Another homemade beer to add to our list, I decided to call it Italian Blanche Ale instead of Belgian Blanche Ale because I didn’t completely follow the style 😂, as usual, 😉 using the ingredients I had available. However, I did follow the various steps that should be done with their respective temperatures, but now let’s see what we need.
INGREDIENTS
PILSNER MALT 600 g
WHEAT MALT 400 g
RYE FLAKES 150 g
WATER 5+3 liters
FUGGLE HOPS 5 g
WILD HOPS 5 g
CLOVE 1
CARDAMOM 5 pods
BREWING YEAST 1 teaspoon
SUGAR refermentation.
Of course, you are encouraged to make your own variations 😉
INSTRUCTIONS
First, to prepare our Blanche Ale, we need to place our pot on the stove with 5 liters of water (we’ll use the other 3 liters later). When the water reaches 52°C – 125°F, we turn off the heat and pour the malts and rye flakes into the pot, give it a good stir, cover with the lid, and wait for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, we turn the heat back on and bring it all to 62°C – 144°F. Once it reaches the temperature, we turn off the heat, cover with the lid, and wait for 30 minutes.
After half an hour, we turn the heat back on and bring our mixture to 65°C – 150°F. Once it reaches this temperature in a few minutes, we turn off the heat, cover with the lid, and wait for another 30 minutes.
Don’t worry, the other 2 steps will be shorter 😉
After 30 minutes, we turn the heat back on and reach a temperature of 72°C – 160°F. Then we turn off the heat, cover, and wait for 10 minutes.
For the last step, you can now also light the fire under the pot with the remaining 3 liters of water. We need to bring both the water and the mixture to 78°C – 172°F. Once the temperature is reached, we turn off the heat and wait another 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, I filtered the first part of our Blanche Ale directly into the fermenter because I will only add hops to half of it.
After collecting the wort, I pour the other 3 liters of water over the grains that have also reached 78°C – 172°F. As usual, give it a good stir, cover, and wait for 10 minutes. This is to rinse the grains and collect sugar and various substances still attached to them.
HOPING
Here, I’ll let you decide because usually, all the wort is hopped, especially when making a traditional beer like Blanche Ale. However, since I like to experiment, I decided to follow your advice and only hop half of the wort.
So, we collect our second part of the wort directly into the pot and place it on the heat.
When our wort comes to a boil, we add the 5g of Fuggle hops.
After 45 minutes, we add the 5g of wild hops, the clove, and the crushed cardamom pods, and let it boil for another 15 minutes.
After a total of 1 hour our homemade beer is hopped, we remove our pot from the heat and place it in the sink with cold water to quickly lower the temperature and reach the room temperature. There are various techniques for this process; this is the simplest one.
FERMENTATION
Once our wort has reached room temperature, we filter it directly into the fermenter where we had already placed the first part of the wort.
To ferment our Blanche Ale beer, all we need to do is add 1 teaspoon of selected yeast into the fermenter, close it with the lid on which we have mounted the airlock filled with any liquor we have at home.
In less than 24 hours, fermentation will have begun. If you encounter any issues, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or YouTube.
BOTTLING
After 2 weeks, fermentation has surely concluded, and we can proceed with bottling.
For the fermentation in the bottle, I directly add sugar to the bottles, 8 grams per liter, so you need to adjust according to the size of your bottles.
Once capped, we leave our bottles at room temperature for at least 2 weeks to allow the yeast to convert the sugar into carbon dioxide, resulting in a nice fizzy beer.
After 2 months of maturation, your homemade Blanche Ale 🍺 will be perfect and ready for a dinner with friends. If you can’t wait for 2 months, you should wait for at least 2 weeks; otherwise, it won’t be carbonated enough.
Please drink responsibly.
If you have a hydrometer, you can also calculate the alcohol content as shown in the video below 😉.
