My Cherry Wheat Ale

Not having drank or made too many fruit or wheat beers, I decided to give this one for a try:

Andy's Cherry Wheat Ale

Yeast:
Safale US-56

Grain Bill:
1.5 lbs Crystal Malt 90L (Uncrushed)

Extracts:
3 lbs Barvaian Wheat DME

6 lbs Honey

Hops:

0.5 oz Saaz - Pellets
0.5 oz Fuggles - Pellets

4.6 lbs Pureed Dark Cherries

Steeped the grains in 3 gallons of water at 157 F for 30 minutes. Brought the batch to a boil. Removed from heat, added the DME and Honey. Returned to heat and brought back to a boil. Dropped Saaz hops in at begining of boil for 60 minutes. Added 1 Tsp. Irish Moss 40 minutes after boil. Added Fuggles at 45 minutes into the boil.
After 60 minutes, removed from heat, dropped the wort chiller in and started it. Dropped temp from 205 F down to 88 F in only 7 minutes! (no joke, my wife is my witness, and I'm using my fluke digital themometor). Continued to cool until wort hit about 77 F, then poured into fementation bucket to airiate the wort. Dumped 2 gallons of my crystal clear well water (Temp of 42 F out of the tap). Wort temp was 70 F when I pitched the yeast and took a hydro OG of 1.084.
Activity started about 6 hours after pitching. Stayed very active for about 4 days, good head of foam on batch. Waited until foam fell (which was today). Hydro read about 1.030. Racked the wort to carboy with pureed cherries. Wort was a golden brown color, but is now a DEEP rich red color. Smells great. Can't wait to try it.
Plan on letting it condition for about a week, making sure the hydro stays steady, then I'll prime it with dextrose and bottle it.

Story about the hops. I had PLANNED on using 1 oz Saaz for 60, 0.5 oz Fuggles at 15, and then the other 0.5 oz of Fuggles at the end of the boil. But I had aleady started to steep my grains when I discovered I only had half an ounce of each! I forgot I had used them in another batch and forgot to get more!
That's okay, I don't like really bitter beers. I don't want it to taste like soda pop, but I can't really bitter ones. If I want to drink something that bitter, I'll just mix some unsweeten bakers chocolate into hot water, cool it and drink it. Cheaper and takes less time!

6lb of honey sounds like it will take a pretty long time to ferment out.. am I wrong in thinking this here?

From what I understand myself, and what I have experienced myself, the answer is "yes" and "no" :cross:
Both this batch and a Golden Honey Ale (which i used 6 lbs of honey) took only a week before my krausen (sp?) fell.
Most ale yeasts, from what I've gathered, do not consume the honey sugars like they do the malt sugars. Rather, they take a lot longer. Meads use a LOT of honey, but take quite a while to ferment.
So you can see why I'm saying yes and no at the same time. The only batch I've made that took longer than a week in primary (ale batches that is) was the chocolate Cherry ale, and it had a LOT of malts in it: 6 lbs Dark Liquid malt, and 3 lbs of grains. That one took about 10 days or so before I could rack it.

I'm new to this, and thus far have been kit brewing with LME (Dark, Light, Amber). They are partial extract where I steep the grain first, then att the 2 cans of LME.

What's the biggest difference in flavor between the LME and DME? Would you think with this recipe I could use an amber or dark LME as a substitute? Is DME just as easy to use? If so, I may be hitting up the LHBS friday!

Bottled up the Cherry Wheat back on the 11th. I went ahead and popped one open yesterday (I like to do this to see how the carbination is doing). It was starting to carbinate pretty good, and it taste great. My wife tried it and threatened me with hot death if I change the recipe! LOL!
She's really pushing me to do one of the Pumpkin Ales on here. I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie like she is. But any excuise to make more beer is a good one!

andylegate said:

Bottled up the Cherry Wheat back on the 11th. I went ahead and popped one open yesterday (I like to do this to see how the carbination is doing). It was starting to carbinate pretty good, and it taste great. My wife tried it and threatened me with hot death if I change the recipe! LOL!
She's really pushing me to do one of the Pumpkin Ales on here. I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie like she is. But any excuise to make more beer is a good one!

Click to expand...

I don't have a lot of recipes yet as I am a n00b (3 batches under my belt). I got the midwest brewing pumpkin ale kit. I just bottled it on Fri, it tasted great. Only changes I made to their recipe was 1 large can of pumpkin during boil, and then another large can while racking. I also added in 1Tb of nutmeg and another Tb of cinnamon at racking. Came out great thus far, can't wait for it to carb!