Category Archives: blonde ale

Claremont Summer Ale Update

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This afternoon I transferred the Claremont Summer Ale over to the secondary fermenter. The gravity right now is 1.014 (down from 1.052), so the current ABV is 5.0%. The beer has a nice straw color and a pretty clean taste (just a hint of ester that I think should mature out). I will probably bottle next weekend, so that the beer will be carbonated, conditioned and ready to drink by Easter (April 8).

The only minor hitch was the stopper for the airlock slipping into the secondary. Fortunately I had a spare, but it will be quite a trick to get the other stopper out in the end.

Claremont Summer Ale

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The brewing season is nearing an end here in southern California, so it’s time to stockpile some refreshing beers for the coming warm months. I also had a few packages of grains and hops pellets sitting around that needed to be used up. The result: a recipe for Claremont Summer Ale. I built the recipe in BeerSmith, using the Blonde Ale style as a rough guide.

Claremont Summer Ale

  • 6 oz. 20°L crystal malt
  • 8 oz. carapils malt
  • 8 oz. Munich malt
  • 3 pounds light dry malt extract
  • 3 pounds pale (extra light) dry malt extract
  • 1 oz. Cascade pellet hops
  • 1 oz. Mt. Hood pellet hops
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss
  • 1 package East Coast Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP008)

 Steps

  • I heated 3 gallons of water to 158° F, and steeped the grains at this temperature for 1 hour (plus or minus a few degrees).
  • Then, I sparged the grains with a gallon of water, bringing the brew kettle up to 4 gallons total. Upon heating the mixture to boiling, I turned off the heat, added the DME, and brought it all back to boiling again. The Cascade hops were added.
  • After 45 minutes of boiling, I added the Irish moss.
  • After 58 minutes of boiling, I added the Mt. Hood hops.
  • After 60 minutes of boiling, I removed all of the hops and chilled the wort.
  • I decanted the mixture (except 0.5 gallons of trub) into the primary fermenter, and topped up with water to 4.75 gallons. The temperature was 68° F, and I pitched the yeast directly in.
  • BeerSmith estimated my starting gravity to be 1.057 (slightly outside the blonde ale style), with 18.1 IBUs, a color of 6.7 SRM, and estimated ABV at 5.5%. The actual starting specific gravity was 1.052, and I expect the color will be a little lighter than estimated too. The most likely reason for this is that I poured off such a healthy amount of trub. The end result is that I should be within the style for a blonde ale (for whatever that’s worth).

California Summer Ale Update

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Tonight I transferred the CSA into the secondary fermenter. The beer has a nice light color, but is nowhere near settled yet. I’ve read that this strain of yeast has low floculation, so we’ll just have to see how the end result looks in terms of clarity.

Right now, the gravity reads 1.010. Slightly lower than I was expecting, so I double-checked the temperature and my measurements, and all is correct. This gives me about 3.3 percent alcohol at present.

The taste of the beer so far is light and mildly hopped. It promises to be very good in the end!

California Summer Ale

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As the winter brew season winds down, I’ve decided to brew one or two batches of something lighter in color and flavor. So, I poked around on the internet to find a recipe that I could adapt for ingredients on hand as well as those available at the local home brew store (which I’m finding has a pretty decent and reasonably-priced supply of most of the basics). Here’s what I came up with!

Ingredients for “California Summer Ale”

  • 1 lb. carapils malt
  • 5 lbs. light dried malt extract (American brand)
  • 1.5 oz. whole Saaz hops (bittering)
  • 0.5 oz. whole Saaz hops (aroma)
  • 4.25 fl. oz. Wyeast American ale yeast 1056 (activator pack)

Steps

  1. I heated two and a half gallons of tap water to 158 degrees Fahrenheit, and steeped the carapils malt (in a nylon bag) for 25 minutes.
  2. I rinsed the malt with warm tap water (also approximately at 158 degrees), to bring the volume up to three gallons.
  3. Then, I heated the water to boiling and added the dried malt extract as well as the bittering hops. These were boiled for 58 minutes.
  4. For the final two minutes of the boil, I added the aroma hops.
  5. I stuck the whole pot in a sink of ice water, and let it cool down a fair bit. Once it was cool, I decanted the wort into my primary fermenter, and topped it up to five gallons with cold distilled water.
  6. Then, I pitched the yeast. I activated the pack yesterday afternoon, and found that it swelled up much more quickly than I was expecting! We’ll see how it does today. I can’t imagine there is any harm from just sitting overnight.
  7. The initial gravity is 1.042. This is a potential alcohol of 5.2 percent or so, but given my usual yield I would predict it will end up being about 3.5 -4 percent in the end.

Ingredients Cost Summary
The light malt extract was $4/lb, for a total cost of $20. The hops were free, the yeast cost $7 for the package, and the carapils malt was $2 for a 1 lb. package. Adding in $2 for the water, and another $2 or so for the ice used to cool this down, I spent approximately $33 on ingredients for this batch. Assuming I’ll get around 48 bottles from this batch, that works out to ~69 cents of ingredients per bottle. Of course, this doesn’t factor in the equipment costs (which probably about doubles things after five batches of beer), but it’s still a pretty good price (under $5 per six-pack!) for what I hope will be good beer.

Other tidbits
For this brew session, I made the leap to purchase a few nylon bags for grain steeping and hops boiling. This is the best brewing investment I’ve made so date! It’s way easier than cheesecloth, ridiculously reusable, and will definitely be cheaper in the long run.