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Please Help My Summer Blonde Ale

Hey guys,

I was hoping to elicit some advice from you all. I'm trying to brew a lighter, but still flavorful summer ale. I've searched through all of my brewing books, as well as a bit of "Googling" and haven't found a good basis for what I'm after. Would you all mind taking a look at this recipe and offering me a little advice on whether or not this will be tasty, or how I may improve it?

Summer Blonde Recipe:

1 lb. 20L Crystal Malt 4 lb. Munton's Plain Super Light LME 1 lb. Munton's Plain Wheat DME ( which is 55% wheat, 45% barley) 1 lb. Pure Wildflower honey

According to QBrew, this should work out to a starting gravity of

1.046 and finish up at 4.5% alcohol. I'd sort of thought about adding a small amount of corn sugar to lighten it up and add a little more kick, but I've never used honey before, and I'm afraid honey AND corn sugar will make the brew a little cidery.

As for hops, I haven't the slightest idea of what I'll use, but I have about a pound each of Fuggles and EKG. At this point I'm basically just trying to find out if the fermentables sound ok, since I've never used wheat or honey before.

As for the honey, from what I've been able to gather from Google is that I should add the honey after flameout in order to retain the sweet honey flavor?

Thanks again! Brad

Reply to
Art Vandelay
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Sounds delicious to me!! You don't really need to change a thing. However it does seem a little bit more on the orange side rather than yellow, not that there's anything wrong with that.... but if you'd like to lighten up the color a bit, use only 0.5 lb crystal 20L and/or 0.5 lb wheat DME, and add a little corn sugar or rice syrup to make up the sugar (& alcohol). You cannot go wrong with rice syrup. I love the stuff. It's got no color, and no funny flavors that I know of. It might thin the beer like corn sugar does, but I've never noticed anything bad about it. I've even used rice syrup as the base malt (if you can call it that!) in one recipe and it turned out great. Anyway...

Also a couple of quick suggestions with the hops: try 0.5 oz Fuggles for 60 minutes, then 1 oz Fuggles or EKG for 15 minutes, then 1 oz Fuggles or EKG to finish off. This should get you within the good end of the bitterness and flavor ranges. If you want more citrus and fruity flavors, I might also suggest Cascade hops, which may be a little more bitter, so you may want to use less than the amounts I listed. Just rough guesses anyway, with a little help from my StrangeBrew software. :)

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out!

Reply to
David M. Taylor

Summer Blonde Recipe:

1 lb. 20L Crystal Malt 4 lb. Munton's Plain Super Light LME 1 lb. Munton's Plain Wheat DME ( which is 55% wheat, 45% barley) 1 lb. Pure Wildflower honey a starting gravity of 1.046 and finish up at 4.5% alcohol. I'd sort of thought about adding a small amount of corn sugar to lighten it up and add a little more kick, but I've never used honey before, and I'm afraid honey AND corn sugar will make the brew a little cidery.

i am by no-means a expert on this ... but if you are woried about adding sugar to honey THEN DON`T!! .... i think it is true... mix sugar & honey and you get a cider-lemon-YUCK!!!! .. it hapend to me..... if it were me i would just add more honey........ and if its to heavy for a summer beer (freez it/keg-it) and throw out the ice slush... PS... i would go light on the hops..... JMO .....

Reply to
John G

John, forgive me, but your logic is not quite right. How you get from honey to lemon is beyond me. I believe your story and I trust you had that experience, however I believe your experience was an isolated incident, and is certainly not a common problem. I have no idea how it happened. Could be the yeast, temperature, hops, sanitation, who knows. Also, if a beer is too heavy, you surely do not want to freeze it and throw out the ice crystals -- this will just make it heavier and higher in alcohol!! The best way to thin it out is to add corn sugar or rice syrup instead of some of the malt extract. Or just add water. ;)

Reply to
David M. Taylor

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