Sunday, February 1, 2009

Blonde ambition


Made our Belgian style Blonde yesterday. We've made a couple batches in the past that seemed to have been a crowd pleaser and also liked by some refined palates. It's a pretty simple recipe using only Pilsner and wheat malt for the grains, and a couple of spice additions at the end. I incorporated a new varietal of hops called Citra. They are a high alpha Hallertau relative, which were generously donated to some of us from Hutch of Rogue Issaquah as sort of a test run for what these hops have potential for. I'm really digging them so far.

Half of the batch of Blonde will be bottle conditioned and corked, the other half will age with a funky culture I've played around with on a previous batch of saison that was a huge success. I'm excited to see how the lemon and citrus aspects of this beer come through. The picture is what the last one looked like...I was really happy with the head retention and clarity, nice tight bubbles and very sessionable. Cheers!


For more information on new hop strain cultivation, check out this awesome article Mark Emiley wrote for WAHA after attending HopUnions hop school in the summer.

3 comments:

ibrew2 said...

Something like Wonderbrett you think? Sounds cool. Very interesting way to use those hops. I think I'll be doing something WAY less interesting!

Colin said...

Different than Wonderbrett. That was
Brettanomyces Clausenii, I think I'm going to go a little more on the lactobacillus route, maybe use the same mix of stuff we did for the funked up saison. I want the lemony goodness of the beer shine through!

ibrew2 said...

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Lemony Goodness!