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

I am gonna do this again as a 2.5 gallon biab no sparge mash. I have uped the grain amounts some (guessing) due to the lack of a sparge.

I have:
4# 2 row
6oz 10L
4oz vienna
6oz carapils

i plan to add the whole pre-boil volume of water in for the mash plus .1 gallon per # grain absorbtion. would this be right?

thanks

So, I'd been missing a coupler for my wort chiller,which I now have, and have the next few days off. Today I shall brew.

I'm having some reservations with the dextrine malt. I'm told if you steep it by itself, it may add body and a nice head, but the starches will make it cloudy. Will isinglass help this? Or should I use maltodextrin? I know it isn't an equivalent. Or should I just skip the dextrine altogether?

Thanks.

Just blazed through 10 gallons of this at a buddies party last night

this will officially be my next batch. just placed my order for the ingredients! Can't wait to brew this one up! I am going to give the S-04 a shot and try to keep it in the low 60's

Just got done!

My OG ended up being 1.051. I used 6# Northern Brewer Organic LME with a # of carapils. I started with a six gallon boil and ended up about 8oz from the target 5 gallons. Used Nottingham and pitched at 68 degrees. Put it in the swamp cooler, which was at 64.

Anybody know why my OG was so far off? I feel since I used .6# less malt I could boil 1/2 gallon less water as well, and still roughly hit the target.

Oh well, other than the crappy leaky wort chiller spraying ~a teaspoon of water into the wort, I suppose it was a good day. I'm excited to see how the Montueka turns out

iowaherkeye said:

Just got done!
My OG ended up being 1.051. I used 6# Northern Brewer Organic LME with a # of carapils. Anybody know why my OG was so far off?

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6# of LME will get you 5 gallons of 1.052 beer.

I have seen it asked but not answered. What is a good water profile to use?

I just racked this beer... going to keg it next monday to drink on Sat (Jan 14th) Tasted great at this point.. young, flat and warm.. haha. At any rate I used WL Nottingham (Platinum yeast) and crystal 20 b/c the brew store was out of 10. Ill post a follow up with a photo for color when its glassed.

Thanks for the good recipe

brew2enjoy said:

I have seen it asked but not answered. What is a good water profile to use?

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i used 1.33

midfielder5 said:

6# of LME will get you 5 gallons of 1.052 beer.

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I have to disagree. My quick math says it'll yield 1.043 and Brewtarget says 1.042. OTOH, 6# of DME will yield around 1.052.

weird. Good catch. There may have been an error in the hopville calculator for the LME ingredient I randomly picked.

Clifton said:

I have to disagree. My quick math says it'll yield 1.043 and Brewtarget says 1.042. OTOH, 6# of DME will yield around 1.052.

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Yeah, on the last page someone told me 1# DME = 1.1# LME. With that, my 6# LME needed the water to be scaled down a bit. I just dunno why I'm so far off target. . .

BTW, after 4 hours 45 mins the fermentor is bubbling (only every 38 seconds).

I only did the carapils for 30" between 150-160, closer to 160--that's the only thing that could buid the body that high, yes? But I'd imagine that's standard steeping times and temps.

i'm drinking this one two weeks after bottling.does this seem a little hoppy to be a blonde or is some subtle hop character appropriate for the style? i only ask cuz i entered it in a competition under the blonde ale category.

just finished this one up. hit 1.040. all is well. got it in the cube, prob. pitch yeast tuesday or so. man i love no chill.

Brewed up a partial boil recipe I found on an earlier post for the in-laws, and it was a hit! I do have one question. I used 4oz of corn sugar to carbonate and bottled on 12/12/11 and I'm getting bottles where some are carbonated just fine and others are coming out flat. Any ideas?? I used in 12oz & 22oz bottles, where I'm getting better results with the 12's.

Bigger bottles will take more time

Why would bigger bottles take more time? If there is the same amount of headspace shouldn't it be the same? I would think the mixture of sugar and yeast would be consistent so it shouldn't matter. But I may be thinking about it wrong.

More liquid needs to absorb CO2 (maybe?)

Big-J2000 said:

Brewed up a partial boil recipe I found on an earlier post for the in-laws, and it was a hit! I do have one question. I used 4oz of corn sugar to carbonate and bottled on 12/12/11 and I'm getting bottles where some are carbonated just fine and others are coming out flat. Any ideas?? I used in 12oz & 22oz bottles, where I'm getting better results with the 12's.

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Wait a few more weeks. My beers take longer to carb in the winter because my closet (where I store conditioning beers) is quite a bit cooler than summer/spring.

Boiling an extract version right now. 4.3 lbs. DME and 8 oz. Lt. Carastan.

Has anyone aged this recipe? I'm assuming you would just loose some hop flavor/bitterness.

I have two kegs that will be about 3 months old when they are tapped(full pipeline)

Big-J2000 said:

I do have one question. I used 4oz of corn sugar to carbonate and bottled ......, I used in 12oz & 22oz bottles, where I'm getting better results with the 12's.

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That's weird. When I bottle, I usually have a better result in the 16/22oz bottles. I always contributed this to shooting for the low carb content on my part ant the greater liquid volume producing a little more carbonation.

ZBrewski said:

Has anyone aged this recipe?

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Are you kidding? Taste this brew after a few weeks and tell me who has the self discipline to age it? It screams "Drink me now!" Ya know, like when the lady says now or.....Well you know!

I made this beer with motueka hops and brought it to a friends cabin this weekend. It was a huge hit! I got a ton of compliments, even from the guys that are more into BMC. I will definitely be making this again, probably with the recommended hops this time.

thinking about putting mine in the garage tomorrow for three or four days to cold crash it.. then to the bottle..

Did this for my first beer ever turned out great!!! Everyone loved it, kegged it and bottled a 6 pack after a couple hours the only thing left were the bottles and I drank them while brewing my next beer. Thanks for a great first beer!

just kegged my batch this morning... pretty tasty.. Im serving it at a party this Sat.

Big-J2000 said:

Brewed up a partial boil recipe I found on an earlier post for the in-laws, and it was a hit! I do have one question. I used 4oz of corn sugar to carbonate and bottled on 12/12/11 and I'm getting bottles where some are carbonated just fine and others are coming out flat. Any ideas?? I used in 12oz & 22oz bottles, where I'm getting better results with the 12's.

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Make sure you mix the priming sugar well into the wort without oxygenating it. When I used to bottle I noticed this same problem when I did not swirl the wort and priming sugar very lightly with the racking cane to combine when in the bottling bucket. This could be your problem.

Thank you Biemuncher for this recipe. I have made it 6 times in the last year, and every person I know who usually drinks BMC and has tried it always asks "You got any more of that blonde beer left?"

Keeps them away from the good stuff

First attempt at AG, seemed to be an epic failure. Temps all over the place. BIAB not working for me. Sparge water temp off. Did what I could as I went along (think...Titanic....). OG way low. Picked up a pound of DME for the hell of it. Sample tasted pretty astringent, figured I messed it up, but fermented it anyway for the hell of it. Tasted a sample later to do FG....Actually tasted pretty damn good! Bottled it, and am waiting on it. Whan I want to pull a second sample to try warm and flat, it's a good sign. Now, the mastun and braid are finished, many AG videos watched, so am planning on re-brewing to see how that compares. I knew I should have just bought that 20 pound bag of grain........

I thought this was the good stuff.

I decided to brew the extract version of this and made 5 1-gallon batches using different yeasts. The yeasts I used were Munich, Nottingham, Safale US-05, Safbrew S-33, and S-04. For my tastes I liked the S-33 and S-04, but I am not a fan of using the Munich. At least now I know how different yeasts affect the beer now.

anyone ever think about adding some fruit to this beer? apricot puree maybe? or frozen strawberries/raspberries?

I've tried blackberries and cucumbers with this recipe. The former imparted a *very* light hint of blackberry (but I only used a pound or two). The latter got infected because I got lazy with the cukes. So yes, I've added fruit, just not successfully yet .

Beernewb said:

anyone ever think about adding some fruit to this beer? apricot puree maybe? or frozen strawberries/raspberries?

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I racked a 5.5 gallon batch onto 6 15oz cans of tart cherries and kegged it 2 weeks later. The secondary fermentation dried out the beer and left if very tart. Not objectionable, but I prefer something sweeter. Still learning to work with fruit so more of the fruit flavor comes through. Next time I'll try cold crashing in the primary first then rack to secondary and continue to keep it cold to keep the yeast dormant. I keg my beer so I don't need the yeast for carbonation.

The batch that I did last summer I fermented on 3 lbs. of frozen strawberries. They imparted a slight pink hue to the beer, a great strawberry nose, and just a slight hint of strawberry in the finish. Overall I thought it was really good.

there are so many cool things to do with this beer, i just bottled mine today, or i should say my friend loves to bottle my beer for me,

i made the first one with citra, because that wass all i had on hand, but i just bought the bill for this yesterday and will make it as posted, then play with it down the road. Like to work off a base with this beer.. GOOD STUFF

gkal1964 said:

Make sure you mix the priming sugar well into the wort without oxygenating it. When I used to bottle I noticed this same problem when I did not swirl the wort and priming sugar very lightly with the racking cane to combine when in the bottling bucket. This could be your problem.

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Will try this next time (and there will be a next time!). Normally I rack the wort on top of the sugar. I assumed that the wort and sugar would mix evenly as the bucket filled. Guess it couldn't hurt to give it an extra stir just in case.

I brewed this a couple weeks ago and measured OG at 1.040 and now it's down to 1.004! That's the lowest I've ever seen one of my beers. It seems to taste fine; I will probably bottle it soon.

Made this today for my first all-grain batch. Dropped a screwdriver by accident into the wort when I was tightening the hose clamps on my wort chiller. Those 2 things combined...I shall call it:

My First Screw Was a Blonde