Home Brew Forum

Ok so bit of a random day, ended up being able to get 2 brews on today, sorry but no pics.

First off i decided to do an elderflower wheat as follows.

2.5kg Marris otter
2.5kg wheat malt

Mashed at 66C
60 mins boil

30g 2.3% hersbrucker hallertauer 60 mins
30g 2.3%hersbrucker hallertauer 10 mins
30g dried elderflowers 10 mins
20g dried elderflowers in fv as dry "hops"

ferment with wb-06
That all went well, tucked up in fv, hoping the elderflowers come though, gonna try n ferment a little cooler than normal to keep the banana out of the flavour profile (we'll see)

Secondly decided to throw together a bitter recipe, n see how it comes out

So i've gone for

3.5kg marris otter
545g crystal
50g chocolate malt

mash at 66%
60min boil

hops

30g 4% fuggles 60mins
10g 4.3% fuggles 60 mins
30g 4.3% fuggles 20 mins
30g 4.3% fuggles 10 mins

Gonna ferment this with S-04,

Best go get this one sparging now, hope this one goes as smoothly as the wheat.

Well, quick update on the ale. As I clearly jinxed myself in the last post, the second brew didn't go as well as the first. Upon going to sparge i noticed a small puddle under the boiler/HLT which i noticed was slowly running to the floor then down the slope in to the bathroom, where it had collected a not insignificant puddle. Tracked this down to the tap. Where it joined the boiler. Suffice to say, quite annoyed, so i ditched all the sparge water, so i could tighten the nut up to stop the leak. That worked at least, all water tight again now. Just a case of reheating a load of new sparge water then. Got it all quickly heated back up n started my sparge, which went ok, except for I measured my water wrong when I refilled the boiler, so i got more than expected in the boiler by nearly a gallon. Bugger, oh well nothing to be done I thought, so by this point I just thought i'd carry on with the hop additions etc as normal. So on with the boil, luckily that all went ok, got 23l of nice clear looking wort in my fv, with S04, n decided to put the left over gallon in a small fermenter which i'm doing with US05 just to see what happens. May as well, seeing as its free wort!

So not exactly smooth, but it should still make beer, n who knows the mini US05 batch might come out better than the other, at least i've got round to doing a side by side yeast test now.

oops!! An Elderflower wheat beer... interesting.

I like the sound of the elderflower brew matey!

Has to be said, the elderflower wheat smells amazing! keeping it in the basement so it stays fairly cool (probably constantly 16-18C ish, never measured it though), hoping I get something with lots of elderflower without the banana from the yeast getting in to the flavour too much.
I do love my wheat, n i'm planning more flavoured wheats, my next if i can work out how the hell to do it is a mango wheat beer, maybe i'll not use a wheat beer yeast, or if this comes out with subtle yeast flavours i will, who knows, I do love playing. My mango idea is to get something very mango'y. Only small problem is I dont know how much mango to use, how much fermentable sugars any volume of mangos will add, how much flavour it will add, or how much of the available sugars will be fermentable by the ale or wheat beer yeasts. Ok so there are a few issues that I could do with some advice on. This might be one I'm playing with for a while.