What kind of beer is this?!

I'm curious, last night I brewed a beer with the following ingredients and it turned out a copper color. I designed it using Beer Calculus. When I took it to my brewstore (this is only my 2nd batch) and asked the guy at the counter if it would work, he just looked at me funny and said "I guess it'd work. It's interesting" So, I was curious to what the style of this beer is.

4lbs Bavarian Wheat Dry Extract
2lb Pilsen Light Dry Malt Extract
8oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L
1oz Riwaka NZ Hops for Bittering
1oz Hallertau Hops for Aroma
1oz Hallertau Hops for Flavoring
Wyeast Weihenstephan Weizen

Orignally I had bitter orange peel in it and the brewmaster guy was like "why do you have the ORANGES in the beer?" I don't know why, but it made me laugh. So what kind of beer have I made so I can label it appropriately =)

Sounds quite close to a Hefeweizen. A traditional hefe wouldn't normally have the crystal, and wouldn't be so heavy on the hops.

Call it an American hefeweizen maybe

(On another note, I don't think the orange peel would be a mistake in that beer. Not entirely necessary, and it would take it another step away from a traditional Bavarian hefe, but not bad at all.)

I guess it's a super-hopped weizen.

I believe that would be considered Ol' Dirty Ale

Get Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and it'll tell you what hte basics are of a style and the ingredients that constitute it. Totally changed my brewing.

I would call it a hopped up hefe, maybe fudge the brew date a little and call it "Hoppy 4th of July Hefe". Also I would probably include the orange to help offset the extra hops.

Nothing here looks out of the ordinary, it looks like you have a nice wheat beer. What was the alpha acid of you hops and how long did you boil for? If they had higher AA you might be getting a slightly more bitter wheat beer than most are.

I'm not sure why you homebrew store guy is giving you such a hard time, you look like you're right on track to me and if you added orange peels you might have had a nice wit.

If you did put orange peel in....and some corriander....you could call it a Belgian Witbier. IBUs generally stay below 20....but hey, if you like the hops, might as well create an American hybrid!

The AA content was Hallertau @ 7.3%AA and Riwaka @ 6.5%
My friend likes reallllly hoppy beer, and I like wheat beer, so we figured we'd mix and match. I'm glad you guys are more confident than they seemed last night

The total IBU's is supposed to be (according to the calculator) 15.5IBU's I believe

I boiled for 60 minutes, adding an ounce of Riwaka at 15 minutes, then an ounce of the Hallertau at 50 and an ounce for dry hop.

eschatz said:

Get Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and it'll tell you what hte basics are of a style and the ingredients that constitute it. Totally changed my brewing.

Click to expand...

+1 on that. I love that book. I keep checking it out from the library so I can spend more money on equipment. Maybe SWMBO will get the message and it will show up on my Birthday .

Don't be too constrained by the official BJCP styles. If you like hoppier wheat beer, by all means make it. Might not do well in a competition if entered as a Hefeweizen or whatever, but who cares!

On the other hand, the Ray Daniels book mentioned above is a great one and will help any brewer brew better beer. I've been brewing to style for a while now, and I've found it's useful to do so, to improve brewing technique. I've brewed quite a few clone recipes, and since I have a commercial beer in each case to test my results against, I've begun to learn what to do to steer my results in whatever direction I want to.