Alan's and Melissa's Honey Wheat Beer

Bodensatz Brewing

Alan's Honey Wheat Beer

This is a 2nd attempt at making Alan's Wheat Beer, which is in turn based upon Papazian's Wheat Beer. This recipe is almost identical to the previous attempt - except for the use of different brands of malt extract and honey, as well as the addition of a bit more boiling hops.

Ingredients

2 pounds Wheat Malt Extract
1 kg can Morgan's Specialty Blend - Wheat
3 pounds Light Bierkeller German Malt Extract
1 pound Cosman and Whidden honey (unpasteurized)
1.50 oz Hallertauer (boiling) hops
0.5 oz Hallertauer (finishing) hops
1 package Wyeast 3056 Bavarian Wheat

Data

O.G. 1.056
F.G. 1.011
Brewed: 13 July 95
Pitched: 14 July 95
Bottled: 30 July 95 (1-2/3 heaping cups dry malt extract)
O.G.: 1.054
F.G.: 1.011

Method

Beforehand, put 2 gallons of water into a 5 gallon carboy to act as a temperature shock-barrier.

Put boiling hops into a sparge-bag. Add the bag, malt extracts and honey to 2 gallons of water, and boil for 1 hour, leaving the open end of the bag tied loosely around one of the handles of the pot.

3 minutes before the end of the boil, open the sparging bag and dump in the finishing hops. After the 3 minutes are up, remove from heat and extract the sparging bag, making certain to sparge it into the carboy with boiling water and a (sanitized!) funnel.

Empty the wort from the brewpot into the carboy, and fill the rest of the way up with water.

Stir well, even agitate.

Pitching

Even though the yeast was almost exactly a year old, it took-off with no problems at all. We smacked the package only 48 hours before the pitch, and had no problems with it at all. Note that we are finally getting the hang of using liquid yeast.

Fermentation

The wort was pitched on Friday afternoon, before going away for the weekend. The carboy was then put into the basement, since it is much to hot in my upstairs apartment to brew. When we returned on Sunday evening, there was vigorous activity in the carboy.

After about 2 weeks activity was almost non-existant, so the brew was bottled. The smell and taste at the time of bottling was simply incredible, and we think that this is going to be the closest thing to a real Bavarian Wheat that we've ever made. Greatly looking forward to cracking one open in a month or so!

Temperature was a nice cool 65-68 degrees F the whole time.

Yield

600ml x 2
1 litre x 1
650 ml x 16
200 ml x 1
330 ml x 26