BJCP Style: 1D - American Wheat
Somehow I've made it this far without ever doing anything with wheat malt. Time to change that. Getting started with a clean and simple American wheat with a healthy dose of Loral hops in the late boil and American ale yeast.
Full recipe is on BrewersFriend but here's the TL;DR
- Brewday: 2018-10-13 (brew 2 of 3)
- Malt: 50/50 German Pils and Wheat (Weyermann)
- Hops: [Magnum] (Loral)
- Yeast: SafAle US-05 (slurry from Ameri-Helles)
- OG: 1.038, FG: 1.005, ABV: 4.3%
I had almost exactly 2500g of Weyermann Barke Pils malt leftover from all the German beers I made for Oktoberfest. Might as well use it up. 50% pils, 50% wheat malt
Mash temp
Brew session beer: One of my favorites, and fresh hop season is the best time of year.
Grains out. Heating up to boil
72g of Loral hops will go in for 5 minutes at the end of the boil for a nice blend of noble character and fruitiness
Floor Manager Steve "helping"
Hops in. Time to chill.
Into the fermenter
Wort sample
Didn't know what to expect for efficiency with wheat malt. Now I know: it's crap! Expected 70% and ended up with 58%. This works out to 1.038. If it attenuates like it should we'll end up with about 4% ABV which is ok, just not what I was expecting.
And away we go
2018-10-17 (+4): already down to 1.005 according to the refractometer which puts it at 4.3% - not bad. I'll check again to confirm when kegging but that seems about right.
2018-10-19 (+6) - moving to 2ndary because I needed the fermenter
2018-10-23 (+10) - Cold crash. Steve supervising.
2018-10-24 (+11): into the keg
2018-10-24 (+11): uncarbonated sample. Tasting soapy and weird, but that's US-05 still in suspension. Should clean up after some time in the keg.
2018-10-25 (+12): Carbonated sample. This is tasting really nice - I've always had a hard time getting excited about wheat beers but this has some good stuff going on and plenty of body for being 4.2%. Can't wait to see how it develops over the next couple of weeks if it lasts that long.
2018-10-31 (+18): half pour
2018-11-4 (+22): full pour in the hefe glass
2018-11-11 (+29): full pour. tasting good, has some phenols going on. Because of the wheat? Because I used the same batch of yeast for a cream ale and it came out clean. Interesting mix of flavors and I think the Loral really works. Pleasant overall and pretty crushable even though I'm not a big fan of wheat beer.
