Beer Forum

There's an annual camping trip a friend of mine organizes. We've been doing it since before we had serious jobs and could afford good beer. We've always keep with tradition and bought cheap american light lager (keystone, pabast, bud light, ect). The organizer of the event wants to do homebrew this year, but wants to keep with tradition and make it cheap. We are thinking about using the follow recipe. Does it look quaffable, or am i going to end up putting the camp fire out with it on the last day.

18 Gallons (times 3)
Mash temp 150 for 60
Raise temp to 168 at sparage
5.6% abv
21 IBU's

34lbs Great Western 2row
1.5oz Magnum @ 60 minutes
2oz Mt hood @ 5 min
2oz crystal @ 5 min
Wyeast 1056

We want to stick with ANY combination of the following hops:

Cascade
Chinook
Magnum
Mt Hood
Crystal
Willamette

These are hops that we already have too many of. Since we wouldn't have to buy more, it fits with the cheap theme.

I would probably up the mash temp to 152 to try and give it a little more body. Maybe throw in a pound of crystal 15 for a bit more body as well. Hell at that point if you just hopped it to about 25IBUs you're looking at a pretty decent blonde ale recipe... Wouldn't even need to worry about late hop additions... all at 60. Bam. Cheap and simple.

mors wrote:I would probably up the mash temp to 152 to try and give it a little more body. Maybe throw in a pound of crystal 15 for a bit more body as well. Hell at that point if you just hopped it to about 25IBUs you're looking at a pretty decent blonde ale recipe... Wouldn't even need to worry about late hop additions... all at 60. Bam. Cheap and simple.

Are you suggesting the eliminating the late hops to keep it simple, or would the aroma not be pleasant in a light beer like this?

I prefer my blonde ale to have a low hop aroma and a light hop flavor. The style allows for low to medium hop aroma and light to moderate hop flavor. Basically it's meant to be an easy drinking beer and lots of hops can get in the way of that.

I like my blonde ales to have a nice solid APA-like hop flavor and aroma, but with a lower target clean bitterness. So, given your hops you listed, I'd late hop with a mix of the Cascade and Willamette at around 15 and 2 and back adjust the bittering addition so the total IBUs hit at about 25. Bittering would be using either the Magnum, Crystal or Mt. Hood. All 3 would be nice and clean.

I'm making three batches so I'll try experimenting with the hops.

I do a couple different blondes. My lower ABV I keep around 16 IBU. The higher ABVs are in the 20's. I think you're looking good, but I would make one exception - I keep my hops very simple in those recipes. 1 variety for bittering, 1 variety for everything else. Perhaps a touch of a 2nd hop in the 'everything else' category, but I would still focus it towards a single variety.