A challenge was put forth to brew a blonde ale with a butt load of hops, mostly from my using my beer recipe software incorrectly. It is a style notable for its easy drinking feel, brownish-yellow (very, very light on the brown) complexion, and malt forward taste. In a moment of inspiration (thanks nibbish) I set out to craft the recipe and initially came up with a brew utilizing 1.5 oz. of Simcoe hops for bittering, .5 oz. of Simcoe and 1.0 oz. of Amarillo for flavor. Sadly, a trip to the brewstore turned up empty of Simcoe, so I audibled to Columbus hops (14.4% alpha-acid) for bittering and flavor. So, in the end, my recipe looks as it does after the jump.

7 lbs - Pale 2-row malt from Belgium (Dingemanns)
2 lbs - wheat malt
1 lb - Carapils malt
0.5 lb - Rice Hulls (to prevent the wheat from getting stuck when lautering)
1.5 ounce - Columbus hops (14.4%) added for 60 minutes of boil
0.5 ounce - Columbus hops (14.4%) added for 2 minutes of boil
1.0 ounce - Amarillo hops (7.5%) added for 2 minutes of boil
1 cap full - Irish Moss
1 pkg - American Ale yeast from Wyeast (smack pack)

The stats for the above, at an estimate 70% brewhouse efficiency, give an expected original gravity of 1.051, 80.3 IBUs, and a color of 4.7 SRM.

Fore a beer like this, I'd usually try to go for a lighter body with a lower mash temperature. But, since i'm putting more hops in it than is sane, I upped my temps to a medium body range. So, my target temp was 152º F during a 60 minute mash. At about 6:30 am, I set out to measure out all the water I'd need for mashing and lautering and got it on a heating element. Once the mash water was at the desired temp, into my mash tun it went. With my previous batch, I learned the hard way that some of the mash manifold CPVC tubing should be glued together. When it came time to run the sweet wort out of the tun, the manifold came apart, allowing grain to jam it all up. So me and my buddy had to dump everything from one cooler to another, fix the manifold, then dump everything back into the tun. Made a mess, but it somehow ended up as a really good tasting beer. A little CPVC cement in key locations and I was good to go.

Now, I've dumped my grains into my mash water and given it a jolly good stir. Time to wait. Fortunately, I had the 2013 Timberwolves to occupy my time. After destroying the Golden State Warriors on the back of James Harden's 25 points, I began the sparge. Now that I've modified my system to use a fly sparge, it takes roughly 80-90 minutes to fill up my boil kettle. The goal is to match the sparge water flow rate to the wort flow rate out of the mash tun to keep about 1/2 - 1 inches of water above the grain bed while letting it rinse slow enough to gather as much sugar as possible from the grains. Once that is done, its off to the garage with a beer in hand!

Normally this is my favorite time of the process. I get to sit outside, drink beer, listen to tunes and boil my future creation. Today, however, it felt like I was sitting in a swimming pool full of hot, salty, thick water. I was forced to remain shirtless.  I'm not sure any of the wort was able to boil off since there was no room left in the air for more water. On the plus side, it required less propane to maintain a good, rolling boil. On the down side, the handles of that pot got freekin hot. Since I have to lift it off the burner when the foam rises to prevent a boil over, it was a tenuous situation at best. On the plus side, I was merely starting my first beer at this stage, so the risk of dropping it was lowered.

The boil was pretty uneventful. The air was hot, the music was loud, the hops went in. I did a standard 60 minute boil for this batch, nothing fancy. The hard part was trying to bring it down to a reasonable yeast pitching temperature. I like to get it to about 65º F if at all humanly possible (far more humanly possible in February) to allow the yeast to ferment at temperature that won't produce fusel-y alcohols. I am not using the world's greatest wort chiller, so I was really only able to bring it down to about 73º F on this hot, July afternoon. We'll see how that goes for it.

At the end of the day, I had a batch of beer in a fermenter, a good buzz, and a salmon to smoke (which turned out ok but not great.) Life ain't too bad.

Next time, if I wasn't so long winded as to bore the crap out of everyone, I'll try to include pictures and less words, and hopefully the words I do include will be more of a live feed of thoughts as I go through my day.