American Wheat critique?

Looking to make an American Wheat drink and was looking for some input.
Here's my start:

6.00 lb Wheat Malt
4.00 lb Pale 2-Row
1.00 lb Munich Malt
0.50 lb Crystal 10

1.00 oz Saaz 60 min
0.25 oz Cascade 5 min

2 Oranges worth of Zest, flameout (maybe 5 mins?)

Strain hops/orange before pitching.
Probably ferment with WPL 320 American wheat yeast

Looking for a mostly wheaty, but with some other beer-y flavors.
Any insights? Should i bump down the munich? or leave out the Crystal?

I think the recipe looks good the crystal should be fine because it is only crystal 10. I you wanted to have more of a hop aroma and flavor you could up the cascade.

Thx.

Yeah, I thought about the hops, but I really don't want to make a wheat IPA, or even bring too much hops to the table... or glass. Just wanted to give it a little bit.

I suppose I'll have to brew this and then post notes on it.

well it would have to be much more bitter to be an wheat IPA. My thinking was that a nice cascade aroma would go well with the citrusy orange peel. You could do a half or 3/4s of an ounce at 5 mins or flameout and I think it would come out good.

yeah, why dont you use 3/4 or an ounce of cascade at flameout? only getting that good aroma to go with the zest.

Yeah, I was hoping just the 1/4 oz would add some mild cascade flavor.

Perhaps I will bump up to 1/2 or 3/4.

Thanks for the feedback

Just curious why you would choose to bitter with Saaz? Personal preference maybe?

I would just bitter with a small amount of the Cascade and save the Saaz for a pilsner.

JPicasso said:

Yeah, I was hoping just the 1/4 oz would add some mild cascade flavor.

Perhaps I will bump up to 1/2 or 3/4.

Thanks for the feedback

Click to expand...

Just curious how this turned out. I'm looking to brew something very similar. How did it all turn out? Did you up the aroma hops? Would you? How much orange flavor/aroma did you get? Would you change the amount of orange zest?

Well, it did not turn out.

Not because the recipe was good or bad, it tasted good going into the fermentor, however, there it stayed... for just under a year. It had some serious funk on it and so I had to bid farewell to my last brew.
(My wife got pregnant and we ended up with twins, and slightly we've been busier than I could have ever imagined. )

So anyways, let me know if I formulated anything good. I'll be looking at remaking this one sometime this summer, when I get back into brewing.

I brewed this beer about three weeks ago on a slightly smaller scale (~3.5 gal. into the fermentor). I added 0.50 oz. Cascade (7.5%) at 60 minutes, 0.25 oz. Cascade (7.5%) at 5 minutes, and 0.25 oz. Brewer's Best sweet Orange Peel at 5 minutes, and left it all in the fermentor until bottling. With ~74% efficiency, it started out at 1.062 and finished at 1.011 for ~6.7% ABV using Safale US-05 yeast.

Based on my sample during bottling last night, I may increase the initial hop amount to 0.75 oz. The sample also seemed to have a good deal of citrus flavor/aroma, but I'm not yet sure if it's too little, too much, or just right. I'll confirm these as soon as I drink a bottle in a few weeks.

I should also mention that, after sampling it, my wife (who doesn't like most beers) said that she really likes it and that I'll need to brew it again, and I definitely agree with her.

What mash schedule did you follow?

Since my brew kettle holds only 3 gallons, I split my 8 pounds of grain (plus 8 oz. of rice hulls) in half and followed this schedule twice, then combined the cooled worts in the fermenter:

No protein rest or glucan rest,
Saccharification rest at 152° for 60 minutes with 5 quarts of water (1.25 qt./#),
First sparge at 170° for 10 minutes with 3 quarts of water, and
Second sparge at 175°-180° for 10 minutes with 3 quarts of water.