blasphemus beer blending?

[fluketamer]

im guilty of blending beers
if i have a beer that i didint hop enough and one thats over hopped ill blend them in the glass. but i feel its wrong and its not the beers fault its mine for using the wrong types or amounts ingredients .

a beer with off flavors can be diluted out when blended but then i feel im really doing injustice to the better beer. especially the diluter and not the dilutee. this should prolly be in the drunken rambling thread.

and i almost never dilute a beer i consider really good.

i even find myself diluting green beers with well conditioned beers to stretch out the good ones and make the keg last longer. (very counter productive) i never said im smart.
my frugality prevents me from dumping slightly off beers so thats part of it.

lots of threads on beer blending and lots of good highly intentional blends like shandys, snakebites, etc.
i love schofferhofer grapefruit and i found a good recipe i am dying to make cause you can just make a wheat beer and then keg it 50/50 with "simply grapefruit" juice.
i like the idea of making a 5 gallon batch and spiltting of a small portion in a mini keg with the grapefruit juice cause if its no good you still have untainted wheat beer.
i notice that the more beers i have on tap at any one time the more blending i do.
even though the title of the thread says blasphemy, im not judging anyone.
just wondering, how many of you are beer blenders like me?

 

[sibelman]

Once in a rare while I'll combine a couple of on-tap beers in a glass for the heck of it.

I get your frugal desire to avoid dumping a kinda sub-par batch. Also, I get that you enjoy beer blends (with fruit juice or whatever).

I guess I'm more of a purist. But blasphemy is too strong a word for your deviant behavior

If it works for you, then do it.

 

[fluketamer]

oh i forgot about the guiness half and half. i first saw my dad and grandpa order one in an irish pub on flatbush ave in brooklyn new york in the 80's. my grandpa was an army surgeon in world war two and when he was stationed overseas in england he learned that they called it and arf - n - arf . and he kept saying it over and over agian that night with a bad english accent.
and i can still here him saying it when ever i drink one or think about mixing one up.

 

[IslandLizard]

I love Black and Tan!

Yup, blasphemy to some, a treasure for those who appreciate it.

 

[PCABrewing]

I love Black and Tan!

Yup, blasphemy to some, a treasure for those who appreciate it.

I was going to post that Black & Tan was the first blasphemy that popped into my mind .
I've never ordered one (or made one) so I can't rightly criticize the blend and certainly not the drinkers of it.
But I've always thought it was more of a performance art than a proper drink.

Everyone likes what they like. Blend away fluketamer.

 

[lumpher]

Black and Tan was what got me hooked into craft beer in the 80's. Guiness and Bass... drank more of that than I care to think about... or can remember...

 

[mac_1103]

I love Black and Tan!

Back when I used to drink bad beer in cheap bars (or was it cheap beer in bad bars?) we would often do a Michelob Light/Michelob Dark version. At least it looked like beer and tasted like something.

These days I only blend for science. It's very tempting if you have one beer that came out a little bit underattenuated and another one that's a little on the thin and dry side.

 

[fluketamer]

lumpher thanks i was trying to remmebr what they had mixed it with. i thought it might have been harp but i think it was before harp was available here in the states

Back when I used to drink bad beer in cheap bars (or was it cheap beer in bad bars?) we would often do a Michelob Light/Michelob Dark version. At least it looked like beer and tasted like something.

These days I only blend for science. It's very tempting if you have one beer that came out a little bit underattenuated and another one that's a little on the thin and dry side.

exactly.

 

[kevin58]

Blending beer is nothing new. Publicans in England have been doing it for a hundred years or longer. Back when "mild" wasn't a style but rather a description of freshness they would often blend mild with stale... which was a word for aged beer not beer that had gone stale.

 

[sibelman]

stale... which was a word for age

Hmmmm... Smells like marketing.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Sometimes blended beers win awards.

 

[kevin58]

Hmmmm... Smells like marketing.

Nope, just a different era and different use of the language. Mild meant young or fresh beer. Stale meant aged.

 

[wetmk]

Sometimes blended beers win awards.

And sometimes they are the most expensive beers on the shelf.

 

[skunkape]

Blending beer is nothing new. Publicans in England have been doing it for a hundred years or longer. Back when "mild" wasn't a style but rather a description of freshness they would often blend mild with stale... which was a word for aged beer not beer that had gone stale.

I think that’s also the origin of the Porter style. Short pulls of several beers to either finish off kegs or hide the fact that you’re giving a beer away.

 

[Beermeister32]

I enjoy IPAs. Sometimes a Double or Triple IPA comes on too strong. On those beers, I’ll dilute it back in the glass with Coors Light. Turns a too strong IPA into one nice and drinkable. Plus you get more IPA to drink!

 

[InspectorJon]

I understand that barrel aged stouts often get blended at the brewery before bottling but that’s kind of a different discussion. I brewed an imperial stout last year and got much better efficiency than I expected. The result was higher ABV and lower bitterness than intended. It was greatly improved by blending with a bitter IPA.

 

[kevin58]

I think that’s also the origin of the Porter style. Short pulls of several beers to either finish off kegs or hide the fact that you’re giving a beer away.

Nope. That's the old misinterpretation of the "three threads" passage written by Obadiah Poundage. It has been misunderstood and misquoted for centuries. For a detailed history and dissection read Martyn Cornell:

https://zythophile.co.uk/2015/06/05/the-three-threads-mystery-and-the-birth-of-porter-the-answer-is/
And Ron Pattinson published and summed up the Obadiah Poundage letter itself:

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2007/09/obadiah-poundages-letter-of-1760.html

 

[odie]

Abita brewery does that in their tasting room.

 

[fluketamer]

I enjoy IPAs. Sometimes a Double or Triple IPA comes on too strong. On those beers, I’ll dilute it back in the glass with Coors Light. Turns a too strong IPA into one nice and drinkable. Plus you get more IPA to drink!

this is a really incredible admission. i understand this but this would have really been frowned upon in the past. although i would never taint my brew with commercial i see how coors lite could be used to thin out beers. its relatively flavorless but still has alcohol and fizz. makes sense. im sure you dont taste the coors in there when mixed with a double or triple.

but theres more to it than that. bmc used to be looked at as trash. aka as alcopop. when i first started homebrewing my brother used to say to me how bmc is so clean consistent and filtered. i used to say yeah they filtered all the beer out of it. lol. but i was also jealous of not being able to make a similar product at home.
now crisp clean adjunct american light lagers are definatley a major part of homebrewing (as opposed to ales in the 80's , 90's) and they are my favorite beer to brew.
this response shows how much homebrewing has changed over the years.

some other strange blendings:
black velvet - stout and champagne - i dont know about this one
spaghett - miller high life with a aperol spritz
trojan horse - stout and coke - this is getting gross
i have tried stout and icecream its not as good as it sounds. i thought this would work especially well with duclaws sweet baby jesus but no.

lots of great responses thanks

 

[mac_1103]

There's always the poor man's Mimosa - Milwaukee's Best with Tang.

 

[sibelman]

I’ll dilute it back in the glass with Coors Light.

Maybe this really is "blasphemy." Even though it makes good sense.

Analogous admission: I've used half vodka half water in certain "double" martini style drinks to reduce the alcohol.

 

[fluketamer]

There's always the poor man's Mimosa - Milwaukee's Best with Tang.

OMG

 

[skunkape]

Nope. That's the old misinterpretation of the "three threads" passage written by Obadiah Poundage. It has been misunderstood and misquoted for centuries. For a detailed history and dissection read Martyn Cornell:

https://zythophile.co.uk/2015/06/05/the-three-threads-mystery-and-the-birth-of-porter-the-answer-is/
And Ron Pattinson published and summed up the Obadiah Poundage letter itself:

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2007/09/obadiah-poundages-letter-of-1760.html

I stand corrected, sir. Consider it banished from conversation.

 

[huckdavidson]

BDSA (quad) w/ Flanders Red or Cherry Lambic - an absolute revolution, a thing of beauty.

 

[dtashmore547]

in my youth in the UK west Yorkshire, a black and tan made of dark mild and bitter 50/50 was a favorite of mine, I still enjoy the same mix with my home brew when I make a dark mild.

 

[hout17]

Nothing new regarding blending. Isn't the original New Castle Brown Ale the result of blending two different beers?

 

[JAReeves]

I regularly blend my sours before bottling. For those that participated in this years 12BOC, the crabapple lambicky had a small amount of barrel-aged passionfruit cider and 2-year old flanders red to add complexity.

 

[IslandLizard]

I regularly blend my sours before bottling.

Now that's a true art!
And way beyond the "blasphemy" of simply mixing 2 finished beers in a drinking glass.

 

[mabrungard]

Blending is how Gordon Strong won 2 Ninkasi awards from AHA. That and he actually won because of having mead and cider medals. He admits that the beers were composites of several beers to get the flavor just right.

But blending is not really taboo. It's just one of the tools in our toolbox. When you have someone like Gordon who has a finely-tuned beer palate and beers that are slightly off, you can make really nice beers.

 

[Bramling Cross]

My ordinary bitters tend to be on the lighter side of the color spectrum, so a little dash of brown porter, brown ale, or mild can quickly create something pleasant and different.

UK ales are sorta like legos in that respect.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

https://boakandbailey.com/2007/05/half-and-half/
https://boakandbailey.com/2015/01/proporval/

 

[madscientist451]

i would never taint my brew with commercial

The comment made my think if the old joke, what’s a “taint”?
I keep Genesee Light on hand so I can taint home made cider and beer as well as other commercial beers.
If I order an IPA at a bar or restaurant and it’s too intense for me, I’ll just get whatever light lager they have to go with it.