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