Galaxy wheat

With Amarillo and citra becoming more and more scarce, I figured why not give galaxy a try. I haven't used them yet so I thought a light wheat pale ale would be good vehicle to give them a try. So here's my recipe.

OG - 1.052
FG - 1.012
Abv - 5.2
Ibus - 40

mash @ 152
4.5# 2-row
3# wheat malt
2# flaked wheat
.5# melanoidin
A couple of grams of gypsum to get my sulfates up to around 180-200 for a pale ale hop profile

.5oz galaxy FWH (14%aa)
.25oz galaxy 30min
1.5oz galaxy KO
1oz galaxy Dry hop
S-04 fermented @ 66-68

I figure at the least, this can be a thread for people to refer to when trying to find out the flavor profile of galaxy. Im brewing it tonight. I'll update as it comes along.

Should be a great beer. You should get huge passion & tropical fruit flavor and aroma.

There is a brewry down under that produces a similar beer.

Check this out: http://stoneandwood.com.au/pacific-ale.html

Agreed, doing something similar myself in a few weeks, although I'm fermenting with 3068 and going a bit heavier on the hops.

The only suggestion I'd make would be to back down on the melanoidin, but I like my hoppy wheat beers pretty crisp/clean on the malt side.

Good luck.

Oldsock said:

Agreed, doing something similar myself in a few weeks, although I'm fermenting with 3068 and going a bit heavier on the hops.

The only suggestion I'd make would be to back down on the melanoidin, but I like my hoppy wheat beers pretty crisp/clean on the malt side.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Much like many of the gumballhead clones, they add a certain amount of aromatic or lighter crystal. I dont want crystal anywhere near my beer...I dont like it in my APAs or IPAs, let alone a wheat beer. The wheat will be the dominant flavor, especially with a healthy portion of flaked wheat as I find it gives more of that wheat "twang" in my experience. The melanoidin will just give it a slight hue. Ultimately its an APA/wheat beer. If the melanoidin is too much in this one, Ill maybe back it down to 4oz next time. This time though, Ive already crushed the grains so theres no turning back.

Oh, and I ended up having my AA wrong. They are 13%, not 14%. So I bumped my FWH up to .6oz from .5oz to get my IBUs back up to around 40.

Lets pray this turns out ok. Brewday went smooth with one very big exception. The ground water that I was using to chill the beer was 86 degrees. That was as low as I could get it. I put it in a water bath with some frozen bottles trying to get the temperature down. Ive never experienced this problem before and find it really odd considering its consistently 74-76 degrees here everyday. I hope I get the temp down low enough for the fermentation to be normal.

Good luck! I've had great luck with a ~$30 submersible pump that I hook up to my chiller and use to pump ice water through it. I've done the wait to pitch method without issue, but it always made me nervous.

I'm very excited to see how this works out. I would pick up some Galaxy but I just made a very large purchase of Citra and Simcoe (panic - they are hard to find right now!)

I really like the clean grain bill - if this turns out I may have to pick up a bunch

Well, my worries were unfounded. However, i did find that my new thermometer is a POS. for whatever reason that thermometer was only getting to 80ish, but my other one said everything was right around 70. Its already close to terminal (1.014 currently after 4 days) and the .5#of melanoidin was fine. It has more of a golden hue as opposed to the straw yellow color of a witbier, and thats fine by me.

The first taste test was nice. The galaxy reminded me a lot of amarillo, citra, nelson sauvin, etc...the hops with a definite tropical fruit note, citrus, and maybe a little grassiness (but the beer is very green so thats to be expected). I went ahead and added my dry hops today so I should be kegging around next monday/tuesday. One of the reason I love session beers. You can turn them around quite quickly.