One thing I am notorious about is not keeping very good notes about anything. In home brewing, this is akin to a crime. If you don't take good notes, you have no idea what to change or to look for if you brew a stinker. Even worse, when you brew something that could win awards and you don't remember what type of yeast you used. (Yeah, I'm talking about me. You got a problem with it?)
So,this post is going to serve as my note pad. Right now I'm sitting in front of 4 gallons of boiling wort,drinking a brown ale from my last batch and I need to jot down everything up to this point and annotate this post as I go.
This is to be Strawberry Nights Wheat. Strawberry because there will be 5 pounds of the fruit used to flavor the beer. Nights because I am brewing right now at 8:30 PM. Wheat because it is a wheat beer.
Ingredient list
6 pounds Munton's 100% wheat extract1 pound orange clover honey1 oz. German Tettnang hops (4.6% AAU)1 oz. Hallertau hops (4.8% AAU)Wyeast American Ale yeast 1056Pectic enzyme5 pounds strawberries
Quite a simple recipe, no? I wanted to go simple with the beer itself because the showcase part is the subtle hint of strawberry aroma and taste. This isn't supposed to be a carbonated strawberry soda. I went with the Tettnang and Hallertau hops because of the low alpha acidic units. Bitter hops don't seem like they'd play too well with the sourness of the strawberries.
Because of the lag time in fermentation with my last batch as well as the low attenuation, I decided to make a yeast starter. I mixed 2 cups of water with 1/3 cup of dark dried malt extract (DME) in a flask. I boiled the wort on the stove for 15 minutes and pitched the swollen smack pack of yeast, capped with an airlock, and let sit for a day, swirling occasionally to keep the yeast suspended. When the airlock was bubbling along, I put the flask in the fridge to encourage the yeast to settle for decanting later.
I have to admit, this was the easiest set up I've done yet. Since this is almost a pure extract brew, there was no soaking of any grains. I heated 4 gallons of water to boil and poured in the wheat extract and honey. I had placed both containers in a pot of very hot water to loosen them up. They both poured quite easily and I grabbed some of the boiling water / wort in a measuring cup and poured it into the containers to get everything from the sides.
I then added the Tettnang hops. Since these have the lowest AAU, I decided those should be the bittering hops. They will be boiled for 60 minutes.
At 45 minutes into the boil, I will add a ½ of the Hallertau hops as well as put the immersion chiller in to sanitize. 10 minutes later I will put in the rest of the Hallertau.
The plan is to run the chiller for as long as it takes to get the wort down to around 85° or so. I may leave the bucket (sealed) outside for a while since it is quite nippy here in Florida tonight and might help cool it down a little. Once the wort is in the low 70's, I will decant most of the liquid off of the yeast starter and pitch (add) the slurry to the fermenter. The plan is to ferment 8 to 10 days. I will be in Atlanta all next week. The beer can take care of itself while I'm gone.
Once fermentation is complete and I am back home, I will thaw and crush the strawberries. They were frozen so that the inner cell walls would bust, giving the strawberries a bit more oomph. I will place them into the secondary fermenter (another bucket), sprinkle some pectic enzyme powder on them to help break down the pectin molecules in the berries (reduces cloudiness), then rack the beer (pour) onto them and let sit for another 10 days or so.
Afterwards, I will boil up some light DME, rack to another bucket and bottle. I will give 2 weeks of bottle time before I sample one and determine from there how much longer I need to wait, if at all.
I'm perfectly ok with this batch turning out awful. It's bound to happen sooner or later and if it has to happen, I want it to be with something I'm experimenting with rather than something I know should be good. But I'm sure it will turn out fine and hopefully these notes will help me make it again and again.