Crazy Blonde

Hey folks, i hope i never stole anyone's recipe name.

This is something i've been painstakingly thinking/researching up the last 3 or 4 days waiting for my supplies to show up - there's been a delay.

This is my recipe:

13lbs of 2 row
1 lb of Crystal 20L

1 oz Cascade(7.3) for 60min
1/2 oz Mt. Hood for 10min

IBU ~20-25
Batch size: 6.5 gal
OG 1.058 @ %75 brewhouse eff

The thing is i plan on adding about 3/4 gal of water to the wort to reduce it to 1.052.

Reasoning: I have one big 8 gal fermenter i would like to max out with easy drinking craft beer and my system - grainfather - is limited to 6.5gal of wort.

I was just going to brew 6.5gal but the OG is rather high for what i'm looknig for. I know i can adjust the ingredients but whats the point of having 1lb of grain around?

And i really like to get an easy drinking house blonde ale going and if i can max out my fermeneter all the better, why not?

Side note: I just read up dilution or blending.

No problem diluting if you have clean water to add. Just make sure you use a calculator for the hops that you can enter the boil gravity since it will be higher than usual.

I have never thought about using cascade for bittering.
Have you done that before?
Good luck with the brew.
TG

Troublesome_Gator said:

I have never thought about using cascade for bittering.
Have you done that before?
Good luck with the brew.
TG

Click to expand...

I actually have a blonde type beer in the carboy right now that i used a single hop addition of 60min of 1oz cascade. I will report back how it tastes in 2-3 weeks!

I'm trying to get a BMC like beer for all the homebrew naysayers in my area. Homebrew/kit beer was VERY popular here in the 90's - nearly all corner stores had kits. So everyone thinks homebrew is really bad - and of course they are all experts... Because the way most people brewed the kits and the quailty was bad.

Rather bland beer, maybe use a yeast to add some character?

I make similar beers a lot. The best, for me, is to make it very dry. So i'd recommend a long mash time - 1.5 to 2 hours or more, and my best results come from a temp drop during the mash.

So for example I mash in at 152 and 2 hours later it's down to 145 or so.

Works great!

I've never used Mt hood for flavor hops, but I hear Miller Lite uses Cascade to bitter.

Take that however you like - a confirmation or a warning!

Damn I thought I was gonna see a picture of my SWMBO..LOL


Looks good! What yeast are you planning on using?

Cheers
Jay

Jaybird said:

Damn I thought I was gonna see a picture of my SWMBO..LOL


Looks good! What yeast are you planning on using?

Cheers
Jay

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Thanks, i'm using nottingham. I plan on moving to liquid yeast when i get more confidence harvesting yeast.

Magnus314 said:

I make similar beers a lot. The best, for me, is to make it very dry. So i'd recommend a long mash time - 1.5 to 2 hours or more, and my best results come from a temp drop during the mash.

So for example I mash in at 152 and 2 hours later it's down to 145 or so.

Works great!

I've never used Mt hood for flavor hops, but I hear Miller Lite uses Cascade to bitter.

Take that however you like - a confirmation or a warning!

Click to expand...

So you just stick to bittering hops? I already have one fermenting right now with just cascade has bittering - so i think i will do both to compare. I like mount hood personally.

I'm using nottingham so its going to be prettty dry. My ESB went from 1.056 to 1.008 with notty.

I've never used Mt Hood hops for anything. I use mostly Noble hops or the American versions for these kinds of beers. Sometimes American hops just to mix it up.

Usually I do boil (90 min) and 15 min. additions only. 10 min. would probably be fine. For lighter beers like this the finish hops can really get overpowering fast.

Maybe i'll try 15-20min.

I'm not overly familar with hops but when i was using DME, specialty grains and hops 3 or 4 years back i remeber i took a liking to mount hood.

I like fuggles to so far for my ESB. However, i finally got my hands on some nugget and kent goldings to try to clone the first craft beer - red ale - that i went "wow". I used to crave that beer!

Hey again folks, my batch turned out wonderful. Its very drinkable after only 10 days - for me - but i have most of it locked away to condition.

This time around i will use less brewing water - my boiler didn't work so well with 28L.

Here's the plan: Using brewersfriend in pounds and ounces.

Centennial crazy blonde hack:

12 Cdn 2-row
1 Vienna
1 Carapils
0.5 Crystal 20

0.5 Centennial - 60min + 30min
0.5 Cascade - 15min + Flameout

I will be shooting for a 23L(6gal) batch post-boil of 1.064 and then i will dilute it down to close to 30L(8gal) to 1.050.

Thoughts?