Short notice for a Homebrew Contest. Its five (5) weeks till drop off deadline. Thats not much time. I rarely even look at a fermenter at only five weeks. But there are a few styles that I have confidence in that I can push out in 5 weeks and still get MY stamp of approval.

Blonde ale is one of those. Pretty sure we have all had a blonde ale. Light. Balanced. But definitely craft beer oriented, so there is flavor, there is body, there is hops. All rolled into an easy going, easy drinking pint.

Blonde Ale Vitals:

ABV: 3.5 – 5.5%

OG: 1038 – 1054

FG: 1008 – 1013

IBU 15 – 28

SRM 3 – 6

Some might think brewing a light beer is easy. But it can be tricky to not only get taste out of a smaller grain bill, but be able to taste each ingredient, while not letting any one of them be overpowering. When you can do that, you have a great Blonde ale.

Brewing a Blonde for a competition is always a tough thing. You wanna be in style, but you kinda want to push it in order to stand out as Blonde ales are usually lumped in with other styles that by nature are bigger or bolder. So what I wanna do here is skirt that edge of standing out and sticking out.

First thing I want is a grain bill to get me to 1050. Thats on the higher end of the style, but you want this for a few reasons. Smaller beers tend to feel thin. With more malt you can eek out a bit more body. And also a higher OG lets you boost the hops a bit without feeling out of sync.

The next thing I want from this grain bill is taste. Now this can be a tough choice because there are all kinds of ways to get taste from a malt bill, but you want soft, just noticeable notes. Plain old 2  row gets lost pretty easily, but we can add in a bit of something like Maris Otter to give a bit of backbone. 

Then we will drop in some light crystal malt to keep somewhat of a sweetness, don’t want things to get too dry in a smaller beer like this. Oh,, and because I’m old school… carapils.

Moving to hops. This is the toughest part of a Blonde ale. You want bittering, but not bitter. You want hop taste and a bit of aroma, but not be the focus. 

Bittering is pretty straight forward though. Stay Mid to upper 20 IBU and you are in. 

The taste and aroma though to be honest is a mix of trial and error and personal preference. But having brewed quite a few of these smaller beers, my preference is a 1/2oz at 15 for flavor and another 1/2oz at 5 for some aroma.

(Just a note on the hope for flavoring and aromas. The mid range hops is what you want. I’ve used the 1/2oz 1/2oz in Blonde ales with cascade, fuggles, EKG, Tettenang, Hallertau, saaz, probably more.)

Yeast is the next thought. Lots of room here. While probably anything would work, or make a good beer,, the point of an American Blonde is not to have anything take over. So cleaner yeasts are what you are looking for. US-05 or the Californian strains, are a good bet, Some of the easier strains of Brit yeasts can fit in here as well. Just as long as you’re not throwing tons of esters into this lighter flavored beer.

We mentioned lighter beer quite a few times already. Lighter means lower alcohol to me. And to me, lighter beers always seem to need body. We kinda addressed that with the crystal malt and carapils, but a middle range mash helps a lot. 

Now that I have thought it out a bit, lets put it together. I think for this Blonde ale brew I’m gonna go with..

Prewinter Blonde Ale

5 lbs maris otter

3 lbs 2 row

1 lb crystal 40

½ lb carapils

1 oz of Fuggles at 60 min

½ oz Fuggles at 15 min

½ oz Fuggles at 5 min

 Mash at 152 and pitch a pack of Nottingham