American Honey Wheat?

Thinking about designing my own recipe for my next batch, and I haven't really done that before. (Sunday's the big day!) I've cooked up the following here at work but haven't gotten the chance to run it through Promash yet:

5.5 Gallon batch:

4.5lb American Wheat malt
3.5lb American 2-row pale
0.5lb Honey Malt
1.5lb Mt. Rainier Fireweed Honey

0.5oz Liberty @ 60
0.5oz Liberty @ 5

American Hefe yeast

Protein rest @ 122 for 20
Mash @ 152 for 45


I'd appreciate some feedback on this one. I've never used Honey malt before so I'm not sure if .5lb is too much. Is the wheat ratio OK? How about the hops? I'm hoping to keep it in the 12-15 IBU range for this one, I would like the honey flavor to come to the front with a crisp finish. Also, I normally use Wyeast but I'm not sure if they have an American wheat yeast, but I believe White Labs does so I may use that. I'm just shooting from the hip on the amount of honey as well, I batch sparge and am expecting around 60-65% efficiency due to the wheat, so the honey can make of for some of that. I'm planning on adding it at flameout. Any suggestions are welcome!

Sounds a lot like Dude's "B's Honey Wheat." Different hops profile, and slightly more grain but a little less honey, so the OG will probably be similar.

Check out this post about honey/honey malt.

Marc.

Thanks Marc, after seeing the Dude's post I think I might cut the honey malt to a quarter pound, I don't want to overpower the subtle flavors of the fireweed honey which has a bit of a spicy bite. I am also considering upping the mash temp a few degrees after looking at his recipe, with the grain bill I could afford to lose a little bit of efficiency for the sake of having a meatier beer, and I can always compensate with honey if I come in too low.

Well, I brewed this up last night. I ended up using 1oz liberty pellets for the bitter and 1oz hallertauer leaf for the aroma. I accidentally upped the honey malt to .75lb (wasn't paying close enough attention when I was weighing grain!) and the yeast was a WL320, IIRC.

I had to contend with the 25 degree cold in my brewhouse (detached garage) and on top of that I neglected to preheat the cooler so I missed protein rest by about 5 degrees. I had to add 2 gallons of boiling water from the HLT to get it up to mash temp after the second infusion, I think I was losing a lot of heat transfering with pyrex measuring cups in the cold air.

I suspect the sparge was a few degrees short as well, I had trouble getting a consistant reading. The SG read 1.030 preboil (for a hair under 8 gallons) and 1.044 post boil (6 gallons) so I missed my promash target by about .006, 60% efficiency. Certainly not as bad as it could have been giving my sloppiness and the cold conditions! Wort tasted delectable, I'm hoping the honey aroma sticks around.

Does anyone have any suggesions for better being able to calculate water additions to hit my target temps in a cold environment? I don't know how to calculate the thermal mass of my MLT, it's a 50 quart cube cooler. Also, despite thourough stirring, there seemed to be differences of up to 10 degrees from different places in the grain bed. Should I use the average, high, or low for the temp I'm aiming for?