I have a Spiced Winter Ale and a California Common on tap. A lot of folks like the hoppiness of the Cali Comm so I brewed it for them. I like the Spiced Ale but I have to admit a 50/50 blend is nice. How about you? Do you blend beers!
Yes! Duvel and Spotted Cow is amazing. I had a braggot and saison that blended nicely as well.
I have done a lot of blending in the past 3-4 years. Mostly blending sour beers to achieve a proper gueuze or flanders brown. But I have also blended beers to make a righteous beire de garde. My blending has always been done through closed transfers in kegs after hours of tasting and measuring in graduated cylinders and glasses before scaling up properly. A simple bathroom scale comes in quite handy when attempting to hit your percentages with corny kegs.
I recently blended a west coast amber and a blonde. I liked the blend so much I jumped one keg into the other. Friends say it is one of the best beers I have brewed.
To get a 50/50 blend in the keg I marked the level in the more empty keg then used a ruler to mark double that height on the outside of the keg. Then when adding the second beer I kept transferring until condensation reached my mark.
I think a bathroom scale would work better if you know the tare weight of your keg.
My brother in law loves to run all the taps into a pitcher with varying amounts of each beer - more than once he has hit on a pretty good combo (I usually have a lager, a pale ale, a Belgian and a porter or similar dark beer on tap). Crazy but it can work…
I blend beers of the same style together by combining kegs. For example, I will make two to 3 single hop beers at a time (same wort) and do a hopstand and once I’m getting low I will combine the kegs and get a new beer. I try blending the different beers in a glass just to make sure that’ll work out first.
I tend to blend beers of different styles in my glass for fun, for exploration, because I want to drink a RIS but want a lower alchohol content, etc.
I like to blend the top three beers at the end of a judging flight. Sometimes you get improvement, sometimes not so much, but it’s always interesting. It works especially well on flights of sours or spice/herb/veg beers.
I don’t know why I’ve never tried this. Maybe because I bottle conditioned for so long and rarely have more than one beer at a time. I definitely want to play with this a bit.
I have a cider and a doppelbock on tap right now. I might have to try making an impromptu graff tonight for the game.
The only problem with watching the condensation line is that the beer is actually higher than that in the keg. The condensation forms after the beer chills the keg down enough, but it will get you close enough.
so after you blend and like it, do you ever make a new recipe based upon the blender beers?
That’s probably the key. Wasn’t Porter created this way?
developed early 1700’s by the Brits ( as history goes). have not heard it was by accident.
nonetheless, a recipe based upon a blend might be interesting.
Its been years but black and tans used to be a favorite. When I gave my father in law a heavy porter I made he put a tablespoon of it in his bush light for a week until it was gone. Not that I recommend that but we still laugh about it.
I have, but it doesn’t always turn out as expected. But it does lead one in a new direction for recipe formulation.
I’ll often blend a big beer and a small beer, a belgian and a non-belgian (just to see what it’s like), or even a big beer and plain sparkling water if all I’ve got on tap is a strong beer and I want something smaller.
Most of my brewing these days is targeted towards eventual blending, whether they are sour or clean, but that is blending going into the bottle, not coming out.
I also like to play with blending in the glass though. I have done some pretty simple black and tan style blends that turn out really nice. Left Hand Milk Stout with Deschutes Mirror Pond is a good one. My wife and I play a game at bars where we try to pick out the two beers on tap that would the worst. More often than not the worst tends to be Dos Equis and some imperial stout. Skunk plus roast is pretty bad.
Looking forward to trying out this game the next time we are out for dinner and drinks!