(Help) Jeju Chinascade Pale Wheat

[ben3060]

Hello all,
I am not sure whether to post this under Recipes, here, or elsewhere. In any case I need some advice on a recipe I am inventing (a little out of necessity). Tell me what you think. I am shooting for 20-30 IBUs with a good hoppy aroma/taste and a hint of the Jeju oranges (they have a pretty identifiable taste and I love them) with about 5% alcohol. I am working with a pretty limited supply of things here in South Korea.

I have made a few pretty brown/caramel batches and loved them but I am looking for something a little bit different. Should I leave out the Munich and up the Vienna and Pale malt a bit? Leave out the Chinook at 15? A little Honey? What do you think? I am pretty new to this still.

Boil Size 6.5 G
5.5 G Batch
Safale S-04

Ingredients:
7 lbs Pilsner Malt (2 row)
1.1 lbs Wheat Malt
.9 lbs Vienna Malt
.22 lbs Munich Malt

.5 oz Chinook at 60 min
.5 oz Chinook at 30 min
.25 oz Chinook at 15 min
.5 oz Cascade at 3 min

4 Jeju Island (Korea) Mandarin Oranges Peel zest and fruit pieces heated to 160 degrees, steeped and added while chilling.

Also, I can't reliably get my fermenter below about 24 degrees...

 

[Zabuza]

Given that this is the first try on the recipe, I'd say go ahead and give it a shot as is. As a basic recipe, this is pretty good. From there, you can tweak it depending on how you like the finished product and where you think it could be better.

The one thing you should do, if you can (you said you had some limitations but were sorta nebulous about that), is get liquid yeast. I've made great beers with the safale yeast (and 04 especially, actually) but the potential with liquid yeast is almost limitless.

 

[944play]

Remember that Munich and Vienna are base malts, so there's no reason to be bashful with them. I doubt if I could taste a quarter pound of Munich in a 5 gallon batch.

 

[ben3060]

Given that this is the first try on the recipe, I'd say go ahead and give it a shot as is. As a basic recipe, this is pretty good. From there, you can tweak it depending on how you like the finished product and where you think it could be better.

The one thing you should do, if you can (you said you had some limitations but were sorta nebulous about that), is get liquid yeast. I've made great beers with the safale yeast (and 04 especially, actually) but the potential with liquid yeast is almost limitless.

Yeah, supplies are both very limited and very difficult to get even when available for me here. I was lucky to get my hands on a few packages of the Safale S-04 dry yeast as it is, so liquid yeast is kind of out of the question. I just started a batch of the Centennial Blonde I found on here on Monday night and it is bubbling away nicely with the dry yeast. However, I think you were talking more about taste... The last batch I made (and just finished) turned out very well and I used some Safale S-05 American yeast.

Remember that Munich and Vienna are base malts, so there's no reason to be bashful with them. I doubt if I could taste a quarter pound of Munich in a 5 gallon batch.

With the Vienna and Munich I have never brewed much with them in any quantity, the problem here is that supply is limited and quite expensive for any of the so called "specialty malts." I have a decent supply of Carapils, caramunich II Carafa II but I am trying to stay with something pretty light in color with just a mild flavor of the caramelly, toasty flavor. I might double the Munich addition though if it's really that mild.

 

[Zabuza]

Now that I think about it, doing a half pound of the Munich is probably a good idea. Seriously, though, I think this recipe is good to go. Good work!

Another thing you might wanna try is reclaiming yeast. It's pretty easy, and as long as you have access to a descent beer selection, entirely doable. Make up a nice starter wort, pour in the dregs of a few bottles whose yeast you want to capture, aerate however you can a couple times a day, and 4-5 days later, ¡Voila! Enough yeast for a 5 gallon batch.

Helps a ton when doing clones or when you want to capture the essence of your favorite beer.

 

[ben3060]

Brewed this last night and used Carapils instead of Munich (I guess I didn't have what I thought I did). It looks about right but turned out way more bitter than I was hoping for.