"Blonde Redhead" A Blonde of a Different Color

When planning a brew I often look at who is going to imbibe with me. We often have people over for dinner and to hang out and with my two tap kegerator, have a couple beers. I cannot get away from brewing experimental styles of beer and this one is no different. The plan is to brew a basic American Blonde ale and hit it with a bunch of raspberries and cherries. This should give it an amazing ruby red color and a unique taste unlike the boring standard American blonde. In the past all of the fruit beers I have brewed have been sour or funky. I have yet to brew a clean fruit beer so I thought this would be a great starting point.

According to Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, " Blonde ale is a smooth, easy-to-drink beer, with low fruity esters and just a touch of malt character." I am basing my recipe off of these basic concepts while using the recipe they provide in the book as a start to modify from. The recipe in the book is 95% American two row malt with a touch of crystal malt for body and color. My recipe is a clone of this exact recipe with the use of crystal 20 instead of crystal 15 to give a little more color. This might be the most basic grain bill I have ever used.

For hopping I am keeping it simple as well. I am using two classic American hops, Liberty and Cluster. These varieties are known for being used in classic American lagers for there clean bittering and aromatic qualities. Since I am going to have a bit of late sugar additions with the fruit I am aiming a little higher for IBUs with an anticipated 26. Using Cluster to bitter and Liberty as late addition should be perfect.

With the desire for the fruity character of the blonde ale to come through and also wanting some strong fruit character from the raspberries and cherries, I have chosen Wyeast 1272 to ferment this. American Ale II is know for leaving a slightly tart finish and also has a lower attenuation than the standard Wyeast 1056 American Ale 1. It should leave a little bit of residual sugars from the fruit which is what I am looking for. I am racking my hoppy agave wheat to secondary today and this leaves me with a huge slurry to pitch this beer directly on. Excellent!

The fruit additions are all going to come at the end of the boil. I know that additions of fruit in secondary will give me more fruit character but I am going to try this for ease and to stay clean. I am using frozen fruit and I know that they go to great lengths to be sanitary but I don't wont to risk making a sour beer. I am going to also add all the fruit in a muslin bag to aid with the transfer into the carboy. I don't want seeds or chunky purée clogging up my funnel or the bottom of the kettle. Hopefully this works.

Recipe Specs:

Anticipated O.G. 1.055 pre-fruit additions
Anticipated IBUs 26
Anticipated SRM 5.5 pre-fruit additions

Malts/Sugars

7.5 pounds American Two Row
10 ounces Briess Caramel 20

Hops/Yeast/Etc.

1 ounce Cluster 6.8% aau @ 60 mins. = 20.24 IBUs
1 ounce Liberty hops 3.9% aau @15 mins. = 5.76 IBUs

52 ounces Cherries and Juice
34 ounces Raspberries

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

2 1/2 tsp Pectic Enzyme and 1 Whirlfloc Tablet

11/14/12 mashed in with 4.70 gallons of 163 degree water to hold mash at 150 degrees for 60 mins. Collected 8.5 gallons of 1.056 S.G. wort pre-boil. Boiled for 90 mins, added fruit additions at 1 min, chilled and aerated for 30 mins.

"Blonde Redhead" 1.058 O.G 26 IBUs

Black Witbier

Sometimes when I am coming up with beer recipes I don't end up brewing them for months or even years. A couple summers ago I was throwing around the idea of opposite styles in one beer. By that I mean, Black IPA, East India Porter, Session Double IPA, White Stout, and the style I thought would be interesting to brew, Black Witbier. I had seen this style only one time before with The Bruery Orchard Black and enjoyed that when I had it. The idea of creating a unique new style of beer that doesn't conform to the BJCP regulations grabbed ahold of me. I just needed a time to brew it.

I looked around my home brewery this week at what malts and yeast I had and the idea of the black wit came back to me. I have an Allagash White culture that I had stepped up three times and have a big slurry waiting for some new sugar to eat. I had read somewhere previously that Allagash only uses there house yeast strain to bottle condition White and that other yeast strains are used to condition their other beers. The yeast ripped through my starters in a day or so and seems pretty strong and clean on the smell so I am going to use it.

I also have some new malt that I haven't used before including Briess Chocolate Wheat and Briess Midnight Wheat. These two malts are pretty interesting. According to the Briess website they should provide amazing dark color without the harsh tannic bitterness that roasted barley usually gives. Midnight wheat in particular has one of the darkest lovibond ratings I have ever worked with at 550 L. I found a recipe in BYO Magazine for The Bruery's Orchard White and it looked relatively simple with all of the wheat character coming from 4 pounds of flaked wheat. I actually had 8 pounds of flaked wheat sitting around from a planned lambic that I probably wont brew so it was perfect. There is also an addition of flaked oats, which should help boost mouthfeel. I am really looking forward to the final color and grain bitterness level of the final product on this one.

In most witbiers subtle spicing is usually present. In The Bruerys Orchard Black they use Chamomile, coriander and orange peel. In their version of Orchard White they use lavender, coriander and orange peel. I wanted to go with something different on this beer. I am using one zested grapefruit with the juice as well and also white peppercorns slightly crushed. I have used grapefruit zest in the past and love the results with more of a tropical and tangy flavor coming through in the final product. I have also used pepper before and with using only 20 peppercorns in a light Brett Saison I barley noticed any flavor. I decided that with a stronger flavor in is beer I would double the amount this time. White pepper is more subtle than black pepper because it has had it's skins removed which hold a lot of those stronger favors.

I tend to experiment when I brew. Why brew something that everyone else has brewed. Forget styles and forget what you think you won't like. Witbiers are typically summer beers, lets see what happens when it's turned on its head and drank in the winter.

Recipe Specs:

Anticipated O.G. 1.057
Anticipated IBUs 19.45
Anticipated SRM 51

Malts/Sugars

7.5 pounds American Two Row
4 pounds Flaked Wheat
1 pound Flaked Oats
1 pound Briess Chocolate Wheat
1 pound Briess Midnight Wheat
1 pound Rice Hulls

Hops/Yeast/Etc.

.50 ounces German Magnum 13.1 aau @ 60 mins. = 19.45 IBUs

1 ounces Grapefruit Zest and Juice @ 10 mins.
.5 ounces Crushed White Peppercorns @ 10 mins.

Allagash White yeast stepped up three times

11/12/12 mashed in with 5.75 gallons of 161 degree water to hold mash at 150 degrees for 90 mins. Collected 8 gallons of 1.052 S.G. wort pre-boil. Boiled for 60 mins, chilled and aerated for 30 mins.

Black Witbier 1.055 O.G. 19.45 IBUs

Parti-Gyle: Imperial Cashew Brown / Honey Nut Brown

In my brewing setup my mash-tun's capacity is around 24 pounds of grain when I mash in relatively thick with a ratio of 1.5 quarts to pounds of grain. This means two things specifically. One, I can brew a 5 gallon batch of high gravity beer that can come in at 1.105 S.G. These are the biggest numbers I have seen on my setup, when I brewed my Scottish Wee Heavy. Two, this means that I can do some pretty cool split batches or parti-gyles. Parti-gyles are when you take your second runnings from your mash and make a completely separate beer from it. It works well with beers that have around the same grain bill ala Barleywine and British Bitter. I have done this before with my Harvest Saison / Raspberry Sour and fairly easy to do.

The idea for this beer came from a beer I sampled a couple years ago called Cashew Mountain Brown from Founder Brewing. The beer was an imperial brown ale aged in bourbon barrels filled with cashews and aged in a mountain cave in Grand Rapids, MI where the brewery is located. I love cashews and I think the brown ale will work well with the rich flavor of them. I decided I am going take the first 1/3 of the runnings which should come in around 1.095 s.g. for this beer and the the second 2/3 of the runnings around 1.060 s.g I am going use for a basic honey brown. The honey should boost the second brown ale up to 1.070 s.g not including the boil off and an addition of light brown sugar to the imperial version should boost this up to 1.101 o.g.

To get the cashew flavor I am looking for I mashed 1 1/2 pounds of dry roasted unsalted cashews along with the grain. I also am using a unique new method taken from October 2012 issue of Brew Your Own, called fat washing. Basically you steep something high in fat in boiling water, freeze that liquid, scrape the fat off the top and use the liquid itself to flavor your beer. I did this exact process with the addition of toasting the cashews with a kitchen torch before I steeped them. Lets hope this works!

Recipe Specs:

21 pounds Crisp Maris Otter malt
1 pound Special B malt
1 pound Briess Caramel 60 malt
.75 pounds Pale Chocolate malt
.5 pounds Caramunich malt

Imperial Cashew Brown Ale Hops/Etc.

16 ounces of Cashew Extract

1 1/2 pounds Organic Light Brown Sugar @5 mins.

1.5 ounces US Magnum hops 13.1 aau @ 60 mins. = 50.34 IBUs
1 ounce Fuggles hops 5.6 aau @ 10 mins. = 4.46 IBUs

Wyeast 1028 London Ale yeast

Honey Nut Brown Hops/Etc.

12 ounces Local Honey

1 oz. Willamette hops 9.3 aau 60 mins. = 26.55 IBUs
1 oz. Fuggles hops 5.6 aau @ 30 mins. = 12.29 IBUs

Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley Ale yeast

11/7/12 Mashed in with 25 quarts of 167 degree water for 60 minutes and collected 4.5 gallons of 1.096 s.g wort and 6 gallons of 1.062 s.g wort. Boiled both, added sugars and cashew extract at the end of the boil. Chilled and aerated both for 30 minutes.

Imperial Cashew Brown 1.128 O.G. 54.80 IBUs

Honey Nut Brown Ale 1.070 O.G. 38.83 IBUs