Asking for opinions on a wheat recipe

[frailn]

Hey - new to brewing. My first batch was an Irish Red extract kit from Midwest. Turned out surprisingly good! Wife and I downed the last of it this week. My second batch is in the fermenter - a Boulevard Pale Ale clone extract kit from the LHBS.

Working on my very first recipe. Wanting to step away from the kit and start making up my own creations! So, here is my attempt to try something interesting. I plan on getting all my ingredients from Austin Homebrew Supply.

6# Wheat LME
1# White Wheat (grains)
1 oz Nelson Sauvin Pellet Hops
1 oz Sorachi Ace Pellet Hops
Danstar Munich German Wheat Dry Yeast

1. Still haven't decided on my hop schedule, but would like some advice. The basic plan is to use the Nelson for flavoring hops and the Sorachi near the end of the boil.

2. Trying to come up with a citrusy, fruity wheat beer without using actual fruit. Maybe my yeast choice will impact this effort?

3. I will attempt a mini-mash with the 1 lb of white wheat to help with body and head rentention. Should I add more of this grain to the mini mash with this goal in mind?

 

[Jakeman]

welcome , I make lots of wheat beers, the when i want head rentention i use barley flakes, which i have to tell you cost so cheap, for the body for the gain i use maybe a 1# or 1/2# of light munich malt grains

 

[devilishprune]

You shouldn't have a problem with head retention because I think that wheat LME is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% wheat anyway. I suggest the mini-mash though to get your feet wet.

 

[frailn]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Here is my hop schedule.

.25 oz Nelson pellet 60 minutes (Alpha Acids: Approx. 12.4%)
.25 oz Sorachi pellet 10 minutes (Alpha Acids: Approx. 10.7%)

Based on TastyBrew calculator, should come out to about 15 - 16 IBU in the final beer. I'm basing my hops schedule on Boulevard Wheat which is around 14 IBU. Wife and I love this beer, so it's a good place to start, I suppose, when deciding the hop schedule on my first recipe.

But, this seems like an awfully low quantity of hops in ounces. Maybe because the AA is high in these.

 

[devilishprune]

If you want a hoppier flavor, then you could move the addition of Nelson to say...20 minutes and that way you could use more and allow more of the flavors to come through. Admittedly, I have never had that beer so I can't comment on how hoppy or not it is, but it's just a suggestion.