Wheat grey (sorta)

Need some opinions/advice

Here's my recipie:

4lbs Wheat Malt
.5 oz warrior (60 minute, pellet)
.5 oz hallertrau (60 minutes, plug)
1oz bitter orange (15 minutes)
.5 oz tettenger (10 minutes, pellet)

I also want to dry hop with some whole leave earl grey tea to try and get some of the bergamot flavor out, but not get so much tea flavor.

Does that sound like a good method to get the flavor, or would i want to boil up like 6-8 cups worth of some strong earlgrey tea at bottling time and mix to taste?

As a disclaimer, I have never tried to brew with tea.

If you want mostly bergamot flavor, you might want to go to a specialty store and try to get your hands on some bergamot. The tea, while tasty by itself, would probably lend tons of tannins to your beer, making for quite a bitter experience. Boiling the tea would just increase the extraction of tannins.

If you go through with this, I'd definitely be interested to learn how it turns out.

AndrwHock said:

...The tea, while tasty by itself, would probably lend tons of tannins to your beer, making for quite a bitter experience. Boiling the tea would just increase the extraction of tannins...

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A questionable source of mine said to do a dry hop type thing so that most of the tea flavor would stay with the leaves and hopefully the bergamot would come out.

I'm unfamiliar with Dry hopping, but some what guess that about 1oz of whole leaf Earl Grey would do the trick. I'd only leave it in for about 2-5 days.

Some of me wants to wait and see what the bitter orange is going to do with this first.

I think what I'll do is split my batch and see what happens.

You making a 5 gallon batch? It seems a little light on the malt. What is your target OG?

Blender said:

You making a 5 gallon batch? It seems a little light on the malt. What is your target OG?

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Beersmith says 1.032. I'm expecting something session wise in the 3% abv neighborhood.

Oh and I'm using wyeast American wheat for yeast.

Your going to need some barley in there. A) Wheat typically doesnt have enough diastatic power to convert itself, and b) it doesnt have hulls. That recipe needs some tweaking.

cubbies said:

Your going to need some barley in there. A) Wheat typically doesnt have enough diastatic power to convert itself, and b) it doesnt have hulls. That recipe needs some tweaking.

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this is an all extract brew... no need to convert anything since i'm using LME.

So far its going strong in the fermenter. I'll split this thing down the center and try the dry hop technique in one half an leave the other nekid.

Ahh. Now it makes some sense. I was wondering why you were using so little malt. I didnt realize you were using extract.

cubbies said:

Your going to need some barley in there. A) Wheat typically doesnt have enough diastatic power to convert itself, and b) it doesnt have hulls. That recipe needs some tweaking.

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interesting...now i'm wondering why my 100% wheat malt beer converted pretty well and fermented to a very beer-like completion...very tasty even. you may be right though in that my efficiency suffered, i don't have any numbers in front of me. but believe me, a 100% wheat malt grain bill is quite easily accomplished if not standard practice.

I am sure that it is not common practice. I am actually kind of surprised you were able to do it.

Did you use extract or actual grain?

I measured OG at 1.026, and just 15 minutes ago, the blow off is about quiet and it's reading about 1.10. that was quick enough, though not much of an OG so that's probably why.

Beer smith predicted a 1.006 ish range, so i'll let it sit for a week and take another sample. Still tastes pretty nummy with just the hops and bitter orange.

Now, i can't wait till my mega pot arrives from NB. Need to get me the goods to make my counterflow chiller and i'll be all set for full boils!