was spot on so I think vienna may make it a bit too dark and may be a bit too malty.

Don't know how the crush of the grains could be wrong. I used the mill at the homebrew store that everyone else uses.

It sounds like the consensus is that my sparging was too fast/not thorough enough. I could believe that. I was just following my buddy's lead. I know he's brewed a lot of tasty AG brews, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was doing it right. He made the comment that most of his AG brews used closer to 20 pounds of grain and were very high in alcohol content so I don't know if that changes anything. He also said he started using the bag as he increased the quantities of grain because his drain kept getting clogged. It sure seems like a great idea, but if it doesn't work then it doesn't work.

So what is the consensus? Does this beer still have a chance at being somewhat tasty even if the gravities and alcohol content are way off? Also, is 60 minutes long enough to do the mash (not counting the sparging at the end) or should I have gone longer?

Thanks again everyone.

Thanks ekjohns,

I am using Nilo's version of Wayne's original recipe with the Vienna substitution suggestion from Wayne's post #188 with less Crystal 40L. I just got a great deal on a 55# sack of Weyermann Vienna so Im going to try this out using Vienna as well as the additional Flaked Oats at 1.5# sugested to get a better creaminess to the body.

Im not sure I will add the Orange Extract to the fermenter after blowoff as you suggest, I will add the 0.5oz at the end of the boil. I may end up using both the some Valencia peel and the extract. Im not sure the bitterness is something you want to get rid of completely but I do like the orange taste.

One question I have for Wayne is what fermentation schedule you have used for BM. I know you have said the freshness is key here. How many days would you ferment this and what temps. How many days carbed before tasting.

Im using 21 days for primary at 66-68F and 2 weeks force carbing/conditioning at 35F so about 5 weeks to taste.

seems like the right fermentation schedule for a 5 gal batch. If Brewmasters (tv show) taught me anything its the big boys can speed things up like crazy do to the higher volumes. The bigger the batch the quicker its ready to drink

BeerBaronBob, 1.25oz of corriander sounds like too much unless you like spicey. Most of us have used 3 tsp and its perfect.

2 weeks to condition& force carb?
i could never wait that long! i like to chill it overnight, then in the morning-- add the gas at 25-30psi in short bursts, shake the heck out of the keg and drink it the same day. Granted, it does taste better the next day and improves over time, but i gotta have it !

Perfect for my question.....

So I brewed the PM version of the AHS Blue Moon Clone on the 7th. Trying to have the batch ready for consumption at my superbowl party sooo.....

Should I bottle it now....to give it just over 2.5 weeks in the bottle, or let it ferment til this Friday so it has primaried for 2 weeks, and then bottle giving it two weeks until my deadline to carbonate.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Much appreciated.

Guess I need to know if it is indeed ready by taking a reading tonight....but was looking for feedback on what step from this point is more critical...longer in primary or longer in bottles....

Butcherbrew, gravity readings are the only reliable means of knowing when it's time to bottle. I see 2 weeks tossed around a lot as a magic number, but it's really not the case. I would take a sample reading today, and again in a few days to see where it is at. If it's the same you a ready to bottle, if it's still dropping, repeat in a few days. I bet it will probably be ready to go, but you need those samples to be safe and avoid bottle bombs.

It looks like you will at least be Friday or so bottling the brew, but don't give it, I've had beers be drinkable after a week in the bottle... not ideal.... but completely drinkable.

I am hoping to visit brewmasters warehouse this weekend and purchase some ingredients for this.

do you guys think there is much difference between Briess 2-Row Brewer's Malt and Briess organic 2-row in terms of this recipe?

No need for organic. You might want to look into using Weyerman grains.

Thank you Wayne. By the way, if I have not told you... I really really appreciate you taking the time to post this information and weed out the bad information in the thread. I am excited to give this a try.

I only have one AG batch under my belt, and it did not go well - but I think I have read enough now to have a good idea of what I did wrong. Would you say this is a fairly forgiving recipe for a new AG brewer?

i like my pesticides! and I would agree with weyerman grains or anything other than briees (it tastes thin). Even some MO would be nice.

wayne my last couple attempts have been thin (stupid briess grain) and I was thinking about replacing some of the malted wheat with flaked to give it a more wheaty flavor. The malted wheat gives me almost no grain flavor (again cause its briees)

warning: dumb question follows

I am just trying to get my head around the science of brewing now, moving past the typical buy a kit and following the directions stuff.. so here is my question..

What makes Breiss this and Weyerman good? I assumed that Breiss and Weyerman were just the companies packing the grain, and that grain is grain right?

Just asking so I know what to look for. Thanks!

Grain is grain like grapes are grapes.

Where the grain is grown, What country, what part of the county, when it is grown all effect the taste and flavor.

Once it comes out of the ground, it goes to the maltster. It is the maltster that really can bring forth all that the grain can give. Both Briess and Weyerman are Maltsters. Briess uses grain grown in the US and Canada. Weyerman uses grain grown in Europe.

Most of the larger maltster products are for the larger breweries and bakeries. They do not want big flavors. They want bland. That is what you get with most of the American malts. There are some small craft malsters that care about the end products enough to allow the full flavor to come through.

In Colorado, we are fortunate to have the Colorado Malting Company who make small batch malts. As homebrewers, we have to seek out companies that provide us with the flavors we want.

Blue Moon was supposed to be fairly bland. A training wheels beer to get people one step up from industrial lager. To fine tune the recipe to your tastes, I would suggest using European malts. They do take a lot more care in the malt house. The soil composition is a bit different so the grain tastes different. German or Belgian wheat will give more flavor than most American of Canadian grown wheat.

It does come down to who malts the grain and how much care they take. There still are a few small houses that do the traditional floor malting. This is far more labor intensive and it will cost more, but it does produce malt that tastes quite a bit better.

Blue Moon is not what I would suggest as a first all-grain beer. The use of oats and wheat can set the mash quite easily. A pale ale with just good 2-row and maybe half a pound of 60L crystal would be a perfect first all grain project.

midfielder5 said:

2 weeks to condition& force carb?
i could never wait that long! i like to chill it overnight, then in the morning-- add the gas at 25-30psi in short bursts, shake the heck out of the keg and drink it the same day. Granted, it does taste better the next day and improves over time, but i gotta have it !

Click to expand...

Patience my friend. I have found that most of my beers taste better the longer I leave them in the keg to a point. The last few glasses seem to be the best from the keg.


BrewNinja:
Thanks for catching that. If I recall, Wayne's original large batch amount scaled down to about 0.6 oz per 5 gal. batch. On my first batch I used 1.25oz ground Coriander to maintain close to a 3:1 ratio by weight to the Valencia orange peel which I was using 0.4 oz. I like spicy foods so it was fine when I tasted it. I used 0.6 oz in my last batch with 0.2 oz peel and I thought was OK as well. On this batch I think I will use 0.5 oz Coriander at 10 min and 0.5 oz organic orange extract at the end of boil.

Recipe update: I ended up getting Rahr White Wheat Malt as Weyermann only sells Pale Wheat Malt and Dark Wheat Malt which I take to be Red Wheat. Maybe the next batch Ill use the Weyermann Pale Wheat to compare the differences.

DougE:
Hope you got your answers, I think you are on the right track. You may also have water ph issues which are more important for AG. There are lots of resources explaining this online. One good place that is free is Palmer's "How to Brew" http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14.html and http://www.brewwiki.com/index.php/Sparging

Not sure how that beer will turn out. You put a lot of effort into a batch. Dont be scared off ... try a few PM batches.

patience.... harrumphf!
it was in primary for 3 weeks, chilled/kegged/carb'd in 2 days, and killed in 5 more days!

BeerBaronBob said:

DougE:
Hope you got your answers, I think you are on the right track. You may also have water ph issues which are more important for AG. There are lots of resources explaining this online. One good place that is free is Palmer's "How to Brew" http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14.html and http://www.brewwiki.com/index.php/Sparging

Not sure how that beer will turn out. You put a lot of effort into a batch. Dont be scared off ... try a few PM batches.

Click to expand...

Thanks Bob. My initial reaction to this experience was pretty negative, but in the last few days, I've lifted my spirits. Armed with information I've obtained on this forum (and random websites), I feel confident I can figure this AG stuff out. Plus, I'm lucky enough to live 20 minutes from Wayne, and he has offered to let me help him brew sometime.

I'm getting pretty excited about brewing all grain again even if the first attempt was less than perfect. Before I do another AG batch, I will need to get a little more equipment since I borrowed everything the first time around. I've had an old cooler laying around that I never used because I lost the plug. So I cleaned the heck out of it and am starting to look at how to convert it into a mash tun.

One other question I had... is it possible to do smaller batches of beer than 5 gallons? While I learn and experiment with AG, it would be nice to be able to do a few smaller batches so I don't end up with 5 more gallons of beer that may not even be drinkable. Normally, I'd say someone is crazy for wanting to do less than 5 gallons, but I've had to dump out 5 gallons once before, and it almost broke my heart. I felt somewhat comforted when watching the episode of Brew Master's where Dogfish had to dump out $500,000 of beer. Ouch!

Thanks again, everyone. This forum has been great.

4/6 ths of an oz of orange extract is AMAZING! the beer tasted super close to blue moon with an orange already added. The body was a little thin but thats cause i used briess. I will make it again with MO as a base grain. Also, I would probably use 1/2 oz of extract just so I can get 2 batches per bottle. I dont think 1/2 and 4/6 will make much of a difference added after the krausen has dropped. The orange smell is still very nice as it pours. I think I added only 2 tsp of ground corriander so I might try 3 next time. As far as additional changes I would do as follows (to perfect the recipe, which is already damn close):

Replace more of the malted wheat with flaked wheat.
Use Muntons MO instead of briess

Wayne, sorry for my delay getting back to you. Thank you for a very clear detailed explanation of the various grains. It makes perfect sense now, and I now know what to look for

On a side note, anyone know of a chart online detailing most of the common grains as to origin, taste profile etc?

ekjohns, when you say orange extract are you talking about the stuff in the baking isle at the grocery store?

yep, by us we have Kroger grocery stores. I just bought a 1 oz bottle of the generic kroger brand. should only be a couple of bucks

ekjohns said:

yep, by us we have Kroger grocery stores. I just bought a 1 oz bottle of the generic kroger brand. should only be a couple of bucks

Click to expand...

If you don't mind me asking, what is your current recipe? It is ever-evolving for you, correct? Just wondering where you are and how close you believe you are now.

It's been a pleasure following this thread.

Brewed a 5 Gal All Grain batch of this last night. Its bubbling away nicely. I will post my results in 6 weeks when its done. Going to do 4 weeks in primary then condition and carbonate another 2 weeks in keg.

Purchased all my ingredients from northern brewer....

4.75lb pale malt 2 row
3.75 lb white wheat malt
1.0 lb flaked oats
1.0 oz hallertauer Mittlefish @ 90 min
Corriander ground .10 oz @ 10 min
Orange peel .50 oz @ 5 min (dried sweet orange peel purchased from northern brewer)
Wyeast 1056 american ale yeast
Mashed at 151 for 90 min (12 Quarts for mash)
Mash out to 170
Fly Sparged with 169 degree water to 7 gal for 40 min got 73% efficency
Boiled for 90 min
OG 1.052
IBU 16.4

Brewed a 5 Gal All Grain batch of this last night. Its bubbling away nicely. I will post my results in 6 weeks when its done. Going to do 4 weeks in primary then condition and carbonate another 2 weeks in keg.

Purchased all my ingredients from northern brewer....

4.75lb pale malt 2 row
3.75 lb white wheat malt
1.0 lb flaked oats
1.0 oz hallertauer Mittlefish @ 90 min
Corriander ground .10 oz @ 10 min
Orange peel .50 oz @ 5 min (dried sweet orange peel purchased from northern brewer)
Wyeast 1056 american ale yeast
Mashed at 151 for 90 min (12 Quarts for mash)
Mash out to 170
Fly Sparged with 169 degree water to 7 gal for 40 min got 73% efficency
Boiled for 90 min
OG 1.052
IBU 16.4

Just wanted to post a little follow up on how my batch is progressing. I rushed my process a bit as I was try to get something drinkable by the superbowl. I am glad to report that it is more then just drinkable....haha!!!

I did the partial Mash AHS Blue Moon clone. Primaried two weeks, and just tasted two in a bottle after 1 week. This is by far one of the best beers I have made, according to the tasters! LOL...Even after 1 week of carbonation in the bottles, I have some great tiny bubbles and a small but sufficient head. (LOL - no jokes)

One more week of carbing should put this beer in an even better position to be the star of the show at my superbowl gathering!

Definitely a repeat and will make it a point to have this on Tap once I get my kegging system completed.

Good Luck all....this is a keeper.

Regarding the beer thickness, It seems that most of us are still trying to brew something as thick as the original beer without success.
I mashed 2lb of flaked oats and still far from the commercial beer.
I brewed once a beer that I boiled 1 lb of flaked rye and it came out very, very thick.
Have anyone tried that, boil the oats instead of mashing it?

Here are a few pics of my brew-- I did it just as Wayne said (except I used fresh zest; see my post above).

It was perfect!!

midfielder that seems much darker than everyone else is getting can you please post your recipe.

nilo i also tried 2 lbs of oats mashed and the body was still thin. I have never boiled the oats but it might be worth a try

I don't have it readily available// but I took Wayne's % allocations and entered the 3 ingredients into a free online beer calculator, adjusting for my efficiency to get his OG, ibu & srm #s. I used Weyermann two-row per his recommendation.

nilo said:

Regarding the beer thickness, It seems that most of us are still trying to brew something as thick as the original beer without success.
I mashed 2lb of flaked oats and still far from the commercial beer.
I brewed once a beer that I boiled 1 lb of flaked rye and it came out very, very thick.
Have anyone tried that, boil the oats instead of mashing it?

Click to expand...

How would you go about doing that? Do you simply boil the water/grain mixture and then drain the liquid into the kettle?

Or, do you add the boiled mixture to the mash tun with the other grains?

mccabedoug said:

How would you go about doing that? Do you simply boil the water/grain mixture and then drain the liquid into the kettle?

Or, do you add the boiled mixture to the mash tun with the other grains?

Click to expand...

You mash normal without the oats, collect your wort, then add the oat flakes to the boil. Best inside a muslin bag.

ok, went ahead and added 1/2lb of oats to the boil (50min).
It came out very, very thick. Maybe too thick, perhaps 1/4lb should be good enough.

Brewed the followig recipe, a variation of what I brewed before:
4.5# white wheat malt
5# 2 row
2# crystal 10L
1/2# Carapils

Mashed at 158F for 80min
60min 1oz hallertauer
1/4oz coriander
1/2oz sweet dry orange peels
1/2oz bitter dry orange peels
1/2lb oat flakes boiled for 50min
S04 dry yeast

From what I see, adding oats to the boil is the answer to get the tichkess of the real beer.
will report back once fermented and aged.

nilo said:

ok, went ahead and added 1/2lb of oats to the boil (50min).
It came out very, very thick. Maybe too thick, perhaps 1/4lb should be good enough.

Brewed the followig recipe, a variation of what I brewed before:
4.5# white wheat malt
5# 2 row
2# crystal 10L
1/2# Carapils

Mashed at 158F for 80min
60min 1oz hallertauer
1/4oz coriander
1/2oz sweet dry orange peels
1/2oz bitter dry orange peels
1/2lb oat flakes boiled for 50min
S04 dry yeast

From what I see, adding oats to the boil is the answer to get the tichkess of the real beer.
will report back once fermented and aged.

Click to expand...

Nilo, how close did this recipe previously come (color?) to Blue Moon (except for the 'thickness', of course)? It is quite a departure from previous recipes in this thread, especially the 2 lb of crystal and the English-style yeast.