BeerBorg

Reducing the amount of malt can also result in a thin body, and the lower sweetness can lead to an unbalanced flavor. A few ideas to combat those pitfalls:

Boosting Perceived Body:
1. Add more crystal/dextrin malt, which will add sweetness and mouthfeel.
2. Add unmalted grains (especially oats and rye) for their beta-glucans, which add body without sweetness, but can also contribute haze.
3. Raise the saccharification rest temperature, a good choice to avoid the sweetness of crystal malts.
4. Use a less attenuative yeast strain, English strains are especially well suited.
5. Use a strain that produce a high amount of glycerin/glycerol, saison strains tend to excel at this.
6. Lower carbonation, I find high carbonation makes light beers taste seltzer-like (although higher carbonation can help excessively thin beers, like gueuze).

Enhancing Malt Flavor:
1. Use a more flavorful base malt like Maris Otter, Vienna, Munich, or dark wheat.
2. Raise the percentage of specialty malts, especially toasty malts like Victory, biscuit, and melanoidin.
3. Eliminate adjuncts like corn/table sugar, and corn which dilute malt flavor.
4. Conduct a no-sparge mash to increase color/flavor, and minimize tannin extraction.

Maintaining Balance:
1. For a hoppy beer reduce the IBUs proportionally to the expected residual extract (I think this is a better way to think about balance than the classic BU:GU ratio).
2. Do not trim late boil additions as much to maintain a solid hop aroma.
3. For dark beers consider increasing the percentage, but cold steeping your roasted grains to reduce harshness.
4. Use a more expressive yeast because the lower gravity will result in a cleaner fermentation profile.
5. Account for serving the beer fresher than you would a strong beer (e.g., use a highly flocculent yeast).

These are certainly not all things that should be done concurrently for one batch of session beer, but it is a good idea to pick the ones that make sense for the type of beer you are brewing

Kealia wrote:That is crazy low.....

So far I've been a big fan of Lagunitas DayTime, Firestone Easy Jack and a few others that don't come to mind at the moment. Stone's GoTo is good, but doesn't top my list and I'd prefer one of the aforementioned over it. Slow Ride does sound very intriguing - peach skin and all.

swenocha wrote:Forgot to mention the other one I plan to try soon... Brooklyn Brewery's 1/2 Ale, which is a session saison.

My Whole Foods has the Bikini Beer homebrew kits... but only in the "starter" set that comes with fermenters and such. I would have bought one today had they had it in refill form...

pengins27 wrote:I just purchased my first kit (non HME, i am 17 batches into the MrB kits) -

I bought the Brooklyn Brew Shop - Everyday IPA. Any tips for a beginner that i should take note of? Every hobby needs to progress and i'm trying to take small steps