Imperial Blonde

[AFURRYTHING]

hey guys. longtime listener first time poster. i recently brewed up a batch of Imperial Blonde from one of those Brewers Best kits. I'm racking to my secondary after 11 days. My FG is 1.020. I'm wondering about adding 1 cup of dark honey to the secondary. The honey has a nice bittersweet taste. I'm also going to prime with the honey. Am I going to end up too high on the alcohol? What kind of impact on flavor is this going to have? Thanks!!

 

[Calder]

Honey is fully fermentable, so should not affect FG. 1 cup of honey is about 0.5 lbs. That's 18 points, or in 5 gallons about 0.4% additional alcohol. It will help dry out the beer.

The flavor and aroma from the secondary addition will be minimal, there will be some, but what you use to prime will retain most of the aroma, although it will only be in a small amount.

 

[AFURRYTHING]

thanks! By "drying" out the beer, do you mean the beer having a less alcohol taste?

 

[Bacchus]

thanks! By "drying" out the beer, do you mean the beer having a less alcohol taste?

"Dry" means less sweet. That small of an amount of honey would fully ferment and leave no residual sweetness in the final product but would boost the alcohol content a bit. It also takes away from the overall "body" of your beer. Makes it a little more watery, so to speak. Again, that small of an amount is nothing to worry about.

 

[districthophead]

I'm also planning on brewing the BB imperial blonde. I'm a fan of the style, but have always wanted something a little more aggressive, so I'm thinking about tweaking the recipe by adding an additional 1 oz of Cascade hops during the boil -- .5 oz of Cascade as bittering and .5 oz for flavoring.

So this is what my boil would look like...

1. Add bittering hops: .75 Brewers Gold, plus my additional .5 cascade
2. Boil 40 minutes
3. Add 1 lb. DME
4. Boil 5 minutes
5. Add flavoring hops: .5 cascade, plus an additional .5 cascade
6. Boil 5 minutes
7. Add aroma hops
8. Boil final 10 minutes

Thinking about priming with honey too. @AFURRYTHING, how did that go for you? Any thoughts on all of this?

 

[jfrank85]

I used honey in an APA to counter a high floc. American ale II. I predicted 1.015 FG and ended up after the honey addition with 1.012. Perfect for what i was going for, maybe not worth the small abv bump for some styles.

 

[bjbancroft]

I just brewed the same thing yesterday. I want to add some orange. I noticed that a lot of people add orange zest in during the boil, but it's already too late for that, so I'm wondering if it would work if I put some orange slices in during the secondary fermentation. I want it to be more than just a subtle hint of orange, but not necessarily taste like orange juice or anything. My questions are: #1. Will it work? #2. If so, how many pounds of oranges should I use (for a 5 gallon batch)? #3 How should I sanitize the oranges? Will soaking them in vodka do? And if so, how long should I let them soak?

Thanks for your help. Cheers!

 

[Calder]

A lot of orange flavor is in the zest; orange oil.

I'd take a couple of oranges, zest them, and place the zest in a container and cover with vodka. The higher alcohol of the vodka will absorb the orange oil better than the beer. Add everything to the beer after about a week, or add the liquid to the bottling bucket.

2 oranges should be enough. 3 is a lot. I added the zest of 1 orange to 1 gallon of cider ....... way too much orange.

 

[BuddyChrist]

I just began brewing a batch a on a Sunday, a week from today, and transferred it into the glass carboy yesterday. It is the color is actually brown right now, more of what I would expect from the Brewers Best Brown or Nut Ales. Will it get THAT much lighter over the 2 weeks in the carboy and the 2 weeks of bottling? This is my 1st home brew attempt so I'm not sure what the normal progression is from here....

Thanks!

 

[OhReally]

It is the color is actually brown right now, more of what I would expect from the Brewers Best Brown or Nut Ales. Will it get THAT much lighter over the 2 weeks in the carboy and the 2 weeks of bottling?

I've brewed this too, and BB's Imperial Blonde is sort of a misnomer; it's not so blonde. It's toward the amber/brown side. Maybe they should call it dirty blonde.

Unfortunately, no it will not get that much lighter with time. If I were to brew it again and make it lighter colored, I'd perhaps do a late LME addition and use extra-light extract.

All-in-all, it tastes pretty good, though.

Cheers