soo Interested. :rockin:
Ben
It's nice when you email a brewmaster for help and he actually responds. From John Haggerty at New Holland Brewing Co.:
Let's see - making wheat wine is a lot like making barley wine. You need to use a helluva lot of malt. The primary difference is that 50% or more is wheat which adds some things to think about.
A couple of things:
1. I wouldn't add any specialty malt but if you do it should be minimal. the reason being that this wort is already going to be very high gravity and will never ferment out like a normal beer. That means that your finishing gravity will already be higher than normal and too much specialty malt can result in a finish that is too sweet. Additionally, the fact that you will have such a high sugar content will accelerate the Maillard reactions that go on in your kettle (protein and sugar reacting in the presence of heat) which will naturally cause the wort to darken a bit.
2. Hops selection is only important in regard to style designation, i.e. American or English? This beer doesn't really exist in England but barley wines do and if you are going for that sort of hop flavor/intensity then you should consider using English hops and be somewhat reserved with them. If you are going for an American style then hop the bejesus out of it and use American style hops. Regardless, you will be using a lot of hops either way comparatively speaking because of the large gravity of the beer.
3. Yeast is important when making this beer. You want a yeast that will be able to handle the big workload facing it without creating a bunch of off flavors. Additionally, you want something that will not quit on you early. There is a lot of work to be done here so get a yeast that attenuates well. We use 1056 but there are certainly other strains out there that will work.
4. Finally, your grain bill is so large that it sometimes behooves you to split the mash in two and do two smaller mashes but only take enough wort to fill the kettle once. Usually what we do with beer like this is mash the first half of the grain and sparge until the kettle is half full. We then take the last runnings from the first mash and use them to mash in the second mash. This helps keep the gravity of the wort elevated as much as possible.
