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I want a decent ordinary bitter, around the 4% mark that I can have a couple of pints of on a school night and still be able to fill in the old mileage return afterwards. I also want to use existing ingredients because money's a bit tight and I only want a cornie's worth.
I've had a bit of a dig around in the freezer (and BeerSmith) and I've come up with this:
19L Brew length
Esitimated IBU 35
Estimated Colour 16 EBC
Estimated ABV 3.94%
Grain Bill
2.6 kg Maris Otter
250g Crystal
250 Torrefied Wheat
150 Crystal Wheat Malt
Hop Additions
25g Northdown (7.2%) 90 min
10g Cascade (5.5%) 30min
30g Saaz (4%) 15min
Starter of 1056 Wyeast American Ale
20g Cascade Dry Hop
Here's the thing, my friend Phil has harvested his honey and we're going to make a Honey Wheat beer. Here's the next thing; I've not a clue what I'm doing. My last Wheat beer was infected and it is a style I hardly ever drink but then I drank a Lovibonds Gold Reserve. It's a honey wheat beer, not especially cloudy but one of the only beers I've ever consumed where you can actually taste the honey.
And there's the problem with a honey beer, if you want the flavour to come through you have to take a risk. Honey harbours loads of wild yeasts so, unless you add it to the beer in the boil, the likelihood of an infected beer is increased. Of course if you add it to the boil, the flavour is largely boiled off. I'm prepared to take a risk (it is only a 19L batch after all) and add it to the beer after the initial fermentation has died down.
But, all I've got as far as a recipe goes is 2.5 kilos each of wheat malt and maris otter and a kilo of honey. I want some input from my readers (and let's face it - anyone else) who reckons they know a bit about this kind of beer style. So let's open up some suggestions and debate on a recipe.
I'm looking to make this beer in the next two to three weeks so give me time to propagate a yeast strain (preferably Wyeast as they're most easily available to me) and let's use hops that are readily available in the UK at this time.
In terms of inventory I have the following hops in stock. Ahtanum, Apollo, Atlas, Amarillo, Cascade, Cluster, Citra, Columbus, Challenger, First Gold, Fuggles, Green Bullet, Hersbrucker, Northdown, Saaz, Simcoe, Sorachi, Willamette.
So, please leave your comments below and we'll have a recipe by collaboration (or not) in a couple of weeks time.