Ever Mix Your Beers For The Hell of It?

I often mix my beers to experiment with different taste combinations. Most of the time it works out pretty well.

For example, I have a dark oatmeal stout, an Arrogant Bastard, and a Westvleteren 12 clone kegged. I'll take the Westy 12 as a base, add some of the Arrogant Bastard, then top it off with the oatmeal stout. I really dig the flavor of all three - the heavenly goodness of fine quad, the hop bite from the Chinook, and the dark roasty flavor from the stout.

That had me thinking of combining recipes, especially the Arrogant Bastard & Westy with Chinook hops, candy syrup, Chinooks, and maybe a little chocolate & oatmeal.

Whaddaya think, should I put the pint down ...?

I've taken an overcarbed beer and mixed it with a low carbed beer, to even out the carbonation.

NRS

I have blended a dark strong that was a bit sweet with a dry duppel.

I mix all sorts of stuff- often dark, malty beers with whatever ipa is on tap. Fun to experiment and sometimes will give you a swell idea for a hybrid beer!

The idea of doing this is usually off-putting for me. I get a similar feeling when thinking about mixing italian and chinese food.

"Black and Tan"
A mix of pale ale and a stout. If you use pale lager and a stout it's called a "Half and half"

Its not bad even though prefer not to mix

At one time I had a robust porter and a tart raspberry wheat that made a nice 30/70 blend. Another time I had a blueberry and a chocolate stout that I thought would make a good blend, but I never could find a good proportion. Most of the time though, I haven't really had beers around that screamed out "blend me".

I was going to say black and tan as well. Beer mixes well and can create some really cool flavors. Doing so certainly isn't for the traditionalist though. To many that is like putting a fruit slice on the rim of a hefeweizen.

I have a Citra SMaSH that i find too overbearing, turns out i dont like citra very much, but blended with an aipa its lovely!

I mixed a lot of Porter and IPA last year.

I've mixed my Black IPA with my Raspberry Wheat 70/30 and its fantastic.

at a brew club meeting around Christmas I got passed a chocolate porter coming one way and a kriek coming the other way and my first thought was CORDIAL BEER!

think it was a 75/25 mix, porter to lambic and I thought it was pretty darn tasty

no one else would try it

I had an old IPA that lost the hop flavor and aroma and an orange wheat that was a bit too sweet. Mixing the two resulted in a fantastic beer that I'm really tempted to try and replicate in a single recipe.

We've got a small brew pub near here that does that all the time. He usually has about 5 or so beers on tap and by mixing them comes up with another 5 or 6.

Mixing beers?? THAT'S CRAZY!

Yes, I've done it.

FYI - I saw a Black and Tan kit in the store the other day. 6-pack with 3 Bass Pale Ales and 3 Stouts.

All the time.... I have a Kolsch and an IPA on tap right now... both are good beers but when mixed half and half they are great.

I also BLEND beers in my kegged if on has TOO MUCH of something and the other has TOO LITTLE of something.

I ahave also mixed to kegs to gether and taken them to a party because I wanted to get rid of them of use the newly emptied keg...

Mixing beers is not new at all.
Back in the old days, different batches, strengths, and shades were mixed commonly.

It is yet another great part of homebrewing, the ability to experiment...trying things that are not readily available!

Stone mixes the 3 different bastard beers for its Lukcy Basartd release. It is awsome.
http://www.arrogantbastard.com/lukcybasartd/

matteroftaste said:

I have a Citra SMaSH that i find too overbearing, turns out i dont like citra very much, but blended with an aipa its lovely!

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I guess I'm not the only one!

I had a Belgian single and an Oktoberfest on tap at the same time. 25/75 of those two made a really good blend.

Before I started brewing I had a keg of Newcastle Brown and a keg of Bells Expedition Stout on tap and mixed 50/50 was excellent. We called it Blackcastle.

I had frankenkeg at one point.

I made 7 or so 6 gallon batches. I had a keg with a mediocre pale ale 1/2 full. I added the extra gallon from each brew (several weeks apart) to the franken keg. It went well for a while, but after a blacker than your soul stout gallon was added, it was a porter for the last 3 additions despite them being light colored.

It was interesting, but left me with some nice combinations that will be impossible to replicate.

My Zombie dust and Pliny make a pretty good mix.(they're on taps next to each other so had to do it)

I want to do a strawberry wheat and a peanut butter stout. Black and tan style.... peanut butter jelly time!

I have been doing this for quite some time although I have only mixed within a few specific styles (i.e. PA's and IPA's and IIPA's). Have had some really nice results/surprises and will continue to experiment.

My local brew pub mixes an Apricot Wheat & IIPA about 30/70 that's nice, they call it an 18 since it's twice as good as a #9. it's the only way I can get my wife to drink an IIPA.
I also went to another brew pub that mixed Strawberry Wheat and Double Chocolate Stout and called it a chocolate dipped strawberry. That one was hard to get a good ratio but they did make adjustments as I drank it until it tasted right so no complaints there.
There is a Firestone Walker anniversary beer available that is a blend of quite a few different beers they brew and it is delicious. I'd recommend trying that blend if you can find it.

tripplehazzard said:

I want to do a strawberry wheat and a peanut butter stout. Black and tan style.... peanut butter jelly time!

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With a baseball bat?

Had a black and tan with a Pale Ale from Brooklyn Brewery and a Guinnes not that long ago.

The taste was very different from an ordinary beer. Cant say it was bad, probably need to try it a couple more times since its a very odd taste.

The funny thing was when I ordered it. Did it at a quite ordinary pub and the bartender who never heard of it, got real exicited and had one as well. Later in the evening there where several people aorund the bar drinking black and tan.

NorthRiverS said:

I've taken an overcarbed beer and mixed it with a low carbed beer, to even out the carbonation.

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I did a Belgian Black and tan when one of my bottles of Belgian Imp Stout was flat and I had some Belgian PA on hand. It was pretty good!

Right now I have a very malty Coffee Vanilla Porter on tap next to a very light-bodied, slightly overcarbed Rye Mild. The Rye really makes the Porter pop. Makes me want to brew a Rye Porter next... hmmmm...

I've poured a too-sweet, too-estery, underhopped homebrew IPA on top of half a glass of KBC Porter from Trader Joe's. The commercial porter was not very good - too astringent and burnt, but together they made a nice B&T. I was almost ready too pour it out, but I was able to save it.

The best mix I ever made was a smoked porter with a winter spruce ale, we called it a "burning forest"

I mixed a Strawberry Blonde ale and a Chocolate Milk Stout. It was very good!

Some now traditional styles actually started with people mixing beers in the pub (porter for one.)

Just be careful not to serve any Black and Tan to an Irish person, they won't like it. Nike tried something similar...
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0316/breaking2.html

Great discussion ... it has me thinking about brewing an Arrogant Bastard/Westvletern 12 clone with some oatmeal & dark malts. I'll probably never get to do it but the hybrid brew is tempting.

I blended a Berliner Weisse with a Pale Ale for an all beer shandy. Turned out great.

I did two fresh hop ales at the end of last summer and ended up with an extremely hoppy pale ale and an extremely malty amber ale. The two of them mixed together was amazing.

Somebody earlier mentioned the Firestone Walker Anniversary blends and I need to say that they are amazing! I don't see how a blended beer could get better than that.

for the hell of it? no

purely for scientific research, yes

I gave my boss a Christmas ale I brewed. He drank about half of it, topped it off with miller lite and said "now it's perfect." Guess who doesn't get free homebrew anymore.

I've never really tried mixing that I can remember. Some of these posts sound pretty interesting though. My girlfriend loves snakebites, I think its cider and Bass but I'm not sure.

Bluepoint brewery on long island does a black and blue (oatmeal stout and blueberry ale) One of my favorites!!