Blending Beer

It's your beer sir, do what you please. If people didn't we wouldn't have ever had the Black and Tan hybrids of former fame. I personally like to mix the Well's Banana Bread Ale with Rogue's Double Chocolate Stout and make a chocolate covered banana beer, cuz...hedonism.

 

One of my favourites was PBR and Tooths Sheaf Stout. The latter is not available to me anymore so I am sol.

 

Blending beer is tons of fun. It's one of the most obvious uses of the 'one of everything' type flights that some places offer. So many interesting flavors you can find. Mad River Brewing in northern CA has a whole menu of blends that is always evolving of their beers. Usually amounts to finding your own perfect balance of malt and hop

 

Half and half’s are great, doesn’t have to be a classic Guinness over Harp.

 

I don't blend with the intent to reach a certain taste combo. However, when my wife and I are on a pub crawl we usually drink from a sampler flight to experience the brewery's beers. Knowing we have multiple breweries yet to visit that day, and to keep the alcohol low in out bodies, we frequently won't finish all of the beers in the flight but will mix the remaining beers into one glass to see what we get. We've been doing this for around 15 years, but have yet to discover the 'beer of the year' so we usually have a small sip for the teste experience and leave the rest behind.

 

I love when the lighter bottom beer breaks thru the layer of stout.

 

Take a bottle of Lindeman's Framboise to any house party to liven up any macros laying around if you're trying to drink on the cheap You'll essentially be drinking Abita Purple Haze all night.

 

I once blended SingleSpeed Coconut Migration (IIPA, 7.4% ABV, 75 IBU) with Ballast Point Pineapple Sculpin (IPA, 7.0% ABV, 70 IBU). Result? The perfect Piña Colada IPA!

Another time, I used half a bottle of GL Edmund Fitzgerald and half a bottle of Ghost Face Killah in a batch of beer bread. I then blended the leftover beer to drink. Result? Back to the drawing board.

 

Did this a couple of years ago; mixed an Avery Nuttiest Professor Peanut Stout and an Atwater Decadent Dark Chocolate Brown Ale. I figured this would taste like a peanut butter cup. The nose is there, and the taste is pretty good too. Both beers have nutty taste. Not bad. If I could review this, I would give the nose a 4.50 and the taste a 4.25.

 

Short's Brewing here in MIchigan makes a PB&J Stout by blending a peanut butter stout with a fruit rye ale. Although it's been years since I had it I recall that it was a good representation of a sandwich. https://www.shortsbrewing.com/beers/pbj-stout/

 

Shorts is a very fun place to blend beers due to the sheer volume of different flavors they put out. My other favorite blending site is against the grain in Louisville

 

I do it most often with mixing sours with other styles, one example is if a sour has a strong passion fruit flavor I’ll mix it with a straight forward IPA to balance it.

 

I just did a KBS/frambois blend the other night. Not bad.

 

My favorite is Breakfast Stout and Rubeaus. But the other day I tried KBS with Blushing Monk. Both are amazing. If you ever find a place with both beers and at least one is on nitro, make the mix and thank me later.

 

No beer /beer other than the B&T or H&H of old.

Now I will add a little bourbon to a BBA stout. I always enjoy the first half of the bottle in the manner the brewer made it but sometimes like top 'freshen up" last part.

 

My friends and I once blended an Old Stock Ale with a Hennepin Saison and a Six-Point Resin, as we didn’t like all three on their own and that’s what we had on hand. It turned to be really balanced and drinkable, balancing all aspects of those beers.

 

I've found that a healthy splash of a porter or lighter stout can work really well with your pre-joose ipas. There's just a wild world of possibilities out there

 

I do it all the time now.

One of my local breweries just discontinued their Schwarzbier. So I started blending their very flavorful light lager (4.2%) with their stout (6.6%) and it's quite a decent approximation of a 5.4% Schwarzbier.
The lager brings a lightness and light herbal hop aroma and the stout brings enough roastiness.

I also have liked mixing IPAs and stouts.