Feedback on a Buckwheat Honey Weizenbock Recipe?

Ahoy!

This will be only my second brew, but I'm trying to branch out a bit on my own. I'm modifying a recipe from Papazian's book ("Phat Fired Weizenbock", p 195), to incluide buckwheat honey, with some other mods as well.

Please give me input, before I go running off and spending money.

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Hoist Thee Blacke Flag - Buckwheat Honey Weizenbock


Malts,etc:

4.5 lbs Wheat/barley LME (does this mean half wheat, half barley? The orig. recipe is unclear)
2.5 lbs Buckwheat Honey
1.5 lbs Amber light DME
1 lb Crystal malt (dark)
1/4 Lb Chocolate malt
1/4 lb German Caraffe (black debittered) malt

Hops:

1.5 oz German Spalt (classic) - 60 mins
1 oz American Tettnanger - 5 mins
1 oz Santiam - 2 mins

Yeast:

German wheat beer yeast - I have saved some from my last honey-wheat, which should be cool if it didn't die.

Priming:

1/2 cup buckwheat honey.
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So. Thoughts? Suggestions? Any help will be appreciated; if it is especially helpful, I may send you some "live yeast samples" as a token of gratitude.

Haha, I'd do that anyway. I'm cool like that.

Thanks in advance!

Frankly, that sounds...not good. However, I'm frequently wrong and taste is quite subjective, anyways. If it's only your second brew, why not try the recipe as presented, judge what modifications you'd like to make, and then branch out on your own? That would give you a better basis for branching, as it were.

I may well wind up doing that- but on the other hand, the only adjustments I've made to the recipe are in swapping out some of the LME for the honey, and the priming sugar. Everything else is the same.

I may have to do a little of each and see how it turns out?

Further thoughts are appreciated

Just giving this one a little bump, as it's getting closer to the time of buying ingredients

I'd second the notion to first try the recipe as written and work from there. I too have a tendency to try to adjust recipes based on what I'd like to taste in the final product; however, it's sometimes difficult to predict the effect of your changes when you're first starting out. Plus, since the liquid malt extract comes in 3.3 pound cans I always try to work in terms of cans (ie 3.3#, 6.6#, etc.) Measuring out 4.5 lbs of liquid malt extract might get a little messy... I've never used honey for bottling, so I'm not sure what effect that would have (but honey lacks yeast nutrients so it might take longer to carb).
But regardless of what you decide to do, have fun and enjoy! (and post back with your results)

Marc.

ALl right, that sounds like a pretty good idea. I think I may just follow the original recipe, then I'll play around with mixing some of the buckwheat honey into a Belgian Dubbel- I think the thickenss and maltiness would suit it better there, but I'll wait til later in the summer.

Thanks all- I'll let you know how it turns out!

I'm sipping the dregs of a buckwheat honey weizenbock I just bottled. Buckwheat has a distinct flavor, but it is not an unpleasant combination with spicy danstar munich yeast, at least. With plenty of carafa I and belgian caramunich, it kind of reminds me of belgian waffles. We'll see how it tastes when the bottles carb up, though. it's still really young. My hope, adding buckwheat honey, was to make a strong beer that would be really good in October. Time will tell.

I made a sturdy Weizenbock with 3 pounds of Buckwheat Honey in the bill. It came out very tasty, indeed, with the roastiness of plenty Caraffa II carrying the Buckwheatness. Very tasty!