A Hipster in Winter Wheat

Grains (mostly malted wheat this time), hops, yeast, plus water, give us beer!

And again it's been a while since my last brew post.  I've brewed, fermented, racked, settled, and bottled my latest batch, a darker wheat, and now I find time to write about it.  Now the only update will be the first tasting by the end of February.  I used the Brooklyn BrewShop's Winter Wheat recipe, with some slight modifications, of course, and I hope it turns out well.  Fermenting conditions went a bit haywire toward the end so who knows how that affected the batch.

Straining out first runnings while bringing sparge water up to temperature.

The mash and sparge went off without a hitch.  I've gotten quite adept at the oven mash technique and it's given me quality wort batch after batch since shaking out all the bugs.  I like the steeping sparge technique (outlined in Beer Craft's step-by-step section on homebrewing) and I feel I've been getting good second runnings from it.

First and second runnings, respectively.  Quite dark for a wheat.

This recipe called for Spaltz and Sorachi hops, two varieties that aren't readily available at your random homebrew store; maybe in a bigger city, but not good ol' Cleveland.  Luckily I was prepared for this and did some research before going out to The Brew Mentor.  They recently revamped their website with an online catalog of their stock, so I was able to check what they have against the recipe, cross reference this to a hop substitution guide, and chose to use (German) Tettnang and Citra hops instead of the Spaltz and Sorachi, respectively.  Also, if you check the Brooklyn BrewShop's Beer Making Book against the recipe I list below, you'll see I increased the amount of hops used in this beer.  Those familiar with my writing here know that I disparage that book for it's low hop amounts and often increase the suggested amounts to my taste.  If this wheat beer comes out a little extra hoppy that won't be a bad thing.  A hombrewer friend brewed a wheat where she eyeballed the hops and got something I dubbed a hoppy-weisen, and it was quite delicious.

Tettnang and Citra hops weighed out for the boil.

At this point in my narration of my brewing I don't think I need to go into great detail about the boil and hop additions.  The wort came to boil in about 20 minutes, I added the hops at the prescribed times, and the wort boiled for about 60 minutes total, leaving me plenty of liquid to cool in an ice bath, measure it's specific gravity with a hydrometer, and fill the fermenter up to the gallon mark.

Boiling the wort to kill everything so the yeast can ferment happily.

In go the first 0.35 oz Tettnang hops.

Now 0.15 oz Tettnang hops.

Finally 0.1 oz Citra hops.

Chillin' the boiled wort in the cube.

Again I hydrated the yeast before pitching it.  This calls for boiling water to sanitize it and remove the chlorine from municipal processing, then letting that cool to 80-90°F.  I eyeball half of the package, pitch that into 1/2 C of the cooled water, stir it up, and let it sit for 15-ish minutes.  That goes into the fermenter with the chilled wort and hopefully yeast-y magic will ensue.

Hydrated wheat yeast ready for pitching.

My friends Whit and James joined me for this brewing; the first two to answer my invitation!  We hung around chatting during the 5-hour process and Whit brought a 1.5-pint bottle of New Holland's Dragon's Milk.  It's a double milk stout, and quite powerful.  I've been eyeing that beer for quite some time but never felt able to pony up the $10 for a bottle.  I don't think I'd want to have it again, was too strong, but I'm glad to have finally tried it and appreciate Whit's gracious gift.  In the below picture James helped me pour the ready wort into the fermenter; Whit was photographer.  Original gravity measurement gave 1.043.

Pouring the chilled wort into the fermenter with James' help.
Measured SG in the hydrometer, which sits in the background.

Beer ready to ferment in a cool, dark place.

Lately I've been having to clean up minor and major messes in my brew bin after primary fermentation because I overfill the fermenter.  I overfill it because I want to get as much beer as possible from my small batches, but that has lead to messy primary fermentations, so for this batch I wanted to toe the line and filled it right to the gallon mark and no further.  That did no good, as you can see comparing the above and below photos.  Despite being careful primary fermentation pushed a few ounces of wort out of the fermenter and into the blow-off bottle.  Oh well.  Looking closely at the blow-off bottle in the below you can see how full it became.  I've taken note of that and will be sure to fill it less (I currently fill it about halfway) so as to avoid any messes from similar occurrences in the future.

The next evening after a vigorous day of primary fermentation.

After racking and topping off with chilled sanitized water.

Another issue I encountered is an accidental overheating of the fermenting beer.  Ale likes to ferment between 65-72°F; this is the range in which those yeasts best work and outside of it the yeast either stops working or produces nasty tasting and smelling chemicals.  I live in a fourth floor apartment that uses radiator heating.  My wife and I don't use the heaters that much because living at the top of the building we get much of the heat everyone below us outputs into their apartments.  The place I keep the brew bin in the dining room is on the other side of the wall from the bathroom radiator, which we never open but outputs heat anyway.  After racking and letting the beer sit for a few days I was looking in on it and noticed that the brew bin felt warm.  The fermometer (pictured on the fermenter above) read 80°+F!  This was during a particularly cold spell in our region and so the radiators were really cranking out the steam heat.  I moved the brew bin under the dining room window where I hadn't closed the storm pane all the way, and by the next morning it was back down to 71°F.  The fermenting wheat beer sat at that higher temperature for about 2 days, maybe 3, so who knows how this will affect the final product.

In the end just barely got 10 bottles.

Final gravity measurement gave 1.007, which with the OG reading of 1.043 gives an ABV of 4.75%.  Not exceedingly high, and my topping off might skew these measurements down, but we'll see what the final product tastes like in later in the month.

The modified recipe I followed is given below, with apologies to the hipsters at Brooklyn BrewShop.

Winter Wheat
Grain Bill:
1.5 lb White Wheat Malt
0.5 lb Munich Malt
0.2 lb Biscuit Malt
0.1 lb Special B Malt

Strike 2.9 qt H2O at 160°F.  Mash in oven for one hour at 150°F.  Sparge with 4.5 qt H2O at 170°F.

60-min Boil:
0.35 oz (German) Tettnang Hops 4.5 AA% at 60 min.
0.15 oz (German) Tettnang Hops 4.5 AA% at 30 min.
0.1 oz Citra Hops 13.9 AA% at 10 min.

Cool to 65F in ice bath. Hydrate and pitch 1/2 packet Safbrew Wb-06 wheat yeast. Bottle with 28 gm priming sugar.

And that's that.  A wheat beer for the winter that I'll probably be enjoying into the spring.  I still haven't tried the previous batch, the PB&Porter, and this Winter Wheat will be ready around the same time since it supposedly doesn't that much bottle conditioning.  A full gallery of photos can be found here.

Until next time friends, happy brewing!