What Style Is This?

[Silo Ted]

Made a beer a while ago thats just about reached its carbonation level, and its already half gone its that lovely. Out of interest I looked through the BJCP guidelines and I have no idea what category this would fall into. Any suggestions that I can look at so when I brew it again I can refine it over the next year so its more to a particular style for competition purposes. A fairly simple beer but the taste is superb.

Batch size 21 litres

4.00 Pale
1.30 Wheat
0.20 Caramalt

20.00 gm Northern Brewer [11.00 %] (60 min)
20.00 gm Tettnang [4.00 %] (10 min)

Approx alcohol 4.7%

English Ale yeast. With German hops, should look at trying a german ale yeast, or even a german lager yeast when I get myself a bar fridge.

 

[Stuster]

Not sure what IBUs that gives, but looks more like a blonde ale than anything else to me. How does it taste/smell/look?

 

[mje1980]

I'd also say blonde. Love a simple blonde. Pils and wheat is yummy!

 

[Silo Ted]

I have just committed to a dry August, but when I fall off the wagon in about a week i will try and describe it better while drinking it. Im no good as descriptions but to give it a go would say that the hop flavour is quite mild. Smooth and fresh if that makes sense. That's not to say its a weak hop flavour, just not so in your face as something like Cascade or Amarillo and not anywhere near as rough as late addition POR. For my taste the additions are spot on for a session beer.

Theres not a lot of maltiness from the small addition of caramalt but just enough to compliment the tettnanger. Absolutely more malt presence than a commercial light colored european lager though.

The body is also pleasing for a session beer, not thick like a porter but on the other end of the scale not water thin.

The colour is close to beer 3 from the left in the following photo. http://openbrew.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/beer-colors.jpg

 

[Stuster]

Yep, seems like a blonde to me. BJCP 6b. Link.

And good luck with the dry month. You can do it. After the first few days it's not that hard.

 

[Silo Ted]

Cheers Stuster, I took a look at 6.2 after my last post, and surprised that my evaluation was similar to the guidelines. A small touch more malt flavour in there might be the go next time, just enough to keep the colour on the light side. Might even dry toast a handful of cracked wheat malt in a hot pan for the next mash and see what that brings to the flavour. Could be crap, but Ill never know unless I try it. Heres a curveball. When I bottled this blonde ale I also bottled another beer that would fall into the brown porter category. For a bit of an experiment six bottles were set aside for a blend of the two. It's going to be interesting to see what that tastes & looks like. My guess is that it will still be a brown porter, with more character than the original.