Blackberry Rogenweizen

[Polaris96]

Hi All.

Recently a friend and I were drinking our way through some gruit ale (sage, gale, hopps, and cloves). When I asked his opinion, he said, "it's good, but really kind of wintery, right?"

I took it as a compliment, particularly because sage ale can be an acquired taste. Then I crunched numbers on a few hefeweizen, thought about rye, and went completely off the reservation. Here's the result:

crushed grain:
Rye (Weyermann®) 5 lb.

extract:
Briess Dried Malt Extract- Pale Pilsen- 2.5#
Briess Dried Malt Extract- Bavarian Wheat- 2.5#

bittering hopps (the bittering is a little weird, but not for hefeweizen)
German Hallertau Pellet Hops 1.5 oz.

flavouring
Blackberry Extract

yeast:
White Labs Hefeweizen IV Ale Yeast WL380

water:
5.5 gallons dechlorinated and doped to bavarian chemistry


Preparation:
0. Be really super serious with sanitizing the entire work area, as well as the brewing vessels. The DME will not be boiled, so we want all things as clean as possible.

1. Double decoction mash for the rye. I plan for an extract efficiency of only 60%, so you may want to reduce this amount if you get the most from your malts.

2. Boil the bittering hopps for 30min IN THE SPARGE WATER. (weird, but recommended by many 19th century baverian brewing techniques for weizen)

3. sparge and dissolve the DME into the hot rye wort. We want an OG of 1.048. Tweak as necessary. I will use pilsen to do the tweaking because I want to emphasize the Rye character. I'm not recommending a boil because we want the bier as blonde as managable. Apparently, braumeisters of old boiled hopps in the mash/sparge water prior to mashing in to achieve this. I haven't tried it before. Isn't this neat? IT IS POSSIBLE TO INNOCULATE THE WORT WITH FUNKY BACTERIA AT THIS POINT SO BE A CLEAN FREAK.

4. if possible, crash cool. otherwise cover with a santized lid until the wort reaches about 70F

5. aerate the wort. I use a sanitized aquarium air pump that sits in a sanitized container with a HEPA filter. I don't use a stone, just a piece of icemaker tubing. It's cheap and easy to clean and santitize.

6. pitch the yeast. White labs markets this yeast as "ready for pitching", but I'll be using a starter. I also always double pitch to the starter. I think an extra $7 for a second tube is cheap insurance on getting bad yeast and being stuck with a bucket of sweet wort.

7. After primary fermentation is complete, rack to a clean carboy. We're not going to secondary ferment, just getting the pre bier off the major yeast sludge.

8. Add the flavouring and priming sugar. I think I'll prime with about 1 to 1 1/8 cups of corn sugar. This is well above the "normal" 3/4 cup in 5 gal ratio, but I want a foamy beer.

9. Bottle right away

10. going to try the first bottle 10 days post capping. I'll let you all know if it's enough.


I like the relative simplicity of this recipe and I like the idea of rogenbier (lit. "rye beer") and even a "3 grain recipe". It's all extract, except the rye, which makes things easy.

I will be expecting some clogging issues during the sparge, since I'm not using rice hulls or such.

Since it's a weizen, I'm not looking for flocculation, and finings are definetly out on aesthetic grounds.

My only real concern is the blackberry flavouring crashing into the esthers from the weizen yeast and yielding a bier that tastes like bubblegum. Therein lies the adventure.

I think this is going to be a nice late summer bier. I'll let you know.

 

[Polaris96]

OK bier is fermenting now.

decided that it was too risky to go directly from the mash tun to the fermenter so I did a quick ( ~5min ) boil on the rye wort. This should have killed any active bacteria in the wort, although it would not destroy spores.

The actual brewing went as follows:

1. doped and boiled 2 gal of water with 1oz (4.3) Hallertau-Mittelfreu (BDR import) and, post boil, dissolved 1/2 of the combined wheat and pilsen DME into the hot Hoppwater.

2. Crash cooled and aerated this wort and pitched one tube of Whitelabs WLP 380. This became my starter.

3. doped and boiled 3 gal and double decocted the rye in a watercooler tun ( 125 ~30min / 150 ~ 15min / 168 ~ 15min )

4. Boiled the sweet wort for 5min or slightly less. Trying to minimize maillard reactions, here.

5. disolved the remaining DME in the hot wort.

6. Crash cooled and aerated.

7. pitched the starter into the finished sweet rye wort after about 12h.

At this time, ( +24h ) fermentation is vigourous. Right now planning a short secondary fermantation ( 2days give or take) just to let the blackberry essence "mingle" with the new beer prior to bottling.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[Polaris96]

Racked to the secondary last night. Initial Thoughts are ... NICE.

The bier is very blonde and there are no traces of any contamination. It's super opaque - looks like a carboy filled with taffy or pancake batter. Can't really compare it to the opacity of commercial hefeweizen until it's done, but I'm thinking this is THICK even for a hefeweizen.

The flavour is very very rich with a front of the mouth taste of honey or even butter. I've read rye wort can be oily, and I figure this is an expression of that trait. It's good, but it makes me think three of these at once might be a bellyache.

The blackberry seems completely unnecessary in light of the richness of the bier naturally. I'm following the initial recipe through, though. I've added 3/4 of a bottle of essence, instead of the recommended full bottle - the beer definetly doesn't need more than a hint of blackberry.

It seems heavy, but that may be because of the oily character of the rye wort. I'm going to measure the gravity, today. I may dilute it - it's really rich.

 

[Polaris96]

OK, bottled the beer. Some observations:

Secondary fermentation is an absolute MUST. The weizen yeast fell from solution after about 3 days in the secondary and the pancake was HUGE. Also, The blackberry flavouring kicked off a hardcore secondary fermentation (must've been a fair amount of sugar in the essence.)

Which leads me to observation #2: the flavouring. NOT SO GOOD The essence was initially pretty good but it changed in the fermentor. After digesting the sugars in the flavouring, the bier has a slight sachharinescque tone which I don't like. Hoping the carbonation will help this a bit.

Next time, I'll be either adding fresh fruit or else leaving the fruit out, altogether.

 

[Polaris96]

This brew turns out to be a success only when it's aged. I really like it, now. The outside reviews are good, too, based on requests for more by most poeple who tried it.

You cannot drink this stuff green. I've read lots of advice to the contrary, but This beer exhibits a nasty, saccharinescque note for about 2 weeks after bottling. It's mellow at 3 and delicious at 4.

The mouthfeel is very rich (I was imagining Harry Potter's "butterbeer" when I first sampled it.). Using 3/4 of a normal measure of fruit flavouring is smart and gives just a hnit of fruit without challenging the rye and wheat malt flavours.

I will brew it again for sure. Next time, I'm tweaking it a bit as follows:

Longer secondary for sure.
Changing the blackberry essence to black currant
Upping the hopps and dry hopping (again, non traditional but the rye makes it very rich and I want some assertiveness to cut through the goo)
More wheat, less pilsen in the malt bill (This IS traditional)

I'll post the new recipe when It's all crunched up.