Beer Blending

[Bluesssman]

Do any of you blend some of your beers?

[the lizard king]

I do not, but I guess you could do the usual and blend a pale ale with stout for a black and tan, not sure how the layering will turn out though

[meisterofpuppets]

I do not, but I guess you could do the usual and blend a pale ale with stout for a black and tan, not sure how the layering will turn out though

If you want a black and tan, pour it in a glass and layer it just like normal. Every one of those premixed "black and tans" i've tried are awful.

I've never blended beers but I think it only really comes into play when you are doing sour beers. (I'm sure there are other instances, but I haven't really heard of them). Typically blending is done with two beers of the same recipe at different ages, so with many of today's beers that don't change a lot with age like they used to, blending is not really necessary. Blending old porter that had some Brett character to it with young mild ale is a good example. Because of modern technology, porter doesn't develop Brett character like it used to, but then again it might be a cool thing to try.

The time where blending is really important is in blending sour ales since wild yeasts eat all of the sugars in the wort, even the complex dextrins that normal yeast won't digest. Sour beers will have different characteristics years down the road. What I believe that you do with that is brew a lambic three years in a row. Store each one in a container for a while. (carboy, wood barrel, etc. ) A year after you brew the third lambic, it should be ready to blend. It's typically best to use the older one as the base beer, and blend it with the younger beers. The exact proportions are more of an art than a science. You just have to mix them together in different proportions to taste. It's more trial and error than anything.

After you discover the proportions, you can mix it all together and bottle it. (I'm not sure if you need to prime with sugar or not. It might be the case that the younger beer has enough unfermented sugars in it that it will carbonate by itself, but maybe not.) You should probably let these bottles age for quite some time as well.

Hope that helps to answer your question.

[Thirsty Boy]

yep, blend all the time.

You want a bit more colour and roast in something? blend in some stout. Want some hoppiness or bitterness, blend in a bit of IPA. Have a beer thats just a little meh... lacks malt. Throw a bottle of barleywine into the keg.

Make 7/12G of nice low abv amber - make 7/12 G of nice dark and fruity old ale - do a little blending and now you have 5G of each original beer and 5G of a nice Nut Brown ale.

Brew a Bock and a Munich Helles and end up with a Bock, a Munich Helles and a Dunkel.

And thats before creative fault fixing comes into play -- Over bitter? Make a new batch that's under bitter and end up with 2 batches perfect. Went too far with the Burtonization and its salty... same deal.

The way to work out your combinations, is generally to think about grist bills. Think of the primary ingredients in one beer, what you would have added to those if you wanted to make another beer - and then think of another beer that has those ingredients in its grist bill, but more of them than you would need. There you have a blending match.

Think in betweens - a Pale beer plus a brown beer makes a copper or red beer, a pale beer and a black beer makes a brown beer. Or a little bit of a very strong, very flavoursome beer can just perk up a lower abv beer thats just slightly lacking. A bottle of RIS into your normal stout to pep it up. etc etc etc.

Not all blends are going to work, and you certainly cant hide drastic brewing flaws very well. But little ingredient based mistakes can be made to go away, and interesting beers can be made that require no more effort than sitting at you keggerator with an open mind and a blending glass.

The real question to ask yourself is - Why would you NOT blend?

[brewinhard]

+1 brother!!

Well said. I mainly just blend sour beers to get the best of several worlds!