All-Grain Blonde Ale

We brewed our first All-Grain beer last night with 13 lbs. of grain and a pound of honey. We used a pound of Crystal Malt and so I believe this beer will be much darker than we were going for.

However.. the OG of this beer (w/ the honey of course) was 1.068! This is higher than the first stout we brewed and im wondering if the OG was so high because of all the honey? Or will this beer end up being a very high alcohol content beer?

13 lbs is a lot of grain for a blond ale, so i'm not surprised you're higher on OG. What type of crystal did you use? Remember that wort will always look darker than it actually is. Beer's law: Absorbance = molar absortivity * concentration * path length

Looks like a 10 gallon recipe. Call it a double blonde

The Crystal was 20L... which is the lighter stuff... we had 10 lbs. of normal barley, a pound of honey malt, a pound of pislner, a pound of 20L Crystal and a pound of flaked maze. Oh and also the pound of honey we added 5 mins before the end of the boil.

It smells extrememly sweet coming out of the fermenter... so we'll see i i guess.. haha

By "Normal Barley" I mean 2-row

That is a lot of grains. I'm brewing up my Willam's Notty Blonde Ambition with 10# 2 row and 1# carapils (5 gallons) and that just makes it in the standards for a blonde.

I find that if you make strong beer that you must have an adequate volume of darker grains and stronger hops to help hide the alcohol. It's the first pint that you have to be concerned about but after that it is less of a concern as you are....

thesweetlycool said:

The Crystal was 20L... which is the lighter stuff... we had 10 lbs. of normal barley, a pound of honey malt, a pound of pislner, a pound of 20L Crystal and a pound of flaked maze. Oh and also the pound of honey we added 5 mins before the end of the boil.

It smells extrememly sweet coming out of the fermenter... so we'll see i i guess.. haha

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What is the purpose of a pound of pils in there?

A pound of honey malt is going to be a lot for this, I'm thinking. Most of the honey will ferment out and this beer will get pretty dry because the honey is mostly fermentable. And the honey malt has an SRM of 25, which will be higher than your 20L

I'm going to imagine when you try this it will be very malty, and probably have a nutty sweet profile to it, but dry. I would think this would be too malty cloyingly sweet for my tastes, but you might like it.

WBC said:

I find that if you make strong beer that you must have an adequate volume of darker grains and stronger hops to help hide the alcohol. It's the first pint that you have to be concerned about but after that it is less of a concern as you are....

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That's not true. Darker grain is not necessary for a big beer. You might have to hop more aggressively, but dark grain won't matter.

carnevoodoo said:

What is the purpose of a pound of pils in there?

I'm going to imagine when you try this it will be very malty, and probably have a nutty sweet profile to it, but dry. I would think this would be too malty cloyingly sweet for my tastes, but you might like it.

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I saw some recipies for Blonde Ales that called for Pilsner malt... and since i don't really know what Pilsner malt is.. I made sure that some of it was included.

I would be fine with a malty/nutty/sweet beer... we only used 1oz total of Cascade hops .5 oz for 60 mins and .5 for 30 min.. so hopefully the hop character will be high enough.

thesweetlycool said:

I saw some recipies for Blonde Ales that called for Pilsner malt... and since i don't really know what Pilsner malt is.. I made sure that some of it was included.

I would be fine with a malty/nutty/sweet beer... we only used 1oz total of Cascade hops .5 oz for 60 mins and .5 for 30 min.. so hopefully the hop character will be high enough.

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Pilsener malt is a base malt, like 2-row. You would use it in place of 2 row, but adding in a pound like you did essentially does nothing. It won't hurt anything either, but it really doesn't need to be there.

Your hopping is also going to seem a little too low for a beer that started at 1.068, but you're learning. It'll get better.

carnevoodoo said:

That's not true. Darker grain is not necessary for a big beer. You might have to hop more aggressively, but dark grain won't matter.

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Well some medium to darker grains will tend hide it more than a truly all pale malt ale. To each his own as I was not trying to argue with anyone but to think a little before making something that is hardly drinkable. Some people don't mind the alcohol and a "big pale" would not be too bad but to others it would be over the top.

So you're ^^ saying that it's just going to be quite bitter and very much alcohol tasting? Hopefully the honey will offset that.. though im not sure that's how it works

Honey will not offset anything. And if your hopping is too low, it will be the opposite of too bitter.

thesweetlycool said:

So you're ^^ saying that it's just going to be quite bitter and very much alcohol tasting? Hopefully the honey will offset that.. though im not sure that's how it works

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No, it won't be very bitter at all for the gravity. It is a little underhopped, if anything. Not for a blonde, but yours is much bigger than a blonde.

@WBC - The IIPAs that I consider to be the best of style are pretty much straw yellow, dry, and intensely hoppy. Dark malt might cover flaws, but if you work on removing those flaws, you don't need to worry about what will cover them up.