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

[BigPicture]

If anyone has racked this onto fruit, can you provide some details? I'm thinking of doing a strawberry or raspberry version for SWMBO.

I used the Wyeast 1056 yeast adjustment & racked on top of 40 oz. of raspberries in the secondary. Frozen berries crushed & simply dropped whole in the carboy. I didn't even thaw them, just hit the bags with a rolling pin before I opened them. I kept the beer in the secondary for 10 days but it started to develop some nasties so I quickly racked it directly to the keg, leaving the berries behind. Simply followed Requiem Raspberry's (Link) ideas on fruit beer with BM's wonderful recipe.

It came out FANTASTIC! We threw a party & 5 gallons lasted 4 hours. Great taste, great color, great aroma. Real fruit tastes much better than any extract. This stuff is much better than ANY fruit beer I've bought retail. I'm brewing this again real soon. :rockin:

 

[Chriso]

That's hilarious to me for some reason. BeerSmith tells me that my batch of (per BM's recipe) Cent. Blonde comes out to $12.35 for 5 gallons. $3.15 for the base malt (I bought in bulk sacks at $0.45/lb) - around $1.00 in hops - and $5 for my Notty packet - or if I re-use some yeast out of the fridge, I can bring it all the way down to $8.00 for 5 Gallons. I <3 buying in bulk. I might have to start brewing this as my 'charity beer' for sending to events and stuff, at that price point.

 

[NoTrubble]

I'm still new at recipes but my question is this. What would it take to make this beer stronger in ABV without comprising taste/flavors too much?

 

[JordanThomas]

I'm still new at recipes but my question is this. What would it take to make this beer stronger in ABV without comprising taste/flavors too much?

Mine ended up at 5.2%. Partially because I got high efficiency and didn't top off. I think you could just up the 2-row, or boil it down a little further than usual. Both would leave you with higher gravity beer.

 

[swedishiron]

I'm still new at recipes but my question is this. What would it take to make this beer stronger in ABV without comprising taste/flavors too much?

I made a batch of this last weekend, my first BIAB all-grain. My local brew supply store recommended I bump up the 2-row by a 1lb and also keep a 1lb of DME on hand in case my efficiency was low. Oh we'll, my efficiency was calculated @ 79% after throwing in the DME into my boil. The ABV is now looking to end up around 6.3%.

 

[allenH]

I'm still new at recipes but my question is this. What would it take to make this beer stronger in ABV without comprising taste/flavors too much?

Just upping the abv will throw this wonderfully balanced beer out of wack. I would try to keep the BU:GU ratio around the same for the new ABV. Plug this recipe into a program as is, adjust the malts to up the abv to the desired level,(keeping the same percentages) then adjust the hops accordingly. It will be a totally different beer, but most likely a good one.

 

[Chriso]

You can increase the amount of grain in the grain bill - but if you do that, you must also increase your hop addition amounts or else you will have a beer that lacks balance.

You should use any kind of brewing software (ProMash, BeerSmith, any Beer Recipe website calculator, etc.) to calculate the increase in gravity and bitterness - and you should try to increase the additions carefully while maintaining the same basic specifications. This is the same thing you should do if you have, for example, hops that are vastly different in A.A.% than what the recipe calls for.

To give you an example, I used a quick calculation on the website http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe .

I inputted BierMuncher's recipe exactly as he wrote it in Post #1 for 5.50 Gallons batch size and using the AA% numbers he stated.
If you increase the Original Gravity from 1.048 to 1.065 - it throws off your bitterness quite drastically - the extra sugars mean that each individual hop addition adds less total IBU to the beer.
BUT, furthermore, increasing the hops to exactly the same IBU won't work, because your Gravity Ratio will still be off-whack.

Here you can see what I'm talking about visually.

1. The original recipe. Pay extra attention to these specs: the OG, the visual depiction on the sweet-vs-bitter graph, the Total IBU, the IBU for each single addition, and the BU:GU ratio.

2. The original recipe, with 2-Row increased from 7# to 12# - and NO other changes made.
(I'm ignoring the specialty grains for the sake of calculating bitterness. If you want to replicate the flavor profile, the specialty grains should be increased by a small & corresponding amount.)
See how far out of whack the balance of this beer just went by adding all of that extra base malt? And look at the visual depiction meter - It's WAY off on the Malty end.

3. The new recipe again - but now, I have increased each hop addition slightly to get them back to roughly the same IBU Per Addition.
But do you see how the sweet/bitter graph is still way off of where it was originally even though we added some hops to it?
Simply matching the IBU is not good enough to balance the beer - You really want to find an approximation of the same BU:GU RATIO. This should bring our beer back into balance.

4. The same 12# recipe, but this time I increased the hop additions even further.
The general ratio of each addition to each other should be the same - so should the general flavor profile of the beer - but the total IBU increased in an effort to bring our BU:GU RATIO back into the right range.
(Remember: It's NOT going to be an exact clone, after all, it's stronger in sugar content! It's an entirely different beer, when you get right down to it! Just one that hopefully mimics Centennial Blonde.)

Does that make sense? I hope so! Enjoy!

 

[Chriso]

Lastly, here is a visual aid to show you a comparison between #1-4 as I described above, using the handy Hop Graph that BierMuncher and other posters frequently use... I dimmed the background so you can see what you're looking at.

You can see how wildly out-of-whack #2 and #3 are - and how simply correcting the IBUs based on your BU:GU Ratio is such a good & balanced approach (see how 1. and 4. both sit in the same "part" of the green band, if you were to connect them with a line drawn straight through both points?).

That straight line is "good" in terms of trying to match the Big Version of the beer to the original CB.

The last couple posters who said something about high efficiency and their LHBS telling them to add 1# of malt and 1 more # of DME? You guys are not going to have beers that reproduce the same balance as BM's original recipe. It WILL likely be drinkable and probably even a good beer! But know that, if you brew this again, doing it spot-on the recipe should, in both of your cases, give you a more forward hop characteristic and less malt presence.

The more you know!

 

[cscade]

[all that stuff Chriso said]

Yep.

 

[swedishiron]

The last couple posters who said something about high efficiency and their LHBS telling them to add 1# of malt and 1 more # of DME? You guys are not going to have beers that reproduce the same balance as BM's original recipe. It WILL likely be drinkable and probably even a good beer! But know that, if you brew this again, doing it spot-on the recipe should, in both of your cases, give you a more forward hop characteristic and less malt presence.

Chriso - great information in your last two posts, I really appreciate you taking the time to pass on your knowledge to me a newbie to this slippery slope called home-brewing. Here is a link to my recipe that I mentioned in an earlier post: Centennial Blonde Inspired Recipe. The delta between the recipe and notes/calculations taken during the brew, hopville has it down for 1.062 OG, whereas I measured 1.064 OG and could realistically adjust to 1.065 given the fact the wort was around 80 degrees when gravity was measured. Since it was my first mash/sparge i adjusted to a 90 min boil and actually reduced everything to 4 1/2 gal, I only topped it off to 5gal but should have added another 1/2 gal at the end. That would have really helped, a huge mistake on my part.

In a stroke of beginners luck though, I may of compensated my higher gravity with the hop substitution and bumping up of the amount used in the batch. As usual my impatience to get my first AG session underway, led me to go on and just use the hops I had on hand - 2 oz of cascade pellets and a sampling from a pound of wild cluster hops if picked in September. According to hopville my IBUs increased to 32.9. A better balance, more of an exponential curve as you recommended. So I'm crossing my fingers that what I brewed might end up to be a great beer in the long run, it isn't going to be the true Centennial Blonde.

I'm going to look at this as an educational opportunity and brew another batch of BM-Centennial Blonde but this time following the exact recipe/no substitution for a point of comparison with my creation. Focusing on deltas in malt to hops balance.

 

[Chriso]

Glad I could help. And there is a lot of flexibility in the later hop additions, too, so you can easily bump up, say, the 5 minute addition by multiple ounces without drastically altering the IBU. You will get a clear increase in hop flavor and aroma, but it's much more difficult to measure through data points - it's more of a subjective increase.

But I frequently do exactly as you say - Base my recipe and even change components on the fly, based off of what I have in my inventory. "Using that bag of Cascade means I will have to put 0.5 oz away back into the freezer? Not any more. 0.5 oz at flameout. Done! Used it up."

Of course remember that the science of brewing is only half of the equation, it's possible to make a beer balanced on that graph that tastes like garbage IRL. It's just an aid - but it's one I like using to kind of re-think my recipe from as many angles as I can before I start the brew day. If I know the recipe "looks" good and "sounds" good, and if I know that the vital specs all "look" good on paper and graph, I'm at least feeling better that the beer should start off on a solid footing.

Brew on, brethren!

 

[sr20steve]

Brewed 10 gallons of this just kegged one and its really good. I ended up splitting the batches and pitching notty in one and us05 in the other...I just kegged the us05 and its amazing. I ended up with 1.046 OG and 1.012 FG for 4.5% and the hops still come through just fine. One of my buddies even asked if I did a dry hop (Which I didnt) but I added gypsum to the mash so that might be why my hops are shinning through. I reused this yeast cake for a 20 gallon Kern River Citra DIPA that we brewed yesterday, I figured it would be a perfect yeast to re-use.

 

[forcabrew]

Made 10 gallons of this and it's ready to be kegged / secondary'd. I'm gonna to keep one keg as is and wanted to put some fruit in the other. Has anyone ever added pomegranate juice that you can just buy on the store shelves?

 

[garbageman]

Worth a try. You could split off one gallon and try, then flavor the rest.

 

[he-brews]

Went out this past weekend and bought all the stuff to make this beer, this is my first all grain. Just did a partial about 5 or 6 weeks ago. Mashed about 20 minutes ago and oh my God it already smells great! I cant believe how many posts are on this thread alone!

 

[he-brews]

Ok this is my first all grain and I'm still learning a lot. Once I pulled my wort outta the mashtun yesterday I checked the OG and it was reading 1030 so I panicked a little really wondering if the boil would change it that much so I added a pound of rice solids I had laying around. When all was said and done I carboyed it at 1050? U think it will still taste Blondel?

 

[mjap52]

Ok this is my first all grain and I'm still learning a lot. Once I pulled my wort outta the mashtun yesterday I checked the OG and it was reading 1030 so I panicked a little really wondering if the boil would change it that much so I added a pound of rice solids I had laying around. When all was said and done I carboyed it at 1050? U think it will still taste Blondel?

Sounds like you need to have more faith in yourself. Only way to find out is to try it. It'll probably be a bit strong for a blonde, but it will make beer! The rice may be a bit out of style for this, but whatevs. Try again soon!

 

[cublue]

Ok this is my first all grain and I'm still learning a lot. Once I pulled my wort outta the mashtun yesterday I checked the OG and it was reading 1030 so I panicked a little really wondering if the boil would change it that much so I added a pound of rice solids I had laying around. When all was said and done I carboyed it at 1050? U think it will still taste Blondel?

Sometimes too much info can be a bad thing. I have been brewing 6 months now, and by no means an expert. I admit I don't always take a reading until after the Wort has boiled and cooled. Anytime I try to "adjust" for my mistakes I regret it. Until you get more comfortable, my advice is to let it ride, try it, and take notes at every step. Surprised no one has told you, that when in doubt, to relax, wait a while and have a home brew!

As for your "rice blonde", don't sweat it too much. It'll still be beer! Maybe just not the one you intended. One of my favorite beers was born from a bad brew day, one of my least favorite was a hefeweizen that I tried to "fix"....

Hope it helps, keep reading and take notes on brew day and tasting day!

 

[JordanThomas]

You SHOULD wait until the wort is cooled to take a reading. If you took your reading when it was still hot, you're going to have a much lower reading than what is actually there. Wait until it cools, throw it in the fridge until it reaches calibration temp (mine's 59*) and then take a reading.

 

[he-brews]

Thanks guys I hope it turns out ok its fermenting like a son of a b^*itch!!

 

[orion7144]

I am going to be trying this as my first all grain in the next couple of weeks. My question is when I mash how much water should I use? The whole boil amount?

 

[jdozer]

I mashed at 1.25 quarts per pound of grain, and sparged up to boil volume

 

[Silverbullet]

1.25-1.5 qts per lb is a good rule of thumb.

 

[orion7144]

thanks for the quick replies

 

[he-brews]

It was my first and I only have a 5 gallon cooler so I mashed about 4 1/2 gallons and sparged 2 gallons. Just done this because that's what I was able to and that's about all my pot would handle once I emptied the mash. I think I got about 6 gallons to cook. Turned out great, it smells up my whole utility room in the basement. It has a real sweet-fruity smell so far but its starting to slow down now. Cant wait to keg it!

 

[Guidry]

Once I pulled my wort outta the mashtun yesterday I checked the OG and it was reading 1030 so I panicked a little really wondering if the boil would change it that much

According to my notes, the pre-boil OG should have been 1.035. That's not far off from 1.030 if you were taking a reading hot. Even if you let it cool to about 95-100F, you'd still be looking at a correction of about .005 which puts you spot on. If you took that reading right out of the mash, you may have been even higher, although if that was the first runnings reading, you were probably close to what is expected.

I'm certainly no expert brewer, but if I can offer one bit of "criticism" it would be that your mistake was when you panicked. Remember, this is homebrewing! No need to panic unless you see someone dumping your carboy in the drain.

 

[jdozer]

We aren't building airplanes, relax dont worry. Even a little off on the numbers and it'll still be tasty.

 

[gladius270]

Making a 2.5 gal a.g. batch tonight. Hit the lbhs just right and landed Centennial, Citra, and Galaxy. Original intent was to use Centennial and galaxy. Should I wait squeeze some Citra in late or at flameout?

 

[NoTrubble]

I just bottled this today. It smelled a bit skunky like that Corona stuff. Didn't taste bad though. Time will tell in the next few days but this seems like a beer that will be better enjoyed ice cold instead of room temperature. (SWMBO won't drink ice cold beers. It's a Belgian/European thing)

 

[Chriso]

Well, IMO *NOBODY* should drink ice cold beers! But I get your drift. I enjoy beers a lot more when they're around 55*F, excluding light american lagers of course.

Making a 2.5 gal a.g. batch tonight. Hit the lbhs just right and landed Centennial, Citra, and Galaxy. Original intent was to use Centennial and galaxy. Should I wait squeeze some Citra in late or at flameout?

I'd stick to Centennial & Galaxy if you have enough of both to do it - Citra can sometimes be a little overly powerful and can take over when you didn't mean it to. I think it's best in an IPA where it can really shine as much as it wants to.