Winter Wheat Problem

[WildHopHunter]

Hi Everyone - Recently I was given a couple of cans of extract (Light & Wheat) from a friend who never got around to brewing. Being winter time I really didn't want to brew a Hefeweizen. I decided to brew a winter wheat which I was shooting to be a Wheat meets Porter. I came up with the following recipe:

3.3 lbs Light LME
3.3 lbs Wheat LME
3/4 lbs Roasted Barley
1/2 lbs Crystal 60 malt
1/2 lbs Chocolate malt

I wanted to ferment this using WLP320 "American Wheat" so that I didn't get too many esters. It turns out that my LHBS didn't carry this yeast. I should have just gone with WLP001 but instead I took WLP380 "Hefeweizen IV".

Needless to say the beer turned out to have a ton of clove esters. I find the taste of cloves to really not work well with the dark malts. I am on the fence whether to let the beer age to see if the clove flavor disappates or to dump the batch.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[bigelowsbest]

In my experience, "when in doubt, age it out" unless you're hurting for carboy or keg space, go ahead and see what a few months does for your beer. Although the thought of cloves and dark Malts doesn't sound all that great. If its still bad after two months or so, then yeah go ahead and get rid of it

 

[GuldTuborg]

I think it's doubtful the clove flavor will age out, but it's possible. Maybe others will like it, so I wouldn't necessarily dump it, either. Just FYI, the clove flavor is a phenol, so ester production has nothing to do with its presence or absence.

If you don't like the clove flavor, just avoid the traditional Bavarian and Belgian wheat yeasts. I bet this recipe would be great with a different yeast. It looks more like a stout than a porter with this amount of roasted malt, though.