AG #58 Wheat Beer (now with raspberry)

[BrewerBen]

Its seems like ages since my last brew and the brewery is currently in transition. And when i say the brewery i mean i now have a permanent indoor brewing place instead of setting up outside when its not raining. I thought i'd get a brew in even though its not finished and with empty kegs and hardly any bottles thought a wheat beer could be turned out pretty quick. Another motive to doing a wheat beer is to try out some acid malt. I've been using crs in the last few brews and when i use alot to get the alkalinity right down for a pale i can taste a twang in the beer so the plan is to try out a combination of Acid malt and a little CRS. For this beer i've gone straight in at a little over 5% Acid malt which is on the upper limit of the recommendation before you can taste it in the final beer. If i have overdone it then all iv'e ended up doing is making a Berliner Weisse so will hopefully still be a tasty brew.

Target Gravity is 1.048 for 28L

2850g Lager Malt 49.57 %
2600g Wheat Malt 45.22 %
300g Acid Malt 5.22%

10 gm Endevour[7.3% %] (75 min) Hops 6.1 IBU
11.5 gm Mandarina Baveria[8.9 %] (75 min) Hops 9.4 IBU

2 packs of Fermentis WB06

14 ml crs
3g Calcium Chloride.
2.1g Gypsum

Mash in 27.5L at 38C
Step 1: 30 Mins @ 62C
Step 2: 40 Mins @ 72C
Mash Out: 10 Mins @ 78C
Sparge 13L @ 78C

Grain shot:


Mashing in. I find with a large percentage of wheat malt it take up less space for the weight. 5.75kg of only barley malt would have been a struggle but no problems fitting this lot in:


Pumps on:


Shot of the brewery. The BM will eventually stay back against the wall once we have sorted out the steam issues. Pretty compact for what will be a 10 gallon brewery.


I have this waiting in the wings. Its been fitted with a thermowell, a stainless cooling coil and 2 x 25 watt flexible heat mats from a reptile shop. I will use a maxi 110 shelf chiller for the cooling once it arrives. Hopefully i will get to use it soon.


Mashing done:


Malt pipe lifted. I can do the short malt pipe by hand but for the large malt pipe lift i have a pulley hoist waiting to be fitted.


Sophisticated steam management system. Ducting + stick + bungees + duct tape worked surprisingly well. In the bend there is a hole to let the water drain into the pan. The original plan was to use a bathroom extractor fan and route the steam out of a window in the roof via the flexible ducting. Unfortunately during a test when the ducting got hot it collapsed with the suction and water spewed out the bottom of the fan.


Pre boil gravity right on target:


Setting up the recirc pump, plate chiller and siphon stick. Slight issue with the pump as it would not get going. Turns out one of the connectors was shorting out so i quickly cut it off and used a connector block to get it going again.


Run off:


OG Reading right where it should be:


Very little leftover when using the siphon:


A new addition to the brewery - temp controlled fridge. This will have several duties, when doing smaller batch sizes i will use it for fermentation temp control otherwise it will be used as a kegerator. I can get 2 20L sankey kegs in there. Despite doing 58 brews this will be the first one where i have some decision in the fermentation temperature. For this beer i set it at 22C. Fermentis recommend under 22C for clove flavours and over for banana - at 22 i'm hoping for a bit of both.Thermowell goes through the lid for the temp sensor, on the Speidel fermenter above it wasn't long enough to reach the wort so it went in through the front:


Quick peak the next morning and fermentation is well underway:

[sbond10]

Lovely looking beer there dude hope it turns out well

[BrewerBen]

Thanks, i also have just under 2kg or so of rasberrys from the garden sitting in the freezer which i am very tempted to stick in this brew but the more i think about it the more i worry about infections.

[Monkeybrew]

Looking like a nice brew there, and you can't beat brewing out of the UK weather!

I'll brew my next beer outside (weather permitting), and will then probably boil just inside my shed door over the Winter months.

I've got a Wheat beer planned, but will be using Lallemand Munich yeast instead.

What's the correct ratio of base malt to wheat malt?

Cheers

MB

[BrewerBen]

The ratio's i've seen in recipes have mostly been around the 40-60% wheat so i tend to keep it in that range, perhaps erring towards having more barley malt than wheat malt although i cant really get a stuck sparge i have seen the pumps bore a hole in the malt bed when flow was slow.

[seymour]

Nice looking recipe, particularly that bold hop combo. I bet the weizen yeast will produce some interesting spiciness too. Can't wait to hear how it all melds together, particularly with regards to the sizeable acid malt percentage.

Cheers!

[BrewerBen]

The hop combo was just to use up the last of the packs but i would hope the manderina baveria would go well.

I'm also throwing caution into the wind and going for the raspberry addition too. They are defosted with a little water added to help with mashing them up and i added a camden tablet to hopefully kill of any nasties. I'll dump this lot in tomorrow and then probably spend the next day cleaning up my brew fridge.

[BrewerBen]

Fermentation has slowed right down.


Gravity Reading of 1.015


In goes the rasperry pulp:


Gravity looks like it has gone up by a point:

[BrewerBen]

So the gravity dropped to 1.010 and stayed there so i crash cooled down to 4C and the fruit bits dropped nicely to the bottom of the fermenter. I then racked into another fermenter and left at 4C for 24 hours and bottled.

I racked the beer through a hop boiling bag to catch any bits:


Leftovers:


One of the bottles was cracked but i didn't notice by the time i filled it so nothing i can do other than drink the contents. Initial verdict is its a interesting beer, there is an enticing sweet rasberry aroma but then you are slapped in the face by the sourness of the fruit followed by a aftertaste of the original malty wheat beer. I'm pretty sure the sourness is from the fruit rather than the acid malt as i tasted a sample before i added the fruit and didnt notice any sourness at all.

[seymour]

Great-looking pink beer there for breast cancer awareness month!