James Blonde Ale (HBC giveaway)

Thanks again MM and Shane from HBC!

I'm only really at extract level so its perfect for me but feeling adventurous I ordered my first all grain! - A friend of mine has the equipment so he's teaching me the process. So along with this one I should have a nice batch for Christmas!


The instructions were very simple and straight forward. Nice to have that extra ease with the ring pull lids on the cans. Probably should've used oven gloves to swish the boiling water in the cans to get that last extract out!


I was curious as to what the bottle marked 'A' was in the kit until I looked it up and realised it was the hop flavouring or oil. Probably labelled like this for simplicity but I reckon it's just as easy to label it with some brief description so you know what your putting in your beer.


I followed the instructions as stated and filled the bucket to 22lt. By advice I usually fill a bit short on extract kits but I thought I should follow the recipe here for once!


I will keep you updated on all its progress- fermentation, dry hopping etc. I had to leave it in my friend's house as its too cold at mine!

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Thanks for the review, hope it turns out well and looking forward to hearing about it!

Hi Treacle.

Many thanks for your picture, which I found artistic in a sort of way. I do recognise the ring-pull extract cans, which give perfectly good results.

Not least, I like the image because it does sum up so marvelously how easy it is to get across bittering flavours into the concentration process and how hard it is to get the other hop nuances.

I am going to guess that bottles marked "A" are drived from almost any highly alpha acidic hop and that, in reality it matters little which. Presumably some kits come with more "A" extract than others?

The real deal is the hop addition and the extract kits are great because they free up a new-ish brewer to focus their efforts on this aspect.

So on day 10 I added the three hop tea bags to the brew. Instructions were to put them in to a cup of boiling water and leave for 10 mins to cool down before adding to the bucket.

The only thing I did differently was that I found a bowl rather than a cup more suitable as the hop bags swelled up too much in the cup. Really good aromas coming from the bowl:thumb:

After 14 days as instructed I bottled my beer. I used one level teaspoon sugar per bottle for priming (as opposed to the half teaspoon they advise) as I like my ale - especially a "Blonde Ale" to have bit more carbonation. The majority of my bottles were 500ml

By the way the start Gravity was 1.042 and it ended at 1.010 equalling around 4.3% I think?! Anyway Im not sure what it was supposed to reach but that level is fine for me! No problems with the fermentation sticking either :thumb:

I had to leave the bottles in the airing cupboard which I know can be a recipe for disaster but it was just too cold in the rest of the house and it worked on my last batch.

Here's a pic when I took lid off after 14 days with the hop bags floating on the top. I assume that's normal! Great hit of the hops!

The instructions are a bit vague on when the carbonation is complete - just basically says to try it and see if it's fizzed up enough! So after leaving it for 2 weeks in the warm I tried one!

As expected it was a perfectly drinkable ale with a lovely light, fresh hop flavour and balanced with hop bitterness. It had a bit more acidity than I was expecting but not in an aggressive way. Obviously it was still early days...

After a good three weeks to settle and condition in the cellar I cracked one open. Wow really happy with the results! A wonderfully clear, golden colour and a good head. It was certainly not over fizzy so I was really pleased that I added a bit more priming sugar than instructed. I would even go so far as saying that maybe I should've added a touch more. Or perhaps next time I'd try batch priming first- although I'd have to find out first what the recommended quantity would be.

All in all a really easy drinking blonde ale. Not over hopped in bitterness, flavour or aroma plus the acidity that I noted when I tried it 'young' seems to have mellowed with the light maltiness and the whole beer seems much more balanced now. Sorry for my lack of good descriptive brewing vocab- I'm still a novice! But I can definitely say that I would order this beer as a great session blonde ale. Cheers!::drunk:

Here are a few pics- The beer is not quite as amber as in the pic (must have been the red carpet or my nieces's red leotard!) Its more golden in colour and wonderfully clear. Also I've added the full instructions below:thumb:

Just thought I'd add a quick update on this beer - actually I felt compelled to! The other day I discovered 4 bottles of the "James Blond Ale" in the cellar which I'd completely forgotten about!

I'm fairly new to the brewing game and I've never really been good at keeping beers aside for storing longer than a few months, so I was amazed how well it had improved after 5-6 months! It has such a wonderful aroma of tropical fruits - passion fruit and mango - and the taste is just the same. A friend of mine likened it to that fruit drink Rio in a good way! It was very balanced in hop bitterness and acidity and had a good head on it too. I'm gonna share my last bottle with a friend who only does all grain just to get his approval!

I was wondering does anyone know where those tropical fruit notes came from? Is it the specific type of hops used or the malt or yeast or just all combined? I'd like to try and make maybe a partial mash and try to obtain some of that fruit character preferably without having to wait so long! If not I'll probably order the kit again and hope that it's ready for the summer. Cheers!

One of my favourite things about HBing is finding bottles of something I'd thought was long gone. Not only do you get to re-visit them but they're always so nice.

Treacle said:

I was wondering does anyone know where those tropical fruit notes came from? Is it the specific type of hops used or the malt or yeast or just all combined?

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It'll be the hops - probably Cascade, Citra or something similar. It's the subtle combination of different hops that give some beers their distinctive tropical flavours, my current favourite is a combination of Cascade and Willamette.

darrellm said:

It'll be the hops - probably Cascade, Citra or something similar. It's the subtle combination of different hops that give some beers their distinctive tropical flavours, my current favourite is a combination of Cascade and Willamette.

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Thanks for the tip I may have to try that combination some time! Would you just dry hop these?

I just found the hop combo on their website as the ingredients aren't stated in the kit:
We use 3.0 kg of premium liquid malt extract. 30 IBU in bitterness. We use the three premium hops pellets in teabag form – Nugget, Summit and Sorachi Ace.[/I

Time to get experimenting!😉🍺