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

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On a side note, this may be a blessing in disguise. Depending on how it turns out, I may dilute it a little to get back closer to the original recipe. Gee, should I mess with the hops? Maybe bump the cascade to 3/4 of an ounce? I think I may do that.
 
Ok, finally done with brew day. I've been up for about 22 hours now, so it was a little tough. Gotta go to work tomorrow, so I can't go to sleep til tonight, but that's another problem altogether. Back to the centennial blonde blunder. I noticed that the mash was ridiculously thick. I had to add two gallons of boiling water to get it up to temp, and thin enough to even stir. Depending on how far off my scale was when I brewed my punkin ale, I could've used anything up to 25 lbs of 2-row on this one. After the boil I had about 9 gallons at 18 brix. I added 3 gallons of distilled water to get 12 gallons at 1.053. I think this will be right up my alley just like it is. Should end up about 5.5% I figure.
 
I have pitched a single smack pack, with no starter, into a similar gravity beer and made excellent beer.

Wait it out, keep calm and drink on
 
My conical is full of punkin ale, so this went into two ale pails. One is bubbling away, and the other isn't too far behind.
 
I brewed this 3 weeks ago and it's great. My LHBS was sold out of centennial so I used 1oz of willamette instead.

image.jpg
 
the cascades i've got are only 6.6%aa. should i up the 60min addition of centennials or just leave it as is. brewtarget shows it coming out at around 18 ibus. i guess i wouldn't taste a huge difference
 
royal1911 said:
I brewed this 3 weeks ago and it's great. My LHBS was sold out of centennial so I used 1oz of willamette instead.
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How do you like it with willamette? I've made the original twice and both have had a spicy (peppery?) bitterness that I don't really care for. I assume that's the centennial. I really like the malt bill for what it is. But for my taste, I think I need to change the first two hop additions and maybe double the amount of the cascade additions.
 
Another batch chugging away in the fermenter. Had to make some subs though, apparently I was out of some stuff. Had centennial and cascade though, so no biggie. Used S-04 for this one. We'll see how soon I can get this in to a keg.
 
Another happy CB customer. Made the recipe exactly as is for our 2nd all grain batch using BIAB. We wanted to bring some homebrew with us on vacation so we brewed with enough time to do 2 weeks primary and 2 weeks in the bottle. Couldn't be happier. The malt and hop character really balances well with the white sand, hot sun, and salty sea air. Cheers!

image-356057061.jpg
 
n240sxguy said:
I think my scale F'd me on this one. Anyone know how much space the roughly 17 lbs of grain for this recipe takes up? I had it in 1 and a half 5 gallon buckets. Actually a full bottling bucket, 6 gallons?, an half a 5 gallon bucket. I'm at 17 brix, and not half way through the boil. Stupid scale! No idea how much grain is in this damn beer! I thought the mash tun looked pretty full.
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In the future go to:

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

They have a great calculator that has kept me out of trouble on some heavy brew days. Basically tells you if your grain will fit in your mash tun (after specifying your mash tun type) along with whatever ratio of water you choose.

Enjoy!
 
Groner said:
In the future go to:

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

They have a great calculator that has kept me out of trouble on some heavy brew days. Basically tells you if your grain will fit in your mash tun (after specifying your mash tun type) along with whatever ratio of water you choose.

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Oh it still fit. That wasn't the issue. It was just super dry at first because I used more grain than I was supposed to, and didn't have enough water for that amount. I've used just over thirty lbs of grain in my mash tun, which is about all it could fit. This was still a little shy of that, but way more than it should've been. I will check out that site to see I what it says will fit matches what I've put in it.

In my post, I was curious how much space in the buckets that amount of grain equated to. Maybe that site will help me figure that out.
 
I just brewed this today. It was my first AG batch. I quite a few problems, but my OG was 1041 so it must have gone OK. fingers crossed it turns out well
 
I've only found whole-leaf Centennial hops so far (Austin HB and my LHBS). If I used whole-leaf instead of pellets, would I adjust the amounts compared to the 0.25 oz @ 45 min and 0.25 oz @ 20 min? Doing the 5.5 gallon extract recipe.
 
mgr_stl said:
I've only found whole-leaf Centennial hops so far (Austin HB and my LHBS). If I used whole-leaf instead of pellets, would I adjust the amounts compared to the 0.25 oz @ 45 min and 0.25 oz @ 20 min? Doing the 5.5 gallon extract recipe.
Click to expand...

I just used brewer's friend and did the calcs for you
http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/

there seems to be a difference of 1.71IBU for switching from pellet to leaf, assuming your AA%s are the same. So I personally wouldn't worry
 
n240sxguy said:
I think my scale F'd me on this one. Anyone know how much space the roughly 17 lbs of grain for this recipe takes up? I had it in 1 and a half 5 gallon buckets. Actually a full bottling bucket, 6 gallons?, an half a 5 gallon bucket. I'm at 17 brix, and not half way through the boil. Stupid scale! No idea how much grain is in this damn beer! I thought the mash tun looked pretty full.
Click to expand...

I use a Polder food scale . The bowl holds a pound . Just dip it in the bag till full . Checked it against my quad beams . It is accurate to the half ounce at least . had it many years . do not think they sell one like this any longer but perhaps one of the others would hold exactly a pound also . sure makes weighing pounds easy .

scale.jpg
 
mgr_stl said:
I've only found whole-leaf Centennial hops so far (Austin HB and my LHBS). If I used whole-leaf instead of pellets, would I adjust the amounts compared to the 0.25 oz @ 45 min and 0.25 oz @ 20 min? Doing the 5.5 gallon extract recipe.
Click to expand...

You need 11% more leaf than pellets . .28 or so in your case . Might want to use a bag . them leafs soak up wort and clog up filters and the siphon tube . Pain in the arse . Although if fresh they sure do have a great aroma but that does not last long in storage and they become useless for sure . I just tossed a few bags of chinook that lost their aroma .
Seems odd that your LHBS does not have centennial pellets .
 
MarcusKillion said:
I use a Polder food scale . The bowl holds a pound . Just dip it in the bag till full . Checked it against my quad beams . It is accurate to the half ounce at least . had it many years . do not think they sell one like this any longer but perhaps one of the others would hold exactly a pound also . sure makes weighing pounds easy .
Click to expand...

I had a bucket sitting in my digital scale. I think it hit part of the frame or something and threw off the weight that way. It's still beer, just not exactly what I intended to make. :) The sample tasted good, so it should be alright. Just a little less hops than the recipe called for.
 
I brewed this a few week's ago. It sat in my fermentation chamber at around 68 degrees for 2 weeks and then closer to 70 for a few days. The gravity is down to 1.014. Any idea if I can expect it to drop another few points down to 1.008? Should I try to rouse the yeast some? Or go ahead and begin to cold crash it?
 
rjthomas21 said:
I brewed this a few week's ago. It sat in my fermentation chamber at around 68 degrees for 2 weeks and then closer to 70 for a few days. The gravity is down to 1.014. Any idea if I can expect it to drop another few points down to 1.008? Should I try to rouse the yeast some? Or go ahead and begin to cold crash it?
Click to expand...

Let it go another 2 days, check the gravity again, if it's 1.014 still, I would just roll with it. If it drops, then let it go another week.
 
Brewing this great recipe today, but since I was a good boy and brewed the first two batches to the letter, I decided to experiment a bit and do some substitutions.

For the first time I'll be fermenting with Nottingham. The others were WLP 001. Subbed 1.5 lbs of 2-row with 1.5 lbs of Vienna malt. I have some milled laying around and want to use it up. Subbed the last two cascade additions with East Kent Goldings. I've been looking for a reason to break that bag open.

Mashing at 149.8 right now.
 
I did this recipe, with a few grain changes, like adding a little victory for some malt backbone to hold up to some bigger hops.

I've done it a couple time, but the latest, was a single hop Mosaic.. Taste great, kegging it today.
 
I'm thinking about brewing this one up next. Would increasing the amount of late addition hops a bit and or dry hoping throw off the balance of the beer? Has anyone tried that or should I just brew it as is for the first time?
 
n240sxguy,
I just put a 50 lb sack of ground 2-row into buckets. I used 11 pounds out of it and it just fit into 2 5-gallon buckets. There was maybe room for 1 more lb. So call it 4lbs/gallon ground weight.

What was your brix/OG?
 
dgr said:
n240sxguy,
I just put a 50 lb sack of ground 2-row into buckets. I used 11 pounds out of it and it just fit into 2 5-gallon buckets. There was maybe room for 1 more lb. So call it 4lbs/gallon ground weight.

What was your brix/OG?
Click to expand...

Well that confirms my fears and my math. Looks like I used about 2.5X the amount of 2-row I needed. 33lbs by my math. By far my biggest F..k up in brewing ever. Brix at about the 4 gallon mark were 25.5. Preboil 16. Post boil 18. I added three gallons of distilled water to dilute it and still had an OG of 1.052 going into the fermenter.
 
n240sxguy said:
Well that confirms my fears and my math. Looks like I used about 2.5X the amount of 2-row I needed. 33lbs by my math. By far my biggest F..k up in brewing ever. Brix at about the 4 gallon mark were 25.5. Preboil 16. Post boil 18. I added three gallons of distilled water to dilute it and still had an OG of 1.052 going into the fermenter.
Click to expand...

It will still be beer and taste good. :mug:
 
I just got it kegged two days ago. I had roughly 12 gallons at 5.5%. It is good. I think I'm gonna dry hop one of the kegs though. I have some cascade pellets. What would be a good amount to use? 2oz?
 
Knocked my third batch of this out last night for a beerfest in October. I just got a new mill, and I forgot that when I did the recipe the last time it was accounting for my LHBS's crappy crush and resulting efficiency in the mid 50s. As a result, instead of coming out with about 5.25 gal. of 1.055ish (I like this one bumped up a bit anyway), I wound up with 5.25 gal. of 1.069. First time I have had to top one off with water. Added about a gallon to get back in the mid 1050s. Also calling this one my Simarillo as I am comfortable with the base recipe now and will start playing with it going foward, subbing out Simcoe and Amarillo on this one.
 
Just ordered the stuff to brew a ten gallon all grain batch, question would it be ok to do a 1oz for each hop addition ? Or would I be better of dry hopping with the extra? Ordered 2 oz for each hop


And what temp for the sparge water? Thanks
 
Jeepinctbrewer said:
Just ordered the stuff to brew a ten gallon all grain batch, question would it be ok to do a 1oz for each hop addition ? Or would I be better of dry hopping with the extra? Ordered 2 oz for each hop


And what temp for the sparge water? Thanks
Click to expand...

I'd stick with the original recipe and stay away from dry hopping. Otherwise, you have a totally different beer.
 

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