Help me improve my Canadian Blonde recipe

I made many great stouts in the past, but blondes seem more difficult to get right. I looked on the web for an all-grain Canadian Blonde recipe (basic blonde similar to a Budweiser). I found a few recipes with similar ingredients, so I tried a small 4L batch trial:

  • 660g pale malt 2-row
  • 165g munich malt
  • 50g crystal 40L
  • 40g Carapils
  • 6g Cascade hops 60 min.
  • 4g Hallertau 10 min.
  • Safale american US-05 yeast

Mash at 67°C for 70 min. The result is too watery, too light, it needs more malt flavor, hops seems okay. People post such flawed recipes on the web, good thing it was only a 4L trial.

I was thinking to replace all the 2-row with Munich malt... What are your suggestions to increase that missing malty flavor?

Topic recipe-formulation all-grain beer homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

That recipe looks good for the style. (1.054 OG) Though is a about 3 srm 30% too dark for the style. Making it a pale. Maybe drop out the crystal.

I think the main issue is the mash temp favors too much beta-amylase producing more fermentable sugars and thining out the beer. Raise mash temp to 68-69°C / 154-156°F to favor alpha-amylase.

If your FG was below 1.013 then your mash temp and active enzymes were the issue of the thin character.

Note: Budweiser is an American lager, nothing like any Blonde ale.

1
answered at

IMHO the problem is the amount of base malt - for that amount I would be tempted to use nearer 1Kg of pale malt. The rest looks "reasonable" although using a subtle noble hop like Hallertau with Cascade might be a contradiction. one might prefer to consider using something like Saaz or Tettnager for the light hop lager taste. Cascasde will give the brew a more hoppy "craft beer" taste.

Replacing all the pale malt with Munich malt should increase the malt flavour but also give a more "Oktoberfest" flavour than a light beer.

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