American Wheat Beer Summer Citrus Wheat

Well im about halfway through the keg, and i love it. Most of my friends are hop heads, including myself, but i find this to be the perfect summer beer. After working in the garden for a couple hours, im not in the mood for an incredibly hoppy, 7% IPA. This does the trick for me. I think next time i may add a little more orange peel, but overall i love the recipe. Thanks for posting.

I forgot to put the orange in the boil...should I just put it in the primary?

I do not think you'll get the desired flavor. However, I never tried it like that. Give it a go!

I am going to wait until fermentation is complete then boil the orange peel in a couple cups of water, cool, and add to the fermenter.

This sounds perfect. Might me my first 10 gal batch too since it won't tie up the fermentors too long! Cheers

Just brewed a partial mash version of this with a few changes. I dont have all grain capability so went to LHBS and this is what they gave me:

1.6 LBS wheat grain
1.06 lbs 2 row
2 lbs muntons light DME
3 lbs muntons wheat DME
1 pack munich wheat yeast
I zested 2 smallish oranges and on medium red grapefruit (instead of lemon)

Mashed grain BAIB in 3.5 gal @ 154-156 F for 60min
Removed grain and let drain then moved to another pot with 1.5 gal @ 170 for 10 min then romoved a drained.
Combined as much of the wert as possible and brought to boil
Added 2 lbs light DME at 60 along with .5 oz Cascade
.5 simcoe at 45 min (messed this one up supposed to be at 15 I used simcoe because I had it and wanted to use it up)
Added 3 lbs wheat DME @ 5 min and returned to boil then added 1.0 oz cascade and zest

The hydro sample tasted really good so im excited about this one. hope the Simcoe doesnt make it too "piney"

Oh and this batch was my first with my IC and it worked fantastic!

Just bottled up 12 pints of this. Even before this it tasted excellent, like a Blue Moon maybe. They did not have the rice hulls though so I'm not sure what I am missing because of this? any ideas?

Rice hulls are just to help prevent a stuck sparge when mashing with a high percentage of sticky huskless grain like rye or wheat. Some systems need them, others are fine without.

Heating up 4 gallons of strike water right now for this recipe, can't wait!

I'm using it in a summer 'homebrew-off' with my brewing buddy.

I'm using 4.5 lbs of pale 2 row to compensate for my low efficiencies lately (newer all grain brewer).

I'll post pics, thanks for the recipe!

Nailed my OG and 5.5 gallons post boil, awesome!

Just pitched a starter of 1010....can't wait to try this!

Thanks again.

Just went into the fermenter with a recipe inspired by this. I used my HBC 342 hops I've had sitting around. I did 1 oz at 10 min and 1 oz at 5 to get me to 17 ibu. I used S-05 as well. Hit my target of 1.044 right on the dot. This may be my first beer that won't be dry hopped that I've made in a long while.

Force carbed this overnight. This is a damn tasty refreshing beer. It killed me to not dry hop this but with Mother's Day coming Sunday I figured I'd give my babies' momma something she'd want. Thanks for the recipe!

I just brewed this up yesterday. I have been doing smaller 1 - 2 gallon batches and this was my first 5 gallon brew. Can't wait to try it. Should be ready for the 4th of July

It'll easily be ready by 7/4!

@EllisTx, that's an awesome looking beer...making me thirsty!

Thanks for the recipe.

We brewed this 15 days ago, and just kegged today. Very excited to try it tomorrow.

We made a few alterations... Will report back on findings.

Swapped the late boil hops to amarillo's, added fresh lemon zest at the 5 min mark.

Chopped up a lemon and orange and added it when we moved it to the secondary at 10 days, added a little more zest at day 13.

Struggled with efficiency on this og was 1.039, fg 1.007.

It tasted great in the cylinder, can wait for co2 to do its thing!

I want to take a crack at brewing this beer and hopefully will be doing so by the end of the week. This will be my four batch that I ever brewed and have done one partial mash already with great sucess. Since this recipe does not have a lot of grain I was thinking I could do a BIAB. Only thing is I only want to end up with 5 gallons. I did some math and wanted to make sure that I got my calculations right.

4.6 lb White wheat
2.6 lb Pale 2 row
1.3 oz Total Cascade hops (will be protioned out to correct amounts then add at correct times)

Zest one orange
zest one lemon

does that make sense or did I do something wrong

Anybody tried this as a 1 gallon batch?

Duece40 just put this into Beersmith as you have it your grain bill is a little low giving you only 1.032 SG, IBU's on point at 24.2, color little light but no biggie, ABV is 3.2 I would increase your grain bill (unless looking for low alcohol beer) other than that sounds good.

Yeah I brewed it about 5 days ago and got that same O.G. 1.032. Next time I'm going to and an extra pound to both to raise up the alcohol content a bit. Looks like it fermented well though. Used white labs 001 yeast cake had a cream ale on it before. Think I'm going to bottle Sunday. Samples taste great though

I brewed this one last week. I overshot my target OG by several points (1.064). My last batch was pretty low efficiency, so I adjusted my grain bill to account for this. I guess I am starting to figure out my new system because my efficiency was 80%.
I pitched WLP001; starting fermenting at 63 and have raised it to 68 over the past 5 days. Still bubbling away. Do you guys recommend a secondary on this one, or just bottle once I hit my FG?

Thanks!

Just scaled this recipe down for a one gallon batch and brewed it up last night. It's fermenting away in the closet and I can't wait to crack the first one open about a month from now. Think I'm in more danger of becoming addicted to brewing beer than drinking it!

Made 10 gallons of this about three weeks ago, 5 gallons will be straight original recipe and the other 5 got 4 pounds of black raspberries in primary.

the color is great, much darker than I thought it would be. The aroma is beautiful and the beer has a residual berry sweetness that tasted very nice uncarbonated. I put the keg on the gas two days ago so by next week it should be carbed and ready to be properly evaluated. If the berry is too strong I might dry hop with a bit of cascade, maybe .5 ounce just to balance it out.

Thanks for the recipe!

runningweird said:

Made 10 gallons of this about three weeks ago, 5 gallons will be straight original recipe and the other 5 got 4 pounds of black raspberries in primary.

the color is great, much darker than I thought it would be. The aroma is beautiful and the beer has a residual berry sweetness that tasted very nice uncarbonated. I put the keg on the gas two days ago so by next week it should be carbed and ready to be properly evaluated. If the berry is too strong I might dry hop with a bit of cascade, maybe .5 ounce just to balance it out.

Thanks for the recipe!

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Let us know how that turns out. I'm thinking red raspberries next spring, after I try the original this summer. Did you do the orange peel and the raspberries? Thanks!

Chizult said:

Let us know how that turns out. I'm thinking red raspberries next spring, after I try the original this summer. Did you do the orange peel and the raspberries? Thanks!

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so here is the black raspberry monster. i doubt it will ever clear out - I am going to try to save a six pack of it before I drink the entire keg myself.

I was worried there was too much residual sweetness when I kegged it but after conditioning for a little while it is really great. This is not a subtle raspberry flavor - it is large and very fragrant. I will make it again, I did not use orange peel in my original recipe as I didn't have it on hand.

runningweird said:

so here is the black raspberry monster. i doubt it will ever clear out - I am going to try to save a six pack of it before I drink the entire keg myself.

I was worried there was too much residual sweetness when I kegged it but after conditioning for a little while it is really great. This is not a subtle raspberry flavor - it is large and very fragrant. I will make it again, I did not use orange peel in my original recipe as I didn't have it on hand.

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Wow! Monster is right...that's like drinking Grimace. I might have to go for just a couple pounds of raspberries. I'm just looking for a touch of color and flavor. Thanks for the feedback.

I did simmer the raspberries after freezing them, that might have set the color a bit too. I wanted to be sure I didn't ruin my beer. it is grimace like now that you mention it. But it is oh so good. I should have made a few more carboys worth. I would suggest a pound if you just want color.

An update on this beer with the added raspberries - It is the best raspberry beer I have ever had. The carbonation balanced out any residual sweetness and there is none of the "fake raspberry" flavor that I get from many other raspberry beers(UFO comes to mind)

I do not think 4 pounds of berries is too much, I will be making 10 gallons in about a week and splitting it with a friend. Mine will get 4 pounds of blueberries.

The 5 gallons of by the book summer citrus wheat(minus orange peel) is also fantastic - I used us05 and it is still a bit cloudy but has a nice warm wheat character and a great hop profile that lets the grain come out.

I think this will be my base beer wheat for any fruit wheat beers in the future.

Making a mango version of this one. I took out the bitter orange peel and using zythos hops (out of citra) for the last two hop additions and add 1oz at flame out to get some mango aromas from the hops. Can't wait for this one to finish. I got 10lbs mangos in the freezer waiting for the secondary.

199q said:

I made this one with TwoHeadsBrewing this weekend. I made the extract version. it looks pretty good! I cant wait to try it out.

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What was your extract recipe?

I had this recipe converted. Hope it comes out ok.

Well its in.

This is a excellent recipe. Mine turned out great. So far it is the only Hombrew that my wife likes. So did the neighbors. I did use the zest of 1 orange and 2 lemons like Agent did and I loved it. I am brewing up another batch of this tomorrow.

I pitched last night and it has not started to ferment yet. Strange.

Did not turn out well. Way too dark and kinda watery.

I like this recipe. I'm going to brew it next weekend using WLP410 Belgian Wit yeast.

grssmnperez said:

Did not turn out well. Way too dark and kinda watery.

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Too dark? Interesting, since there's nothing but light malt in this one.

TwoHeadsBrewing said:

Too dark? Interesting, since there's nothing but light malt in this one.

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Seems like most of my brews have been turning out darker in color than they should be. Its kind of weird.

grssmnperez said:

Seems like most of my brews have been turning out darker in color than they should be. Its kind of weird.

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Maybe you are getting darkness from excessive boiling, how long is your boil and do you stir often ?

res291que said:

Maybe you are getting darkness from excessive boiling, how long is your boil and do you stir often ?

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Always 60 mins. Rapid cooling. 15 minute stirring intervals.

So I was out with the kids trick or treating and pulling the wagon and I had a few of my Summer Citrus Wheat left in the cooler. I thought it was a good time to share some of what summer brew I had left and I found it interesting that 2 different people at separate times said this beer tasted like a light 3Floyds Gumball Head. I had to have a Gumball Head last night to compare and I did notice the similarities in the 2.

Now the only things I did different in this batch were:

1. No Orange Peels. I used the zest of 1 grapefruit instead
2. For the yeast I used S-05

I made this beer 3 times this summer and tweaked it all 3 times. I love it.