Recipe advice, IWA: India Wheat Ale?

[dirk]

I've brewed a couple big wheat beers and was thinking of doing a wheatwine, then I remembered the IPA I just brewed, and how great it was.

I want to brew a sort of India Wheat Ale. I basically just combined the grain bills from the two and used the hop profile from my IPA of about the same OG (amped up a little bit because I thought it could've been a bit more bitter). Threw in some rye because I like rye. I've thought of swapping out some of the hops for some more wheat-beer friendly varieties to better meld with the banana/clove esters, cluster or saaz maybe, but I want to maintain a high level of bitterness so I'm not sure how to do this.

I've only found two examples of this looking around on the internet so I wanted to see if anybody had any thoughts about it. Does this sound like it would taste good to anyone? Or am I about to commit beer treason?

I do a kind of semi-all-grain brew with a large grain bag (method taken from this site actually) and sparge in another large pot. Here's the recipe:

MALT
% LB OZ MALT OR FERMENTABLE
32% 4 0 American Two-row Pale
32% 4 0 Wheat Malt
12% 1 8 Wheat Dry Extract
12% 1 8 Light/Pale LME
6% 0 12 American Victory
2% 0 4 Rye Malt
2% 0 4 Oats, Flaked
2% 0 4 Carafa I

Batch size: 5.0 gallons
Estimated Original Gravity 1.073
Estimated Final Gravity 1.018

Color
14° SRM / 28° EBC
(Copper to Red/Lt. Brown)

HOPS
USE TIME OZ VARIETY AA
boil 60 mins 1.25 Warrior 15.0
boil 60 mins 1.0 Simcoe 13.0
boil 30 mins 2.0 Amarillo 7.0
boil 15 mins 1.0 Amarillo 7.0
dry hop 14 days 1.0 Amarillo 7.0

Boil: 75 minutes
YEAST: Either Weihenstephan Weizen or American ale (or both?)
Alcohol 7.3% ABV



Any help is appreciated

 

[weirdboy]

Actually I made one of these last year and it's awesome. I really enjoy it.

My hops additions are pretty different, though.

Aside from bittering hops at 60 min, all of my boil additions are in the last 10 minutes. I have some at 10, 5, and 1, and then I double dry hop as well.


I am not sure what the carafa is doing in your recipe. Is that for color?

 

[dirk]

Yep. I usually put it in my wheat beers. Gives it some aroma too I think. Also makes me feel more Bavarian.

 

[dirk]

Do you use more hefe-type german hops?

 

[weirdboy]

I use all American hops in mine. A couple of C's, some Amarillo, a bit of Simcoe.

I think a noble hopped one would be interesting too, but I was really going for a sort of variant of an American IPA when I wrote the recipe for mine.

 

[dirty_martini]

I do the same thing for. Summer every year. I basically take a witbier recipe (50%pils, 40%wheat, 10%oats) and ramp it up to IPA strength..around 1.068-1.070 SG. Than I hop it like an IPA. I get around 70 IBUs with amarillo in FWH, summit at 60 and 30, then citra and Amarillo at KO, along with more in dry hop. Ferment with s-04 since it's a little fruitier than US-05, but with the same attenuation.

Of course, that was last year. This year, it might be a different hop blend.