Vanilla cream ale

[Elmer]

After brewing a brown ale and 3 consecutive stouts, I had to go to the light side.
Boiled up what has become one of my favorite recipes, with a few tweeks


1# flaked maize
1# Pilsner malt
1/4# instant rice
3.3 Pilsen LME
2# Pilsen DME

1 oz cascade (bittering 60min)
.5oz cascade (flavor-15mim)
.5oz cascade (aroma - 5 min)

Fermentis us-05 dry yeast

I will be adding 2 vanilla beans after 2 weeks (in secondary)
3 weeks in primary
3 weeks in bottle

Mashed at 155F for 30 min
SG was 1.054

 

[Elmer]

Prepared vanilla, will add to primary on sat.
Do not know of 2 beans will be enough.
If not next time will use 4

 

[BernardSmith]

Nice one - but the pale beers are not my thing. I think you need to be more careful about DMS with Pilsner malts and grains...

 

[Elmer]

Vanilla bean left little weird dots in the beer.
Almost thought it was infected. But it was just the beans
Taste is very vanilla forward followed with a cream ale back end

 

[Elmer]

2 weeks in bottle needs o carb more (basement is only 58, surprised it conditioned at all)

The vanilla flavor has decreased from the time of bottling.

There is a nice smooth mouth feel of a cream ale followed by a hint of vanilla on the back end.
Overall it is tasty, even SWMBO liked it!