First batch · 20 litres · all grain
Everyday Blonde
The beer to have on when other people are coming round. Pale, soft, faintly bready, with just enough hop to finish clean. Nothing to object to and, brewed well, nothing forgettable either.
Original gravity
1.049
at 72% efficiency
Final gravity
1.012
75% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
4.8%
by volume
Bitterness
21 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
3.6 SRM
7 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
4.40 kg
0.22 kg per litre
Brewed to Blonde Ale, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
Freshness of the base malt. There is no crystal, no roast and no dry hop to hide behind, so stale malt is the entire flavour of a bad blonde ale.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pale two-row malt | 3.90 kg | 2 L | 37 ppg | 89% |
| Wheat malt Head retention on a beer with nothing else holding it up. | 0.30 kg | 2 L | 37 ppg | 7% |
| Carapils | 0.20 kg | 1.5 L | 33 ppg | 5% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Willamette | 28 g | 5% | 60 min | 16.3 IBU |
| Cascade | 20 g | 6% | 10 min | 5.1 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Mash at 66C for 60 minutes.
- 02Boil 60 minutes on the schedule above.
- 03Ferment at 17C, which keeps the Kolsch strain clean and quiet.
- 04Cold condition for two weeks near freezing. It will drop bright without finings.
- 05Package at 2.5 volumes.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 66 C for 60 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 72.3 C
- Strike volume
- 13.2 L
- Boil
- 60 min
- Ferment
- 16-18 C
- Carbonate to
- 2.5 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 128 g
- Yeast
- Kolsch YeastWyeast 2565
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 2.5 volumes this one needs about 128 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99