My Huricane Irene Ale

[FirefightingBrewer]

So when Huricane Irene hit my town I decided to try my hand at brewing my first all grain recipe. It's a hybrid style beer that was based on the Cream of Three Crops recipe found within these forums. The recipe I threw together is below...

7.5 lbs 2 Row
2 lbs Flaked Maize
1 lb Flaked Rice
.5 lbs Cara

1oz Amarillo 60 min
1oz Cascade 10 min

Mash 153 60 minutes with 1.35 qts per pound.
2 Stage Batch Sparge

Put in the primary for 17 days and transferred to the secondary and kept it there for an additional 17 days. Had an original gravity of 1.054 going into the primary and finished out at 1.08, giving it a hefty 6% abv for a real "light" colored beer.

Now my question with this is, how did I do recipe wise? Personally I think I could have reduced the corn by a pound because after tasting it, you can really taste the corn. Its not bad tasting, just noticeable. I like this beer, but it is not my favorite. Anything you could recommend to make this stand-out some more?

Also, I was only able to classify this as an American Pilsner with color, IBU's, etc. Falling within range, does that sound about right?

Look forward to the feedback.

 

[TopherM]

What yeast did you use? You can't really qualify something as a pilsner without using pilsner malt and pilsner yeast and lagering it.

A cream ale is really just a lager/pilsner that has been fermented as an ale instead of a lager, but is not a steam beer. There is a cream ale category in BJCP standards. If you didn't hit those standards, this is likely technically defined as a "specialty" ale.

 

[FirefightingBrewer]

Topher, sorry about not including the yeast. I used White Labs California Ale yeast. I pretty much assumed I would be in the "specialty" category but as I cycled through iBrewmasters BJCP classifications, the American Pilsner was the only thing that was within all the ranges. Knowing that I was not lagering it, i was not sure if I could still classify it as such.

I am happy with my "specialty" brew it is light, slightly sweet (assuming from the corn), and pretty damn refreshing. Just wish I would have had it during the summer months instead of the brown I had on deck. Need to get my brewing cycles down so that I can match the beers with the seasons. At this rate, I should be firing my Pumpkin brew sometime in February..hahaha

Do you have any recommendations for improving it for next time? I was thinking about reducing the corn by half and maybe replacing the Amarillo with Sorachi hops. Just had a local brewery beer with Sorachi, my first time, and it was rather unique.