Blonde Pilot

I made a Blonde Ale a few weeks back for a Halloween party and wanted to revisit that beer a little bit. Luckily there is some left, so in between typing that first sentence and this one, I went and poured myself a pint. I have said before that Blonde's are tricky because they are so light that any flaws will be easier to detect. Whereas problems in IPA's and Stout's are more difficult to detect since there are bigger and bolder flavors up front.

This beer ended up being a little rushed, I brewed it a little late to be ready for Halloween. Although some of the issues I have with this beer are more my fault, even if I tried to blame them on time. I used an English Ale yeast, which is not the preferred type of yeast for this style of beer, but it has some characteristics that I like, so I tried it. Overall, I would give this beer about a 3 (scale of 1-5). It has a nice light yellow color although has some haze with excess yeast still suspended. I has a nice bready taste and is fairly light bodied, the bitterness is great for a Blonde. The hop aroma is mostly lost in the fruity esters, which is the major problem with this beer. It lacks that crisp, dry finish that most Blonde's have. The beer came in at 4.2% and is sessionable.

Those Samuel Adams glasses are pretty tight

I don't like using a yeast starter because I find the first generation is always under pitched, leading to the excess ester production as was the case with this beer. I could make a starter, so this problem is on me. The beer also didn't ferment as far as I was planning because I didn't give it enough time at the low fermentation temperature, which led to the beer being on the sweeter side (instead of dry). My biggest frustration is that I know how to fix the problems with the beer, but with my current equipment there is little that I can do about it.