The Imperial Stout I brewed last week has been fermenting along nicely, and as the airlock activity started slowing down, I raised the fermentation temperature (from the initial 17C) to 20C. Big and complex stouts aren’t the ideal summer beers, so last Sunday I brewed up a batch of a really simple Blonde Ale. The malt bill consisted of Pilsner malt, Flaked Oats, CaraAmber and CaraPils. I slightly overshot the OG, and ended up with 38 liters of 1.055-gravity wort instead of 42 liters of 1.050-gravity wort. The beer is lightly hopped with Herkules and Cascade, with a calculated IBU around 24. This means the beer should appeal to pretty much everyone and be really easy to drink. I decided to ferment the beer with White Lab’s German Ale/Kölsch strain, which should lend some lager-like characteristics as well. The brewday went extremely smoothly for once, and even hit the assumed efficiency of 70%. This will be kegged and ‘lagered’ after a couple of weeks. Hopefully a really nice beer to drink on hot summer days.

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