Imperial Blonde Ale questions!

So I recently read and interesting article on Glacier Brewhouse up in Alaska and they had an interesting style of beer posted. They made an imperial blonde ale that was single hopped with centennial.

I was curious about making something similar! I already ordered some supplies from one of my favorite sites, Austin Homebrew, and was just wondering if I could get some input on how to craft this beast!

Things in the mail:

1lb Belgian Candy Sugar Clear
5oz Centennial Pellet hops
8lb Briess Light Dry Malt Extract
1 smack pack Wyeast Belgian Abbey II (a personal favorite of mine)


It looks pretty basic (and it is), any suggestions or input is wanted!

Ever looked at hopville' home brew recipe calculator? It's free and I've used it for all of my batches so far and love that site.

http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe

LIking that simple recipe....can you tell me, do you add the Belgian Candy Sugar Clear to the boil and for how long?

I have not checked that out but now I need to! I think I will be adding it to the boil but probably within the last 15 minutes. Some of the extract will go in as a late addition too I think.

Ya, add those at the end, so to keep it light. Imperial anything always makes it better!

WHat time are the hop additions?

I'm not quite sure yet. I know blondes traditionally are lightly hopped but do I need to up the IBU's to match that extra malt? I really want the centennial to come through on this one so I'll probably have quite a few late additions.

I'm not that experienced yet but that doesn't sound like an excessive amount of extract in your recipe to me. But 5 oz. hops is quite a bit imho. I just added only 4 oz. hop pellets to a brown ale (~5.25 gal) and it is tasting really hoppy/bitter (pre-bottle, bottling it today).
Again, I'd refer you to the beer calculator to help answer your question. Did you plug in the beer style you're shooting for and then it tells you, with a big green check mark, if you have all the right amounts for your ingredients including hop additions and timing(when to add). And it shows a sliding scale to the right that tells you where your recipe is from malty sweet to hoppy/bitter. Good luck.

The only problem is that there is no baseline on the two calculators I've tried. Imperial blonde ale isn't listed and American Strong Ale is not listed either. Essentially with all of the malt and sugar the abv comes out at 8.2%. Currently my tentative hop lineup puts me at 45.8 IBU's with a bitterness ratio of 0.594 IBU/SG. Compared to a regular blonde that I've made the bitterness ration is just a bit higher on this one

Sounds like you're in the ball park. Good luck with it.

The ingredients are in today! Hopefully ill have time to get up early and do it friday morning!

Eliterunner1 said:

The ingredients are in today! Hopefully ill have time to get up early and do it friday morning!

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Hmm never heard of an imperial blonde. I just made a blonde and its sitting in the keg right now, tastes great.

The one thing id say is make sure you use enough yeast, as well as the proper type. With high abv beers, once the abv starts to go beyond 6% it can be too toxic for the yeast and kill it off before fully attentuated. Also make sure you ferment at the proper temp, you dont want te yeast to create off flavors.

Thats all i got, good luck!!!

Well I finally was able to squeeze in a brew session before work! Brewed it up and decided to up the late addition hops. I threw in .5 oz of Centennial at the 60 then added about 3.5oz within the last 10 minutes. I also adjusted the malt and the measured OG was 1.068. I threw in 2 packets of US-05 and in less than 6 hours it took off. I am very excited for this one!

So now that I have been looking over my beersmith and after tasting the wort, I think I really went outside most styles for this beer. Should be very light in color, higher in gravity, and due to some miscalculations on beersmith around 52 IBU. Doesn't really fit for a blonde and its color is way off for an ipa...Doesn't really bother me because the wort tasted great! I'm just trying to figure out what to call it...

How about dumb blonde, lol.

sweed said:

How about dumb blonde, lol.

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Haha +1

ha yeah thats a good one. I actually did some research and found out some people are calling styles like this blonde IPA. Very few out there to be sure but they do exist haha.

How did this come out in the end? I'm thinking about brewing the Glacier Brewhouse Blonde clone from BYO and age it to be ready around springtime. Opening Day for the blonde ale, not just for fishing.

I want to know if you were happy with your adjustments and the resulting flavor. I know you thought it was bitter like an IPA initially, did it mellow out after awhile? I'm only on my 8th beer all time and 3rd all-grain, and conquering a big blonde so Bud Light crew can taste a lighter smoother craft beer is my current challenge.

It did turn out incredibly citrusy with those centennials. At first taste I instantly thought orange juice:cross: But the citrus character did mellow out. It wasn't my favorite attempt, but I feel as though I simply don't care for pure citrus bombs. If I were to make this again I would probably lean towards a more noble or spicier variety.

I think the problem with this attempt was that a beer around 8% alcohol needs a bit more complexity or it just comes off as boozy. I mean the malt base is similar to what I would use for a belgian tripple, except it lacks overall yeast complexity.

I did ready the BYO article and then read some reviews on that particular beer. They were a little mixed but seeing as how I haven't had it I can't say much more as to how good it is.

If you love bold citrus flavors then stick with the straight centennial, otherwise try some other hops. Oh and after reading back on my earlier posts, I ended up using US-05 and not the Belgian Abbey II

Eliterunner1 said:

I did ready the BYO article and then read some reviews on that particular beer. They were a little mixed but seeing as how I haven't had it I can't say much more as to how good it is.

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You read what I was reading, that's why I came on HBT looking for more info. What would you replace the centennial with if you brewed it again?

CheshireCat said:

You read what I was reading, that's why I came on HBT looking for more info. What would you replace the centennial with if you brewed it again?

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I wouldn't mind trying something like Crystal or Hersbrucker for a more noble aroma and flavor. I really like how a recent beer turned out with Columbus as flavoring and bittering, not quite as much citrus.