Beer Blending Techniques
In the beer industry, blending has long been done by faceless and nameless cellarmen and cellarwomen who have one of the most artistically challenging jobs in the industry. But as sour beers like gueuze, one of the most widely blended beer styles, continues to gain in fashion for brewers of craft and microbrews, so has the rise of the master cellarman, or the master blender.
The most successful sour programs in Belgium and United States have found that the cellar requires a different type of person — an avid note taker with a patient and nurturing touch when working with the barrels or fermenters, and most importantly, an expert palate. Without a well-trained palate in the cellar, consistency isn’t possible.
Blending goes beyond sour beers. It is also used in barrel-aged beers, historical styles, and for some modern breweries it’s just standard practice to reach their end product. This is one of the few traditional apprentice trades left in a fairly industrialized and modernized industry where someone truly becomes an artful master. Unsung heros are coming out from behind the foeders and barrels and up from the cellars to teach us the most meticulous and masterful craft in brewing: Blending.
Blending is a technique we can use to create better homebrew too. We can also use it to create unique and interesting brews with wonderfully complex flavor. Let’s see how we can work our way toward becoming experienced blenders.
Don’t Blend Bad
Successful blending has a singular goal — to create a beer equal but different or greater than the sum of its parts. We never want our beer to be worse than what we started with. With that said, it should be understood that you can’t ever blend the “bad” away. Never take a flawed beer and blend it with a good one. Even in small amounts, the blemishes will shine through.
Blending in Sour Beer
Lambic and gueuze, with their traditional spontaneous fermentation requirements, are hard to control both for fermentation and for flavor. This led to the rise of blending, and actual blending houses. These houses purchased numerous barrels from breweries and blended them under a house label in their own foeders.
If you’re brewing a sour beer, from Flanders red to gueuze, blending is a critical requirement to style mastery. Here’s a tip — brew the same recipe once or twice a year for 3 years, so that you have a minimum of three beers. Your youngest may only be three months old, your oldest, three years or more.
In any type of beer you’re blending there are no rules to how much of each batch you must use. You may choose to use none of your oldest or youngest batch. Typically, commercial sour blenders find that the sum of their blends, whether it be two or twelve different barrels, is often better than any single barrel. Some breweries, when they stumble upon a real excellent barrel do release single, unblended barrels labeled as a “reserve.” I made a gueuze recipe that is a great base batch for you to begin experimenting with, available at the end of this story.
Mature Stock & Fresh Batch Blending
In England, blending an older stock ale with a younger mild ale was status quo for over a century. Although both were enjoyed on their own, this blend actually gave rise to the style of porter. Newcastle’s Brown Ale famously started as a beer made with this aged stock ale and a fresh house amber ale recipe artfully blended.
There are many obvious ways to use this technique, whether it be two beers of the same recipe, or two different recipes. Blending a young beer with a mature beer is a great way to improve what one might be lacking. Age brings a softer hop flavor, maybe a more well-rounded beer. A young beer may have some bright flavors that could be tamed through blending with the matured beer.
I also like to refer to this as a mother beer, or a blending batch. This can be any beer you’d like. One experiment worth trying is brewing your own stock ale, or house ale. Make a big batch and put it in a keg or carboy to age after fermentation finishes. Most stock ales are brewed to stronger than 6% ABV for shelf stability. A highly hopped stock ale (see: Blend It! Double IPA at the end of this story) would also have some shelf stability, and might be fun to use with other IPAs, or beers you brewed that may need a bit more hop flavor. Just make sure it’s a beer you enjoy drinking, and enjoy it as is. Learning all the ins and outs of the flavor of your house stock ale will make you a better blender.
Blending to Style
When blending to style there’s no real obligation to age or sour your beer. Your goal is to take two beers and create something better, or something as good, but different.
A fun way to use blending is to create two recipes with the goal of creating a classic beer style when blended. Cream ale, although not historically made with both ale and lager yeast, was made with one or the other. Some brewers in the U.S. began making an ale and a lager of the same cream ale recipe creating a beer altogether more flavorful.
Industrialization of the brewing process aided in the idea of using multiple wort streams. This technique often just means adding a darker concentrated wort to a light lager to make a new beer. This post-boil, pre-fermentation is another type of blending that gets used quite often by breweries. It is a type of blending to style.
If you look at the array of options, both post-boil and post-fermentation, the combinations are endless. An IPA with an amber to make a hoppy red, a lambic with a porter to make an oud bruin, a Munich helles with a doppelbock to create a festbier, and the list goes on.
One blend that’s great to make is a black IPA. Although arguably different than both IPA and stout, when carefully blended, you’ll create a surprisingly complex and enjoyable beer. Take a look at the recipes Blend It! Stock Stout and Blend It! Double IPA at the end of this story as great starting points for blending. Both are higher in alcohol and bring a good amount of flavor to the table.
Blending Process
Keep in mind you can blend whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, in whatever quantities you want. Just a few ounces of Russian imperial stout in your German Pilsner to attempt a schwarzbier? A pale ale sitting around that fell flat? Grab a sample of it, and see what it brings to another beer you have around.
So where and how do you start blending? Start small. If you’re looking to blend two larger amounts together, start with something you can measure volumes in, like a graduated cylinder or on a scale. Equal parts, a 2:1 ratio, 3:1 ratio, even a 100:1 ratio are all acceptable. When blending two batches, do it incrementally and taste as you go. It’s going to be up to you to determine what’s appropriate.
I encourage you to blend finished or aging worts and tasting them flat, at room temperature. Tasting wort during fermentation is one of the only ways you’ll become a master blender and cellermen. You’ll need to journal thoughts and flavors of each batch and each blend. Grab a beer flavor wheel from online and study the jargon of beer sensory. Learn the flavors, which can be applied to wort sensory.
Although much blending is done post-fermentation, pre-carbonation and cooling, you may want to start by carbonating and cooling your samples. This is what you’ll probably be most familiar with from a sensory standpoint. Ultimately it will be the flavor of your finished product. A carbonation cap that attaches to a small plastic soda bottle will allow you to carbonate small samples.
If this isn’t possible and you’re just beginning to blend, blending in kegs is another option. Cool and carbonate just as you typically would. You’re using finished beer, just as many bars and brewery taprooms do when they blend beers. Taste your finished products in something as simple as a pint glass and see if it’s worth your while to ultimately create a blend in a single keg.
Experiment, Play, Learn
Through all of this experimentation you’ll accumulate knowledge. Be disciplined and sanitary when aging batches. Check on them frequently and see if they’re improving or acceptable for blending. Don’t be afraid to brew small batches specifically for blending with larger batches. Fermenter space can sometimes be limited, so get creative. Save partial batches in 1-gallon (4-L) jugs or small kegs for using toward your blending later. You’ll find the amount of beers and styles you can create are endless.
Blending can be one of the most enjoyable and experimental things you can do as a homebrewer. It was once regarded as a way to disguise or discard bad beer. People do this, and pubs used to do this back when beer was served via oxygen and wasn’t as shelf stable. Nowadays though, we’re armed with education and an industry and hobby that encourage the creativity that blending allows.
Recipes
Steady as She Gueuze
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.044 FG = 1.005
IBU = 8 SRM = 7 ABV = 5.1%
This Gueuze is a typical, traditional Belgian-style recipe. Brew frequently throughout the year cellaring your Gueuze for months to years. After a year, if you have at least 3 batches of different ages, you can begin experimenting with blending. Your best option is to test your patience and begin blending after 3 years with a minimum of 3 batches.
Ingredients
6.2 lbs. (2.8 kg) Dingemans pale ale malt
2.2 lbs. (1 kg) Dingemans pale wheat malt
0.5 lb. (227 g) Dingemans Cara 45 malt
2.4 AAU Fuggle hops (30 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 4.8% alpha acid)
Wyeast 3278 (Belgian Lambic Blend) or White Labs WLP655 (Belgian Sour Mix I) or East Coast Yeast ECY01 (Bug Farm) blend
3/4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.2 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (2.5 L/kg) and a temperature of 152 °F (67 °C) using 2.7 gallons (10.1 L) of water at 166 °F (74 °C). Hold the mash at 152 °F (67 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete, about 60 minutes. In your hot liquor tank, bring 4.4 gallons (16.7 L) of water up to 170 °F (77 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F water (77 °C), collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is 5.75 gallons (21.8 L). Add hops once a boil is reached. Total boil time is only 30 minutes. Chill the wort to 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate thoroughly. Pitch 1 package of yeast, do not make a starter prior to pitching as a starter can alter the blend’s fermentation characteristics. Ferment in primary at 68 – 70 °F (20-21°C) for two weeks. Move to a secondary fermentor, which will act as your aging and conditioning fermentor. This can be plastic, glass, stainless or a wood barrel. Age three months to three years and blend with other batches of Gueuze.
Steady as She Gueuze
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.044 FG = 1.005
IBU = 8 SRM = 7 ABV = 5.1%
Ingredients
3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg) pale dried malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) wheat dried malt extract
0.4 lb. (181 g) Dingemans Cara 45 malt
2.4 AAU Fuggle hops (30 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 4.8% alpha acid)
Wyeast 3278 (Belgian Lambic Blend) or White Labs WLP655 (Belgian Sour Mix I) or East Coast Yeast ECY01 (Bug Farm) blend
3/4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place the crushed grain in a muslin bag and steep in 5.25 gallons (20 L) of water at 160 °F (71 °C). After 20 minutes remove the grain bag, allowing the grains to drip back in to the brew pot. Off heat, stir in all the dried malt extract. Top off with water to get the pre-boil kettle volume to 5.75 gallons (21.8 L) and return to heat. Add hops once a boil is reached. Total boil time is only 30 minutes. Chill the wort to 68 °F (20 °C) and aerate thoroughly. Pitch 1 package of yeast, do not make a starter prior to pitching as a starter can alter the blend’s fermentation characteristics. Ferment in primary at 68 – 70 °F (20-21°C) for two weeks. Move to a secondary fermentor, which will act as your aging and conditioning fermentor. This can be plastic, glass, stainless or a wood barrel. Age three months to three years and blend with other batches of Gueuze.
Blend It! Double IPA
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.081 FG = 1.016
IBU = 100+ SRM = 8 ABV = 9.2%
Ingredients
15.5 lbs. (7 kg) Briess Brewers malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) caramel malt (20 °L)
13 AAU Simcoe® hops (60 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 13% alpha acids)
26 AAU Simcoe® hops (30 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 13% alpha acids)
17 AAU Amarillo® hops (30 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
26 AAU Simcoe® hops (10 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 13% alpha acids)
17 AAU Amarillo® hops (10 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) or Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or Safale US-05 yeast
3/4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.2 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (2.5 L/kg) and a temperature of 154 °F (68 °C) using 5.1 gallons (19.3 L) of water at 168 °F (76 °C). Hold the mash at 154 °F (68 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete, about 60 minutes. In your hot liquor tank, bring 3.5 gallons of water up to 170 °F (77 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is 6 gallons (23 L). Total boil time is 60 minutes, adding hops according to the ingredients list. Chill the wort to 65 °F (18 °C) and aerate thoroughly. Pitch 2 packages of yeast or an appropriate sized starter. Ferment in primary at 65 – 70 °F (18 – 21 °C) for two weeks. Move to a secondary fermentor, and age an additional 2 weeks to 2 months. Hop character will mellow with time.
Blend It! Double IPA
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.081 FG = 1.016
IBU = 100+ SRM = 8 ABV = 9.2%
Ingredients
8.2 lbs. (3.7 kg) extra light dried malt extract
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) caramel malt (20 °L)
13 AAU Simcoe® hops (60 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 13% alpha acids)
26 AAU Simcoe® hops (30 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 13% alpha acids)
17 AAU Amarillo® hops (30 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
26 AAU Simcoe® hops (10 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 13% alpha acids)
17 AAU Amarillo® hops (10 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) or Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or Safale US-05 yeast
3/4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place the crushed grain in a muslin bag and steep in 5.5 gallons (21 L) of water at 160 °F (71 °C). After 20 minutes remove the grain bag, allowing the grains to drip back in to the brew pot. Off heat, stir in all the dried malt extract. Top off with water to get the pre-boil kettle volume to 6 gallons (23 L). Total boil time is 60 minutes, adding hops according to the ingredients list. Chill the wort to 65 °F (18 °C) and aerate thoroughly. Pitch 2 packages of yeast or an appropriate sized starter. Ferment in primary at 65 – 70 °F (18 – 21 °C) for two weeks. Move to a secondary fermentor, and age an additional 2 weeks to 2 months. Hop character will mellow with time.
Blend It! Stock Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.072 FG = 1.022
IBU = 69 SRM = 70 ABV = 6.7%
Ingredients
12 lbs. (5.4 kg) pale ale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) Briess Midnight Wheat malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley (500 °L)
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) flaked barley
16 AAU Northern Brewer hops (60 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8% alpha acids)
8 AAU Northern Brewer hops (10 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 8% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP002 (English Ale) or Wyeast 1968 (London ESB) or Lallemand Windsor Ale yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.2 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (2.5 L/kg) and a temperature of 152 °F (67 °C) using 4.6 gallons (17.3 L) of water at 166 °F (74 °C). Hold the mash at 152 °F (67 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete, about 60 minutes. Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is 6 gallons (23 L). Total boil time is 60 minutes, adding hops according to the ingredients list. Chill the wort to 65 °F (18 °C) and aerate thoroughly. Pitch 2 packages of yeast or an appropriate sized starter. Ferment at 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) for two weeks. Move to a secondary and age up to a year. Dark roasted malt character will mellow some with time.
Blend It! Stock Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.072 FG = 1.022
IBU = 69 SRM = 70 ABV = 6.7%
Ingredients
7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) Maris Otter liquid malt extract
1 lb. (0.45 kg) pale ale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) Briess Midnight Wheat malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley (500 °L)
0.75 lb. (0.34 kg) flaked barley
16 AAU Northern Brewer hops (60 min.) (2 oz./57 g at 8% alpha acids)
8 AAU Northern Brewer hops (10 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 8% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP002 (English Ale) or Wyeast 1968 (London ESB) or Lallemand Windsor Ale yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place the crushed pale ale malt and flaked barley in a muslin bag. Stir into 2 quarts (2 L) of 166 °F (74 °C) water. The mash should stabilize at 152 °F (67 °C) and hold this temperature until enzymatic conversion is complete, about 60 minutes. Place the roasted barley and Midnight Wheat in a separate bag. Mix in 1 gallon (4 L) of 170 °F (77 °C) water along with the roasted grains and hold for 15 minutes. Place both grain bags in a colander and wash with 1 gallon (4 L) hot water. Off heat, stir in the liquid malt extract and stir until completely dissolved. Top up until the pre-boil kettle volume is 6 gallons (23 L) and bring to a boil. Follow the remainder of the all-grain instructions.
