Fun with Wheat!

[Cryovenom]

So, through one accident and one fortunate happenstance I've ended up in a situation where I can have some fun improvising up a wheat brew!

The Accident is that earlier in the summer I accidentally bought twice as much Pale Wheat Malt as I needed since I was looking at 5gal batch recipes instead of adjusting for the 2.5gal BIAB batches that I've been doing. The Fortunate Happenstance is that when I went to buy my stir-plate and Erlenmeyer flask for making yeast starters my LHBS happened to have a big honkin' sale on some liquid yeasts that were just old enough to need a starter to be useful! I also have a bunch of leftover bits, specialty grains and hops from prior brews to play with.

So I figured I'd toss it out to all you wheat beer lovers out there. What would you brew (2.5gal BIAB) if you had all of this to play with? Some kind of FrankenDunkel? A German-American hybrid wit? Let's have some fun with it!

Yeasts:
- White Labs WLP575 Belgian Style Ale
- Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale Yeast
- Wyeast 1010 American Wheat Yeast

Grains:
- Pale Wheat Malt 1.6kg / 3.5lbs
- Munich Malt 1kg / 2.2lbs
- Victory Malt 800g / 1.76lbs
- Vienna Malt 500g / 1.1lbs
- Roasted Barley 475g / 1lb
- Black Patent 425g / 15oz
- Pale Chocolate 375g / 13oz
- Crystal 40 360g / 12.7oz
- Crystal 120 335g / 11.8oz
- Pilsner Malt 287g / 10oz
- Flaked Wheat 280g / 9.9oz
- Flaked Barley 255g / 9oz
- Crystal 60 215g / 7.5oz
- 2-Row 145g / 5.1oz
- Crystal 15 95g / 3.3oz
- Caramunich II 77g / 2.7oz

Hops:
- Willamette 6.0% AA 73g / 2.6oz
- Citra 13.2% AA 60g / 2.1oz
- Amarillo 8.4% AA 57g / 2.0oz
- Centennial 13.5% AA 40g / 1.4oz
- East Kent Goldings 7.2% AA 34g / 1.2oz
- Hallertau 2.6% AA 30g / 1.1oz
- Cascade 5.8% AA 27g / 1.0oz
- Chinook 14.1% AA 13g / 0.5oz


So what do you think guys, there are a lot of possibilities there, what would you brew?

 

[saltymirv]

I love hoppy american wheats, so I would brew that. For 2.5g, use all your wheat malt, all your vienna, and 100g or so of the C40 or C15.

For the hops I wouldn't do any boil hops, just add 1oz each of Citra/Amarillo at flameout, let it steep for 10-15 minutes, then chill. Also dry hop with another oz each of Citra/Amarillo

Use the Wyeast 1010 of course

 

[Cryovenom]

I love hoppy american wheats, so I would brew that. For 2.5g, use all your wheat malt, all your vienna, and 100g or so of the C40 or C15.

For the hops I wouldn't do any boil hops, just add 1oz each of Citra/Amarillo at flameout, let it steep for 10-15 minutes, then chill. Also dry hop with another oz each of Citra/Amarillo

Use the Wyeast 1010 of course

No bittering at all?! I've never even thought of that. How does that work out? Does it mess with the flavour balance of the beer?

 

[saltymirv]

No bittering at all?! I've never even thought of that. How does that work out? Does it mess with the flavour balance of the beer?

So by adding the 2oz of hops at flameout and letting them steep for 10 minutes does add some bitterness. Its probably close in IBU to to adding them as a 10 minute addition, but the wort isn't boiling and churning, so you save more of the aromatics of the hops. Just make sure to stir them gently every 5 minutes or so

 

[JrB82]

Of those yeasts I've only used the 1010 and it's great in a wheat. Less banana than a hefe yeast with a tart finish

 

[Cryovenom]

So here's what I came up with:

Experimental Wheat
American Wheat or Rye Beer

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 10.5
Total Grain (kg): 2.378
Total Hops (g): 45.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.052 (°P): 12.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012 (°P): 3.1
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.18 %
Colour (SRM): 11.3 (EBC): 22.3
Bitterness (IBU): 20.6 (Tinseth)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill
----------------
1.157 kg German - Wheat Malt (48.65%)
0.500 kg German - Vienna (21.03%)
0.334 kg German - Munich Light (14.05%)
0.215 kg American - Caramel / Crystal 60L (9.04%)
0.095 kg American - Caramel / Crystal 15L (3.99%)
0.077 kg German - CaraMunich II (3.24%)

Hop Bill
----------------
15.0 g Willamette Pellet (6% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.4 g/L)
15.0 g Amarillo Pellet (8.4% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (1.4 g/L)
15.0 g Citra Pellet (13.2% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (1.4 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
1.0 g Whirlfloc Tablet @ 0 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 67°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with American Wheat 1010


Recipe Generated with Brewer's Friend

 

[saltymirv]

I like the base malts, but you went really heavy on the caramel. You have like 17% caramel malt in there. I'd keep it to 8% max; you could just cut the C60 and be good. Otherwise it looks like it'll be flavorful and drinkable - my favorite

 

[Cryovenom]

I like the base malts, but you went really heavy on the caramel. You have like 17% caramel malt in there. I'd keep it to 8% max; you could just cut the C60 and be good. Otherwise it looks like it'll be flavorful and drinkable - my favorite

Hmm.. good point. I guess I went a little overboard with trying to use up leftovers. I'll cut out the C60 and we'll see how it turns out.

Cheers

 

[Cryovenom]

Actually... crap. I forgot that I crushed all the grain last night, so I'm stuck with that.

So... time to balance! It looks like you can balance the sweetness of a ridiculous amount of Crystal by upping the hops and playing with your water profile. Something like this guy did:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=231361

So if I aim for mid-30s IBUs and get my sulfate-to-chloride ratio a little above 1, hopefully I can balance out the over-use of Crystal here.

 

[Cryovenom]

What about a hop bill like this, should give 36.5IBU. I added 5g to my Willamette bittering charge at 60min, then I took 5g off each of my Aroma/Steep hops and moved it to the 10min instead to get a bit of IBU out of it

Hop Bill
----------------
20.0 g Willamette Pellet (6% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.9 g/L)
5.0 g Amarillo Pellet (8.4% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (0.5 g/L)
5.0 g Citra Pellet (13.2% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (0.5 g/L)
10.0 g Amarillo Pellet (8.4% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (1 g/L)
10.0 g Citra Pellet (13.2% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (1 g/L)