I made this beer on 12/15 so it’s been lagering for 2+ months. This is a beer that might occupy some ground between helles and pilsner. I used about 80% Best Malz Pils, 20% Weyermann Barke Vienna and then 4 ounces of Copper Malt because I like what it does. Then about 20 IBUs of Edelweiss to bitter and another ounce at 5 minutes. 838 for the yeast. Hoppier than a helles but not as much as a pilsner. The 838 is giving it some Munich-like character. The clarity is there but not “perfect” yet and the head formation and stability is excellent. I was painting in the basement on Saturday afternoon and you always drink beer when you paint… this is the word of the Lord. I was marveling at how well this beer came out with its dry, crisp and hoppy finish and great balance. It’s very simple and it might bore some beer drinkers but this is the kind of beer I have wanted to brew since I started brewing. Okay, so it took 21+ years. :D Pics will follow eventually.
Simple, balanced yet flavorful, characterful and interesting beers are not the easiest to pull off but I’m sure you have come to see that in 21 yrs of brewing lol. I brew heavy on both sides of the spectrum. I like to brew Lagers and Lighter Ales and then I like to brew lots of English Styles…Ambers, Browns, Porters, Stouts. The middle ground Pale Ales, IPA’s…etc are probably what I struggle with the most to brew. Not that I can’t brew them or they aren’t enjoyable, I just can’t get exactly what I am looking to do with those styles…they never quite wow me and that’s ok, there’s so many out there it’s easy just to pick up whatever I have a taste for off the shelf in regards to those styles.
Back to the simple beers, I brew a Yuengling Clone and I just starting drinking that, it’s just over 3 weeks old, tasting nice but a couple more weeks and it should peak. This is the type of beer I like when I just want a regular kind of beer. I would like to narrow down a nice Cream Ale, a Classic or Pre-Prohibition Style American Style Pilsner, then maybe dabble with more German Lager Styles.
Drinking and painting may be the word of the Lord, but in my book it also can be a recipe for a disastrous paint job. ;D
Glad the beer came out so good!
I find this to be true when I’ve had too much coffee! :D In the old days I would paint the spot where the wall meets the ceiling freehand thinking that I possessed some kind of painting sorcery. Now I use the painters tape as a safety net so BEER ME! 
I have tried my hand at a Yuengling clone and was generally happy with it. Care to share the recipe you used? I do not have Cluster or Cascade in the house at the moment… or 2035 if that’s what you used. I seem to remember pale malt, corn, C60, Cluster and Cascade (can’t remember the sequence) and 2035 getting darn close.
Simple beer can be great. Complex beers can also be great. It lies in the skill of the brewer.
I’ll go a step further and say recipe has relatively little effect on quality - quality is mainly related to the skill of the brewer (arguably).
I might be a good example of someone who was able to make [what I consider to be] a great beer and there was some luck involved. I didn’t do anything that was different although this WAS the first time using Edelweiss hops. It can happen randomly and sometimes the stars align. I always said that the key is to make what you consider to be great beer consistently, every time and that does not happen for me. I’m rarely disappointed in my beer but that’s different than hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th every batch. This one happened to be really nice and also in a style that I really like.
Back in 2013 Annie Johnson won home brewer of the year with a two grain, one hop beer.
It was inspiration for one of the first articles I ever had published.
There you go. The longer I brew the more I like “simple”.
I like it right. I appreciate simplicity in many things, but recipe design is one I can go either way on. A complicated recipe is fine if that’s what it takes to achieve your goal. Just don’t needlessly complicate it. Use what you need and be sure there’s reason for every ingredient.
And so many people find that too damn hard to do. If nothing else when I tell people that “simpler is better” what I’m really hoping for is for people to stop and think for more than 2 nanoseconds when they decide to put that extra malt in their mash.
And it is far better to err on the side of simplicity than complexity. It’s easy to tell if something is missing, and it’s usually easy to fix. It’s far harder to sort through a muddy beer to determine exactly what turned it to mud in the first place.
That’s exactly the way to approach it
I feel like there is a glut of malts out there. I try to stay on top of things and experiment but that leads to partial bags of leftover Victory, Abbey Malt, CaraBohemian, Flaked this or that, CaraPumpernickel, pale chocolate, biscuit malt, Carastan, honey malt, double-roasted crystal, CaraSchputz®, Beechwood Smoked malt and the list goes on. Way too many specialty grains and the same ones produced by multiple places. CaraVienne and CaraRuby are apparently the same malt made by different maltsters. I try to keep my inventory as simple as possible… Pilsner, 2-row, maybe Maris Otter or Golden Promise, Vienna, Munich, Wheat, a handful of specialties like CaraMunich or CaraVienne, CaraHell, Carafa, some crystal malts like C40 and C60.
For sure. I’m finding out that less really is more. A one grain / one hop beer can be awesome.
Like a good friend said…“Many craft breweries are just trying too hard.” The same can be said for us home brewers.
+1
A complicated recipe done right can be just as good. I think that the advice should be that whether your recipe has 2 ingredients or 10, be sure you know what every ingredient will bring to the beer.
Allow me to expand on this, as I never said a complicated recipe could not be done right. It’s all personal taste. There are a number of beers that hit you with so many flavors that you don’t know what hit you. Some people might like this, but I do not.
Recently tried a Porter where the first flavor was vanilla, then coffee, then chocolate, then caramel, and to top it off, burnt toast in the end. Both my wife and I did not like it. But for some, this may be the best beer available.
My recent beers have been single grain. The one I like best, and there is a thread on it here, is the Vienna Lager. Single grain. Single hop. To some it’s one dimensional. To me, it is a marvel in how great a simple recipe can be.
Perhaps my problem is having spent so much time in Europe over the last 25 years, drinking awesome Euro-Lagers. Decades ago there was a real “hop head” inside op me. Thankfully, that person moved on.
Of course, any recipe, complex or simple, can be good. It’s in the hands of the brewmaster.
Ooohh…that Porter sounds delicious. Right in my wheelhouse. Do you remember which one it was?