Alan's and Melissa's Honey Wheat Beer

Bodensatz Brewing

Alan's Honey Wheat Beer

Having already made Papazian's Wheat Beer, I liked it so much that I thought I might like to try again, but this time make a few little changes of my own. So I reversed the amount of Wheat Malt Extract and Light German Malt Extract, added a pound of honey and a bit more hops, and came up with the following recipe:

Ingredients

4 pounds Wheat Malt Extract
3 pounds Light German Malt Extract
1 pound honey
1.25 oz Hallertauer (boiling) hops
0.5 oz Hallertauer (finishing) hops
1 package Wyeast 3056 Bavarian Wheat
or 2 packages Red Star Ale
or 3 packages Paul Arnauer (Kitzingen, Germany) Top Fermenting

Method

Add malt extracts, honey and boiling hops to 2 gallons of water, and boil for 1 hour. Add finishing hops 5 minutes before the end of the boil. Put 2 gallons of water into a 5 gallon carboy to act as a temperature shock-barrier, sparge the wort from the brewpot into the carboy, and fill the rest of the way up.

Data

brewed: 08.04.95
bottled: 17.04.95
O.G. 1.056
F.G. 1.022

Pitching

With this particular batch we had a great deal of yeast problems, and ended up pitching 4 times (and had a minor explosion, too!) One pitch should be enough if it works right, but for the sake of completion, here is what we did:

1 package Wyeast Wheat Beer Yeast, which met it's death on a heating pad, but we decided to try it anyway. No activity after about 4 hours.
starter from 2 packages Red Star Ale Yeast, allowed to go too far and burned itself out. No activity after about 8 hours.
3 packages of Paul Arnauer (Kitzingen Germany) Top Fermenting yeast simply sprinkled on top. No activity after 8 hours.
2 packages of Red Star Ale Yeast, simply sprinkled on top.
After 2nd day of heavy fermentation, I woke up in the morning to find 1/5 to 1/4 of the volume gone from the carboy, and a mess all over my closet floor! It had apparently bubbled so furiously as to foam-over the catch-bucket into which the other end of the J-tube was stuck.
We've sinced learned to be more patient with my yeast, and am having progressively fewer problems with pitching.