Jay's Brewing

Some people really enjoy a chewy wheat.  Me personally I kinda like it on the other side.  When I make my wheat beers, I tend to make more that are on the American wheat side.

So what is the difference between a German Wheat and an American Wheat? 

The real big difference is that with German wheat beers, you get a huge banana flavor that comes out of it.  Normally you find that these are going to be low on hops as well.  For American wheats, you get less of the banana and clove notes and can go a bit more hoppy.

So how can you achieve this?

The easiest way is to just change the yeast.  We carry white labs yeast and there is actually a yeast called, WLP 320 American Ale Yeast.  The whole purpose of this yeast is to take after the American style.  It stays low on the banana notes as well as clove notes.

Why do an American Wheat?

I like American wheats because you can do a little more to them, of course that is just my opinion.  I have been in a trend for some time dry hopping American wheats.  The nice thing about it is that you can build some complexity in your beer that way.  Another plus to American wheats are that they are a great fishing beer or poolside beer.  Most importantly to me I can share it with almost anyone.

So what does one look like? Well here is a recipe that I created for an American wheat.  This is what I would like to call my summer fishing beer.

Summer Wheat – The Fishing Beer

Specs: 

OG: 1.048

FG: 1.010

SRM: 6.97

IBU: 25.7

ABV: 4.9%

Ingredients 

2 lbs Wheat DME

3 lbs Pils DME

8 oz Caravienna

4 oz Honey Malt

1 oz Mt. Hood (60min)

1 oz Centennial (dry hop)

Directions:

• Take 2.5 gallons of water and heat up to 150 degrees
• Steep grains for 30 min
• Take grains out, add in malt extract and bring to a boil.
• In the beginning of the boil add 1 oz of Mt. Hood hops.
• Boil for 60min.
• Cool the wort down and put it into a fermenter, fill it up to 5 gallons and pitch yeast.
• Ferment for 7-14 days.
• Add 1 oz of Centennial Hops and ferment for 7 days.
• Then bottle using 5 oz of corn sugar.

About this recipe:

What is kinda cool about this recipe is, it is a wheat but with a twist.  The honey malt, is going to naturally bring an undertone of honey as well as nuttyness to the beer.  Honey malt always reminds me of honey nut Cheerios.  Caravienna malt is a malt that will give a bit of color, sweetness and a light bready flavor to it.  My main focus on this beer was just to have something refreshing with the summer heat to come.  So don’t want too big of flavors to come out in any direction.

The hops for this are Mt. Hood and Centennial.  The Mount Hood hops are very much like Hallertau hops but a bit more spicy and a little bit more in the alpha acid.  It really is the American cousin of the hop.  As far as Centennial, this is going to be only for the nose and has a grape fruit like smell to it.  Centennial hops are pretty close to cascade in the flavor aspect but just a little bit more in every direction, they were actually derived off of Cascade hops.

Some Other Options:

If you wanted to use this recipe for a base, some suggestion that you could do would be:

• Dry hop with Citra or Amarillo.  Citra would have a melonish as well as lime like smell.  Amarillo is going to be a bit spicy in smell.
• You could always put lemon zest in secondary and give it a really big citrus smell.  If you do that make sure to wash the lemon real well to get off the wax.
• I’ve never done it but what might be neat is also adding some toasted coconut to the secondary.
• Mango in the secondary
• Orange zest in the secondary

As you can see, it is a pretty versatile beer and you can really do a lot to it.  Over all this recipe is pretty good in my opinion.  I would have to say that the part that I like most about this beer is that it is pretty easy to drink and the refreshing nature of this beer.  I’m one of those people who like to drink the beer which is seasonal for that time of year.  I wouldn’t recommend drinking this one in the winter time but from May-September it is a pretty good fit! Hope you enjoy!

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Brewing Calendar

One of the cool things about homebrewing is that you can really make what ever type of recipe that you would like.  Also the thing that I particularly enjoy is that every beer has a story behind it.  Most beers just weren’t created just because.  It was either the time period, the ingredients available, the culture or the purpose.

Last year, I ended up making colonial beers in perfect timing for July 4th.  I thought it would be a nice little throw back.  One thing that I noticed with these beers were that they had molasses in about all of them as well as flaked corn.  Also you will see fuggle hops and east kent goldings.  Kinda makes sense because at the time corn was a big deal in America, and having English hops well it’s because we were a colony at the time.  After doing some research, my conclusion was that molasses was just a popular adjunct that people added to their beer at the time.  Almost like a fad that was popular.  Personally I’m not to big of a fan of adding it to my beers because it can take over the flavor really quickly.  If you ever make George Washingtons recipe you’ll know what I’m talking about.

What I think is particularly interesting about Colonial beers is that the recipes which they were making were kinda revolutionary in a sense that they were trying to make beers that tasted similar to the ones that they grew up with (porters, bitters, milds) but didn’t have all of the same ingredients to do it.  The result was a new style of beer.

So if you are interested in making colonial beer and want it ready for the 4th then right now is a pretty good time to start thinking about it and get some recipes put in.  I wanted to get you started with some recipes though.  If you want to go all grain here is the conversion chart, and if you wanted to brew to style I would batch sparging.  Also for the grain choice, personally I would prefer 6-row over 2 – row just because 6-row has an old school flavor to it being a bit more grainy in flavor as well hazy in look.

This Recipe Can Be Found In Radical Brewing:

Thomas Jefferson’s Pale Ale

5.5 lbs Dry Malt Extract (Golden Light)

2.0 lbs Flaked Corn (or ground grits)

1.0 lbs Biscuit Malt

2 oz Fuggle (60min)

1.5 oz Fuggle (10min)

English Ale Yeast

Yield: 5 gallons

OG: 1.069

ABV: 5.2%-6.2%

Maturation: 6-8 weeks.

With this recipe it’s pretty standard for the directions.  Steep your grains in water at 150 degrees for 30min and take them out.  Add in the malt extract and bring it to a boil.  In the beginning of the boil add 2 ounces of your hops.  Boil for 50min then add 1.5 oz of fuggle hops.  Boil for 10 min, end the boil, cool it down, fill it up to 5 gallon and pitch your yeast.

It’s a pretty nice beer.  I made this one before.  I didn’t let it sit in the bottles long enough because I didn’t make it early enough so it tasted a bit, “hot”.  The massive amount of corn for this one really came through and was pretty nice.  I did this one all-grain using the 6 -row which had a cool flavor to it, like I said kinda reminds me of something very old school  in flavor.

This other recipe is for a colonial porter.  If you made both of these it would be a pretty big contrast between the two.  I found this one  from BYO.

Spiced Colonial Porter

1/2 tsp Gypsum

1/4 tsp Kosher salt

5 oz Black Patent Malt

5 oz Cara-Pils Malt

5 oz 80L Crystal malt

6 lbs Dark DME

8 oz Blackstrap molasses

1 oz Mt. Hood (45min)

1 5-inch licorice stick, chopped and shaved

1 cup loosely packed fresh spruce needles

WLP001 California Ale Yeast

Directions:

In 2.5 gallons of water add the gypsum and the salt.  Then steep grains with a muslin bag.  Slowly heat water up 170 degrees.  Remove the grains and add dry malt extract.  Bring to a boil.  Add hops in the beginning of the boil and boil for 45min.  After 45min, turn off the heat, cool down and put in fermenter.  Fill up to 5 gallons.  Add the licorice stick and the spruce needles.  Fermentation takes about 10-14 days.

Like I said this one is going to be a bit different then the other colonial beer.  This one is going to have more distinct flavors to it.

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“What malt extract is better, dry or liquid?”  This is a pretty common question that homebrewers ask when deciding which one to use.  I unfortunately don’t have an answer in this post about which one is, “better” only because I don’t believe that there is one which is better.  At the end its preference.  I’ll break the two down though and hopefully at the end you’ll be able to figure out which one works best for your situation.

First Thing First, What Is Malt Extract?

For this whole time you have been adding malt extract to your beer and you didn’t know what you were adding?  This will no longer be the case.  Malt extracts are the fermentable sugars in your beer.  Essentially what you are doing is skipping a step, a shortcut if you will.  All-grain brewers make the fermentable sugars by mashing grains then rinsing the grains with water extracting all of the sugars.  This technique is called, “mashing”.  If you were to take that mash at its simplest form of base malts then boil it down, that is malt extract.  We have a conversion chart to kinda show that.

Dry malt extract is more concentrated than the liquid.  So for a recipe, if you were going to substitute 6 lbs of dry malt extract for liquid you can’t really use 6 lbs of liquid.  It would be more on the lines of 7.5lbs of liquid.

About Liquid Malt Extract

Liquid malt extract has its upsides, one is that it is generally cheaper when comparing pound to pound.   At the end you are not going to cut your recipe price in half but it is a way to shave some dollars off your brew day.  Another thing that is nice about malt extract is when you buy it from a homebrew shop that sells in bulk (we do) generally they can break it down to fractional pounds.  An example is at our shop we can break it down to .25 lbs.  This is a nice feature because you can buy for the recipe.  You find sometimes for recipes that it might say, 4.25 lbs LME.  What’s nice is you can buy exactly what you need for that recipe.

What I see as one of biggest downsides to liquid malt extract is it sinks to the bottom.   Now the reason why I say that this is disadvantage is, unless you have an extra set of hands normally you have a pretty high chance of burning the malt extract.  If you burn it bad enough, it can be the only thing you taste.   Now the ways to prevent this is 1) Have an extra set of hands 2)Take it off the burner and stir like crazy when adding it in 3) Don’t add all of your malt extract in the beginning of the boil.  By not adding all of your extract in the beginning of the boil you will also lighten your beer.  So problem solved.

(A Burning Sensation Usually  A Bad Thing)

About Dry Malt Extract

While a bit more expensive, you don’t have to buy as much.  The biggest upside to the dry malt extract is one thing, when you add the dry malt extract it ends up floating to the top.  I personally like this because your chances of burning it go down significantly.  There is a problem though, when you add the dry malt extract you end up having to stir like crazy still.  A lot of times also it will clump up into these dough ball looking things of malt.  Matza balls of malt extract is really what they look like.

I’ve also heard that people don’t like that it doesn’t sink to the bottom.  I can oddly understand their point as well.  The problem with dry malt extract is that when adding it to a boil, or even a steamy pot for that matter – steam will rush up into the bag and harden the malt extract to the bag.  Kinda a pain.  Honestly I’m not to sure of a way to prevent it either.

Wrapping It Up

I guess you can look at it a dozen different ways but at the end malt extract is definitely two different things, sticky and messy.  It’s really preference which one you prefer to work with.  I personally use both, I think that they both have their place in the homebrewing world.  If you have different or interesting insights into the extract world, please leave it in the space provided below.

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A few post ago we put up a post about how the hardness of water effects your brewing efforts.  Well I wanted to find a, “dummy” map to help you out what your water might be like if you live in the USA and you didn’t want to send your water out.

I found this map online and thought it was a pretty good reference.

All in all, it is a pretty good map as a quick reference to judge where you might stand on the harness of you water.  This will help you out when you are considering to make lagers or ales.

Hope it helps,

Cheers

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Moonshine Thursday

8 Reasons Why Homebrewing Is Amazing

To start with the, “Mead Project”, I thought a good recipe should be a Melomel.  It will be easy to start with this one because fresh fruit is available at the farmers market as well as at grocery stores.

If you recall from our 101 on mead,  melomels are fruit meads.  So this is kinda like a hybrid between a mead and a wine.

Don’t get freaked out when you see how long this has to sit before you can drink it.  One of the techniques for making small batches of country wine or small batches of mead is, make one or two every month and over time you will have a pretty good stock pile of them to drink.  The payout it definitely worth the wait.

Yield: 1 gallon

Ingredients

2 lbs raspberries

3 lbs orange-blossom honey

1 teaspoon acid blend

1 teaspoon pectic enzyme

1 Campden Tablet – optional

1 package Lalvin RC-212

1 teaspoon yeast nutrient

Directions

1. Puree raspberries set aside.
2. Boil honey with 1 part honey 2 parts water.
3. Boil for 10 minutes and skim off the foam that forms (The foam will contain water impurities).
4. Pour honey water as well as raspberries in fermenter and then fill to make 1 gallon of mixture.
5. Add acid blend, pectic enzyme.
6. (If you chose to use campden tablet cover mixture and let it sit for 24 hours)
7. In a small bowl, add yeast a bit of water to re-hydrate it and yeast nutrient.  Let it sit until it starts to bubble then add it to the must.
8. Let mixture ferment.
9. After 3 weeks rack into another fermenter.
10. After 3 months rack into another fermenter.
11. Let it sit for 3 months then bottle.
12. Let the bottles sit for 6 months before you drink it.

Mead has to be one of the more creative beverages that a brewer can make.  What’s cool about mead is at its core mead is pretty simple.  It consist of: Honey, water, and yeast.  What you can do with it is endless though.

There are five different styles of mead, with in these styles there are sub categories.  In the future especially over the summer I will be posting mead recipes up, but wanted to give the 101 on mead first.

Before we dive into the different types of meads I would like to point out that making mead can be a little pricey because of the main ingredient, honey.  So many mead makers make smaller batches (1 gallon and 3 gallon batches).  Sooner or later though, mead makers start to get the itch to have their own honey production and that’s where two hobbies combine.

Many beekeepers started off as mead makers.  When your hive can produce 50 lbs to 100 lbs of honey in a season it’s no wonder why the hobby of beekeeping is intriguing to mead makers.  If you are interested in bee keeping check out your local bee club (yes there are bee clubs).  In NoVA we have the Prince William Bee Club an BANV .  Check out to see your different beekeeping clubs that are local, my guess is that there is one that is fairly close to you and normally beekeepers much like homebrewers are willing to help a newbie get started.

That last point that I would like to make is more of an observation.  What I’ve seen is that a lot of homebrewers switch over to making mead after having kids. The reason is, mead doesn’t take nearly as much time in consideration to standing over a pot of boil wort and waiting for the process to be done.  With exception to the bottling process mead is pretty quick and you let it sit and ferment for most of the time.  So if you are planning on having kids soon or recently just had a kid and are trying to figure out how you can still stay active in the hobby – my suggestion would be that you might want to check out the world of mead.

Dry Mead

Dry meads have little to no flavoring from honey.  They typically contain 2.5 lbs of honey per gallon of mead.

Sack Mead

This is the most historic style of mead.  This mead is sweeter than any of the other styles of mead.  Typically sack meads have honey as the only flavor.  The honey content is usually 4 lbs per gallon of mead.

Small Mead

This is the quickest style of mead to make.  It contains much less honey than the other styles.  This style has  1 lb of honey per gallon of mead.  The best way to think of this style of mead is it’s more like an ale then a wine.

Metheglin

Methelgin’s are pretty close to sack meads.  They have complex flavors but you add herbs and spices to them.  When adding the spices and herbs they can also be called, “Gruits”.

Melomel

Adding fruit to a mead and having the fruit flavor as the primary flavor is called a melomel.

Conclusion

Having this information will be able to help distinguish between the different styles of mead that are out there.  My plan is by the end of the summer having a few recipes on these different styles of mead as well as the opportunity to make all of these different styles of mead.