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Hey Folks,

Trying to get my wife onboard with homebrew so I'd like to try to replicate one of her favourites- Nine Locks Blonde. I found a basic Blonde recipe on BYO and toned the hops down a bit to get around 12 IBUs as shown on the Nine Locks can while reducing everything to an 8L batch size. Any suggestions? This will be my first BIAB attempt. I'll be measuring my water by weight to get more accurate volumes. Not going to make any adjustments to the water unless suggested, just buying a few jugs of Big 8 from Sobeys.

Really looking for suggestions on the yeast. The recipe call for US-05 but Nine Locks characterizes the beer as a North American-style Weizen, so I'm thinking about using WLP351 (Bavarian Weizen) instead - thoughts?

8 Liter BIAB

1.5kg Canadian Premium 2-Row (1.5-2.1 °L)
150g Malted Wheat (1.5-2.5 °L)
90g Crystal Malt (13-17 °L)

Bring 11L up to a strike temp of 70 °C
Mash at 67 °C for 60 mins.
Raise temp to 75 °C for mash-out
Sparge grains with 77 °C water until to reach pre-boil volume of 11.3L

60-minute boil
8 grams of Willamette pellets (4-6% AA) @ 60 mins.

Ferment with Fermentis Safale US-05 yeast at 19 °C for two weeks and bottle.

Targets:
OG = 1.049
FG = 1.009
IBU = 12.8 SRM = 4.4° ABV = 5.1%

Cream ale would typically include some flaked corn in the grist, and the Blonde I believe has wheat. Both of those grains will help lighten the colour and body of the beer. Corn will also finish a bit drier and more crisp. The recipe you have here looks good, but maybe consider one of the adjuncts at about 10% of the total grist.

KB1138 wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:44 pm

Cream ale would typically include some flaked corn in the grist, and the Blonde I believe has wheat. Both of those grains will help lighten the colour and body of the beer. Corn will also finish a bit drier and more crisp. The recipe you have here looks good, but maybe consider one of the adjuncts at about 10% of the total grist.

Thanks KB, having HD a second look at the can, you’re right. Nine Locks is using wheat in the blonde so I’ll substitute 10% wheat for some of the 2-row.

Ended up selecting Mangrove Jack’s “Bavarian Wheat Beer” for my yeast based on what was available. Hoping it’s a good fit.

JayColli wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 9:46 pm

Ended up selecting Mangrove Jack’s “Bavarian Wheat Beer” for my yeast based on what was available. Hoping it’s a good fit.

Bavarian wheat will end producing more banana esters than what you'd get from a cream ale or blonde. More intended for a Hefeweizen than an American style beer. Still will be really tasty

KB1138 wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 10:02 pm

Bavarian wheat will end producing more banana esters than what you'd get from a cream ale or blonde. More intended for a Hefeweizen than an American style beer. Still will be really tasty

My wife enjoys a few Hefeweizen-ish beers too so there’s still hope. US-05 might have been the better choice but we’ll see how it turns out!

Got an OG of 1.054 but having done some reading on this yeast it usually bottoms out at around 1.015 so I should still hit around 5% ABV.

Yeast shit the bed and I ended up with a FG of 1.022. I’ll definitely go with US-05 next time.

Bottled on 2021-01-14 and tasted it for the first time last night. Carbonation was good already (aimed for 3 volumes) having batch primed directly into the primary with table sugar. Not the best way to do it but works in a pinch.

Colour and haziness were pretty spot-on, as was bitterness, but my brew was thinner and there was a bit of an apply flavour that I'd normally associate with dextrose. I think it'll need another week in the bottle to carb properly and hopefully that'll fix both of my issues. Next step might be to add some flaked wheat to the next brew if the mouthfeel doesn't improve. May also sub-in Tettnang instead of the Willamette in a future brew.

US-05 batch got much closer to my desired FG. Managed to get down to 1.012 from 1.050 for a final ABV of 5%.