“Make Your Best” Highlights
Going beyond the simple question of “what” and instead exploring the “why” will help you understand how to design and brew better beers. Blonde Ale
At the opposite end of the scale of “American” beer styles from the borderline-absurd intense flavors and over-the-top interpretations of classic styles and barrel-aged this and smoked that stands the inoffensive, approachable, nonaggressively flavored American Blonde Ale. This is a beer I love to brew and drink, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I’m at a brewpub and have the option of ordering one and passing on the latest vanilla bean–infused triple bock.
Style: The 2015 BJCP Guidelines describe American Blonde as an “easy-drinking, approachable, malt-oriented American craft beer, often with interesting fruit, hops, or character-malt notes.” The name also gives away that it’s pale! That milquetoast description conceals the reality that you can have a lot of fun with flavor combinations, adjuncts, special ingredients, and more and still make a beer that “fits” in the Blonde Ale category. The malts generally skew away from caramel flavors in favor of toasted malt flavors, and the hops are usually American, but within those very loose strictures, almost anything else goes!
Ingredients: A certain suburban Philadelphia brewery produces a beer every summer that people really seem to love. I suspect it has Victory malt in it. This recipe is for a beer that emulates that beer.
Begin with a 50/50 blend of Maris Otter and Pilsner malt, which should give you plenty of good base-malt flavors without adding much in the way of color. Just to be sure, add some Vienna malt for a bit of light rustic graininess. Finally, use a little Victory malt to bump up the toast in the malt bill. This departs from the “declared” grist from the brewery, but in side-by-side tastings, it holds up well! You should land at about 1.051 and have a barely there, but still noticeable, malt character.
Hopping is simple, but the varieties matter. Bitter with Tettnang at 60 minutes for about 15 IBUS, then add Simcoe and Cascade at 10 minutes. You’ll also add Citra in dry hopping.
Finally, get a hold of some Wyeast London Ale III (1318), which you’ll ferment cool to get a nice light bit of berry ester.
Process: Mash, lauter, sparge, and boil are all standard here. The only real decisions are fermentation temperature and when to add the dry hops. Blonde Ale is (or was, in previous guidelines) a “hybrid” beer. It can be made with either ale or lager yeast, but the common thread is the temperature. You’re either doing a warm ferment with a lager yeast or a cool ferment with an ale yeast. In this case, target 60°F (16°C) and hold there for the first week. After that, let it rise to 70–72°F (21–22°C) to reduce the risk of diacetyl (though it’s not the worst thing in this style!).
I like to add dry hops for just a couple of days before cold crashing and packaging (2.5 volumes of COΨ). The beer’s flavor profile doesn’t require (and the style doesn’t necessarily reward) a big hops nose. It’s more an impression of fresh fruit, lightly present, with a bit of grassy dry-hop character.