Beach Cruiser Blonde

I brewed ten gallons of Beach Cruiser Blonde ale, yesterday. This is my first go-round with this beer, one I'd named long before I had fully conceived what it would be like. The blonde ale style never has been a personal favorite, and I usually turn to a crisp pale lager or spicy wheat beer when looking for a summer thirst quencher. But a recent family trip to North County San Diego led us, inevitably, to Pizza Port Carlsbad, and I found a blonde ale that really hit the spot. I was too busy enjoying the beer to recall its name, and I didn't bother trying to track down a brewer, either. But what made this particular blonde so alluring was a subdued clove spice reminiscent of a Bavarian hefeweizen. With a round of Bavarian weissbiers already planned at the home brewery, I knew then and there exactly what I would be brewing soon. After all, I'm German-American (more or less), I'm blonde (more or less), so why brew a German-American blonde ale? The two carboys are fermenting happily right now, protected from the summer heat in their insulated water baths around 66°F. If all goes to plan, the Hefeweizen yeast from White Labs (WLP300) will add its characteristic stamp of clove phenolics and maybe a little banana ester, but dialed down somewhat by the relatively cool ferment (less banana) and the limited quantities of wheat malt (less clove, because wheat malt contains more ferrulic acid--the precursor of 4-vinyl guaiacol--than barley malt.) Hopefully, all of this will meld nicely with modest additions of candied ginger, bitter orange marmalade, and Willamette finishing hops, to produce a refreshing, easy-drinking, but still interesting pale summer ale. And my early reviews of the unfermented wort are promising. The base beer under these spice additions is very straightforward: 75% American two-row, 10% German wheat malt, 10% Vienna malt, 5% Crystal 20L. The starting gravity was 1.050 (or about 12 Plato), with a mix of Crystal and Fuggle hops providing 20-25 BUs. I expect the finished beer to come in around 5% ABV.

Elsewhere around the Bicycle Home Brewery

Looking over my list of Brew Year's resolutions, my completion record is about 50:50, which isn't too bad, I guess, considering that the year is about half over.

1. Build a kegerator: check.
2. Plan a brew sculpture: fail.
3. Make a mead: check (although it's still conditioning in carboy).
4. Make a cider: fail (but planned for the Fall).
5. Make a wet-hopped beer: fail (also planned for the Fall).
6. Become a "Certified" beer judge: fail (but now just one experience point away).
7. Make significant progress on my beer book: check (but still lots to do).
8. Go to the NHC: fail (maybe next year in Minnesota?).
9. Blog more: fail.
10. Brew more: check! (Beach Cruiser Blonde is my tenth batch of 2009, not including the mead, so I'm well on schedule for breaking my 2007 personal record of 14).