Honey blonde ale - 2025

I went to Los Angeles in 2024 and tried Pizza Port Brewing's California honey blonde ale. I don't remember too much about it, unfortunately, but I did enjoy it. Inspired, I came up with this recipe, based on details provided on their web site. This is a good beer, but it's hazy, whereas the actual beer is pretty clear. I think the wheat in mine accounts for the haze. Also, I think the real beer is a little more malty than mine. Mine has a little too much hop flavor, so I would cut back the Hallertau Blanc hops to 1 oz.

Recipe for 5 gallons:

6.25 lb pale 2 row

1.2 lb honey

.25 lb red wheat

.25 crystal 20

1 oz Mt. Hood hops (5.2 AA) at 45 minutes

2 oz Hallertau Blanc (8.7 AA) at 2 minutes

Omega Kolsch II yeast

Nelson Simcoe pale ale - 2024

In recent years I mainly want to drink a balanced beer. Beers that aren't too dry, too malty, too bitter, too hoppy, or too sweet. The way to achieve that for me has been about 5% abv beers with a low to moderate amount of hops and moderate bitterness. This was just another one of those types of beers. And also allowed me to use up some ingredients. A good beer.

5 gallon recipe:

5 lbs pale 2 row

1.5 lbs German Pilsner 

1.5 German pale ale

8 oz crystal 60

1 oz Simcoe at 10 minutes 

1 oz Nelson Sauvin at 5 minutes 

1469 West Yorkshire 

Innkeeper - 2024

I've never had Timothy Taylor's Landlord, but reportedly Northern Brewer's Innkeeper kit is a good approximation. A lot of the ingredients for Landlord are available online, though I never found anything definitive when I brewed this beer in 2024. Subsequently I learned that the beer is all golden promise malt (Simpsons, I believe) and maybe 5-6% sugar. The craft beer channel on YouTube has a good video with lots of information. I went with northern brewer's recipe. I didn't love this beer for some reason. Maybe it was a little oxidized? I had a leaky keg (co2) that I was constantly topping off with more co2 because there was none to even push out beer, so maybe some air got in there. This beer seemed much lighter than the actual beer. I used Thomas Fawcett golden promise. For my recently brewed second attempt I used Simpsons. 

5 gallon recipe:

6 lbs golden promise 

1 lb corn sugar 

4 oz crystal 60

1 oz Fuggles (5.6 AA) at 30 minutes 

1 oz EKG (5.6 AA) at 20 minutes 

1 oz Styrian Goldings / Celeia (3.9 AA) at 5 minutes

1469 yeast

Homegrown hop ale 2025

I was sort of going for an amber ale but I think it's a little too hoppy for the style. 

860 grams of various types of hops - centennial, nugget, Columbus - divided into four 215 gram additions. 

7 lbs Pilsner malt 

2 lbs very old un-milled pale malt (first beer using my new mill!)

2 oz chocolate 

4 oz crystal 20

8 oz crystal 60

Omega kolsch II yeast. Because I had been using it all summer and, why not?

I mainly taste green pepper in this beer. It reminds me of the 2018 Sam Adams coffee pale ale. It's not unpleasant but not really what I was going for. It might just be a feature of my hops because I feel like I recognize that flavor from prior homegrown hop beers. For that reason I don't think it's the roast/chocolate flavor from the small amount of chocolate malt in the recipe. 

Honkers Ale clone

Honkers ale was one of my first craft beers. I don't think I really loved it when I was first drinking it back in the late 2000s, but I think that's because I didn't really appreciate it and hadn't developed the taste for that style of beer. Unfortunately, it left the market around 2017 so when I attempted to brew this again, all I had to go on was memory. I watched a YouTube video from the brewery and looked at an archived page listing the ingredients, but didn't have a lot else to work with in developing a recipe. I was under the impression the beer was on the maltier, rather than hoppy, side. So when the beer returned in 2024, at least in a few markets, and I was able to buy and taste some, I was sort of surprised. It wasn't how I remembered the actual beer tasting. But surely the brewers at Goose Island know what they're doing, and it's just my faulty memory. Or maybe their recipe changed. Actually, it appears to have changed at some point, as the current site lists Pilgrim as one of the hops. Either way, my beer was good, and so is theirs, and I'm happy that this beer has returned. 

Recipe (Brewed May 2024 and consumed before I bought the re-launched version in October 2024):

6.75 lbs pale 2 row

4 oz crystal 20

2 oz roasted barley

4 oz white wheat

1 oz Styrian Goldings (3.7 AA) at 60 minutes

1 oz Styrian Goldings at 30 minutes 

Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire

SS Minnow Mild

Second beer of the year, pitched on the 1469 yeast cake from the English bitter. This is a re-brew of the Northern Brewer SS Minnow mild kit, which I first made two years ago. Different yeast, 1469 instead of Mangrove Jacks Liberty Bell. Also different hops. EKG instead of Willamette. This was a tasty, easy-drinking beer. These low alcohol malty beers just don't get enough love. They have so much flavor packed into a fairly small package, alcohol-wise. 

2024 English bitter

First beer of the year. An English bitter sounded good, something along the lines of a beer I made back in 2017. I reused most of the recipe but decreased the hops to keep it malty. I ordered Wyeast West Yorkshire yeast (1469) for this beer, since I like this yeast but can't buy it locally anymore. This was a tasty beer that went fast. It was a good beer to kick off the brewing season, and Spring. 

Recipe for 5 gallons:

8 lbs 2 row

.75 lb Crystal 80

.5 Crystal 60

1 oz Fuggles (5.6 AA) at 60 minutes

.5 oz EKG (5.6 AA) at 30 minutes

.5 oz EKG (5.6 AA) at 15 minutes

2023 German Pilsner

Brewed 10/27/23. Took the afternoon off to make it. Started before 1 and finished by 4:30, aside from some cleaning. Maybe record time for me. Final beer of the year. 

OG 1.042-43. Brew software estimated 1.048. I used floor malted Bohemian Pilsner which I think I’ve read can lead to lower extract yield. 

Kegged 11/6/23. FG 1.012. 

I don’t remember much about this beer. It was good, but not so good that it was memorable. It cleared well with whirlfloc only and no gelatin. 

8.5 floor malted pils. 

1 oz of Halletau Mittelfruh (2.9 AA) at 60, 30, and 5 minutes. 

6 grams gypsum in sparge water. Otherwise no water modifications. 

Omega Oktoberfest yeast. 

2023 festbier

Festbier has become one of my favorite beer styles in recent years and I generally prefer it over the Marzen beers, which are more common, though I still hold special regard for Sam Adams Octoberfest. This was the second beer brewed with the Omega Oktoberfest yeast. Based on a recipe I came up with in 2020, it was good but was a little harsh. I am not sure what to attribute the harshness to, so I feel somewhat cautious about rebrewing it, but maybe it came down to something in my brewing process that day or maybe the hops had a higher AA than I was told. I had used very old Galena hops to add some bitterness, and there was a slight harshness even before pitching yeast. 

Recipe:

8.5 lbs Weyermann Pils

1 lb Munich light

.25 lb Melanoidin

1 oz Tettnanger (2.2 AA) 60 minutes

.2 oz Galena (16 AA) 60 minutes

1 oz Tettnanger (2.2 AA) 20 minutes

1.055 OG

27.85 IBU

Actual FG 1.012

2023 helles

I had gotten a free pack of Omega Oktoberfest in summer 2023, which I held until September. I made a starter the night before brewing, which took off by morning. Very straightforward. 8 lbs Weyermann pils. .5 pound Munich light. Hallertau hops. In past years I used acid malt as well, but did not this year, though not for any particular reason. The yeast performed well. Clean. It cleared pretty well without gelatin. 

This beer sort of raised some questions about my own brewing abilities and senses. I submitted it for an informal competition between different brew clubs. The comments mentioned diacetyl. I didn't taste butteriness though. So, can I not detect diacetyl? Or, were the judges associating the corny/bready taste that it definitely had (which I think is a normal characteristic of pilsner malt) and then thinking popcorn and then thinking buttered popcorn from there? Incidentally, those flavors were most intense when the beer was still young and freshly kegged, as the yeast and proteins settled to the bottom. Once the beer cleared those flavors dissipated, but I don't think that diacetyl just goes away.

Anyhow, aside from this informal competition, I don't enter my beers in competitions. I brew them for me to drink and to share. And I brew them to my taste. That's all that really matters, though I'm of course open to feedback and always willing to learn and improve.

2023 homegrown hop pale ale

The previous owner of my home had planted hop plants and put in some hooks in the eves to run line for the plants. The line broke and disintegrated a long time ago, and since then I've just let the hops grow the best they can without anything - other than some bamboo stakes - to climb. The roof is pretty high and I haven't had a good way to get twine that high.

The other issue I've had with growing hops is that they seem to be maturing way too early. As I recall, I had mature hop cones in May of last year. Other cones were still immature. So that made harvesting a bit complicated. In the end, I chose to wait until August to harvest the hops. By then, some had turned very brown and crisp. Frankly, they didn't look very appealing. But they smelled good.

So I decided to take a chance and use both fresh, green hops and the brown hops as well. I also decided to buck convention by using only homegrown hops for this pale ale. I added the hops (wet) in three 140-gram quantities, at 25 minutes, 3 minutes, and 1 minute. Of course, I don't have any idea what the alpha acids were, and there are three different hop varieties in this plot, all grown and mixed together. So it was a bit of a crapshoot.

Overall, the beer turned out pretty drinkable, with a few imperfections. I finished the keg, just last week actually, which probably indicates I wasn't really in a hurry to drink it. At times it was astringent and I seemed to pick up some spicy yeast off flavors. It was also off balance and drank like an IPA. But, I'm not too surprised given the amount of hops I used and the unknown alpha acids. It's possible the brown, crispy hops added some off flavors, but I'm not entirely convinced. Overall, it was fun to harvest the hops and brew and drink this beer. 

9 lbs 2-row

8 oz Crystal 60

US-05 yeast