Labels: American Wheat (Holler at Me)

In my American Wheat post, I mentioned that my friend, Johnny, requested that I brew a white ale, and that it be called, "Holler at Me". His father got wind of this, and decided to work on some labels! Here are a few drafts:

I'm partial to the design of the second one, but I like the label shape/style of the first (the ribbon around the bottle). I also got a kick out of the quotes on the side of the ribbon. Gerry (Johnny's dad) is still working on them, so I'm sure that they'll evolve. I sent him both a twelve ounce, and twenty two ounce bottle for testing.

Speaking of which, the American Wheat is almost done! I'll be bottling it this weekend.

Brewing Day: German Hefeweizen (Blueberry Banana)

This one should be interesting. I'm taking my first shot at incorporating actual breakfast cereal into a beer.

The local beer brewing club that I started showing up for is having a brewing competition in May. The competition is built around cereal. Everyone brought a cereal to the February meeting, and people drew straws to pick a cereal that they wanted to brew with. I ended up with...

A few months ago, I tried brewing a German Hefeweizen that turned out pretty watery, and just generally disappointing. It was arguably my first bad beer. I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to revisit it, given that German Hefeweizen has a strong banana flavor to it (given off by the german yeast). Banana and blueberry, what could be more natural?

Let's get down to business. First, I get the kettle started, since it takes forever (about one hour) to boil. I think I'm pretty convinced that I'll get a nice propane burner before my next boil, especially since the weather is turning. The kitchen stove just isn't giving off enough BTUs.

Time to get the supplies ready. I had to pick up a new tube to drain the kettle in the carboy, as my old tube was getting pretty gross.

More setup. A quick snapshot of the recipe, with my modifications. I'm adding an extra two pounds of Bavarian Wheat DME (dried malt extract) to the recipe, putting it at eight pounds total.

This is going to be a pretty big Hef. I should probably add a bit more hops to balance out the bitterness, but I forgot to get the extra hops at the store, and the German Hefeweizen kit intentionally uses very little hops to begin with. Now to sanitize.

I have a bit of free time since the kettle takes so long. A bit of relaxing in the backyard with Maureen and Benny.

Finally, the boil starts. Time to add the eight pounds of Bavarian Wheat DME.

After guarding the kettle against several potential boil-overs, I start to get the cereal set up. I'm splitting the cereal into two parts.

The bowl on the left (about five ounces) will go straight into the boil, with seven minutes and thirty seconds left. The bowl on the right (about six ounces) will be dry hopped on Thursday, about four days after the fermentation starts. Dry hopping is basically suspending ingredients directly into the carboy after the yeast has consumed most of the sugars. Doing this can create a really strong aroma. For more details, stay tuned for my next post, when I actually do the dry hopping.

Here I've gotten the five ounces of cereal bagged up and ready to boil.

A quick check on the boil. The hot break has finally calmed down, and the boil overs seem to have stopped.

The remaining cereal, about six ounces, will be packaged up until Thursday.

About fifty minutes have passed since I added the Bavarian Wheat DME, and hops. It's time to add the wort chiller so that it's sterilized before the boil stops.

A couple of minutes later, it's time to add the cereal!

It smells like blueberry, but it is also really sweet and sugary. I'm a bit nervous that it might be over powering.

A couple of minutes later, it's time to add the whirloc tablet.

After five minutes, I stop the boil, and bring the kettle out to the garage to chill the wort as fast as possible. Here you can see that I've got the chiller hooked up to the wash bin to run cold water through it.

Here, I've drained the kettle into the carboy. You can see a lot of gunk floating in the carboy. I think that this is most likely boiled cereal. It should settle out pretty quickly, though.

After the carboy is filled, it's time for specific gravity!

I've got a 1.062 reading. Pretty high for a German Hefeweizen. That's what I get for adding two extra pounds of DME. If everything goes as planned, it should hit a ABV of about 5.7%.

Now it's time to add the yeast and cap up the carboy. This time, instead of using a blowoff tube (like I did with the American Wheat), I'm going to use an air lock. This little contraption allows CO2 to escape through the water, without letting air in. It's essentially the same principle as the blowoff tube, but much more compact.

Now it's time to clean up.

Oops, I almost forgot to move the carboy from the garage into the house, where it's warmer. Here the carboy is in the bathtub. The carboy on the left is my American Wheat (Holler at Me) from last week. The carboy on the right is the German Hefeweizen (Blueberry Banana). The German Hefeweizen is darker than I thought it would be; probably because I added so much Bavarian Wheat.

Now it's time for a job well done. 

The wort tastes pretty good! I'm actually really surprised at how well the blueberry works. There's a hint of sweetness from the cereal, a hint of malt, and a hint of blueberry. Nothing is too overpowering. I'm feeling much more optimistic about this!

Notes
Ingredients:

• 8 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME

Hops:

• .5 oz Northern Brewer (60 minutes - bittering)
• 5 oz Blueberry Muffin Top (7 minute 30 second - flavoring)

Tweaks:

• Added extra 2 lb of Bavarian DME compared to recipe
• Added 5 oz of Blueberry Muffin Top compared to recipe
• Planning on dry hopping 6 oz of Blueberry Muffin Top after four days (Thursday evening)

Fermentation: American Wheat Ale (Holler at Me)

Check out the fermentation on the American Wheat! I've never had such strong krausen (foam) in a brew before. I'm glad that I went with the blow off tube instead of the airlock, as the krausen is actually going all the way through the tube, and into the water!

Brewing Day: American Wheat Ale (Holler at Me)

Sometimes things come together. Next month's "beer of the month" at Worts of Wisdom is wheat ale, so I thought I'd go with some kind of Hefeweizen. Then, during the week, Johnny demanded that I brew a "white ale" for him. Inexplicably, he also demanded that it be called "Holler at Me". Apologies for the name.

I started the base recipe with More Beer's "American Wheat" recipe. Because the beer is for Johnny, I thought I'd amp up the ABV, which means more sugar! I added an extra pound of Bavarian Wheat DME (dried malt extract), and an extra half pound of Light DME. To balance out the sweetness, I also threw in an extra ounce of Cascade (hops) for bittering, and another ounce of Cascade for aroma.

Here is all the malt extract. In an "all grain" brew, this would be replaced by grains soaked in heated water, but I'm skipping that for now. On the left is the Bavarian Wheat. On the right is the Light DME.

To prepare, I set out the hops in the order they're going to be added to the boil. All of the hops in this recipe are "Cascade" hops. In the middle is a "whirloc" tablet that gets added to the brew. The tablet causes the protein in the brew to drop to the bottom of the boil, so it doesn't haze the beer.

Here's a quick snapshot of the recipe. Nothing special, except the alterations that I made above. More hops, more extract, more alcohol. I'm shooting for 5% ABV.

The first thing I do, once the ingredients are set out, is fill the kettle, and start the boil. It takes a long time to boil 6 gallons, so I get it started immediately.

While the boil is starting, I sterilize all of the equipment that I'll need. As usual, half of brewing is in the cleaning.

It's quite a rainy day. More cleaning. Here, I'm sterilizing the carboy that I'll use to store the beer for fermentation.

While I'm waiting for the water to boil, I take a quick snapshot of the yeast that I'm going to use. It's White Labs' American Hefeweizen WLP-320.

As usual, Benny is interested in what's going on. I'm always pretty careful around him when brewing, as hop pellets are very poisonous for dogs.

More ingredient preparation. I've cut open the malt extract bags for quick-pouring.

Finally, the water is boiling. It takes about 45 minutes on our gas range to get it up to ~210 degrees (F). It's time to add the extract!

Once all of the extract has been added, I stir it in so that it doesn't harden on the top of the water. This mixture of malt and water is called Wort.

It's time to add the bittering hops. Hops added at this stage of the boil contribute to a beer's bitterness. I cut open the vacuum-sealed bag with the hop pellets in it. The hops have been compressed into pellets to better preserve their aroma and flavor.

Here the hops are in a grain bag. This is 1.5 ounces of Cascade. They're ready to be dropped in.

More stirring to prevent the extract from congealing.

The hot break kicks off about 5 minutes into the boil. The hot break is an important chemical process in brewing, but it also often creates a lot of foam. To prevent a boil over, I have to shut off the stove for a few seconds.

Disaster averted. The protein that was at the top of the kettle during the hot break (above) is now tumbling around in the water as it boils.

Fifty minutes have passed. While things were cooking, I spent some time watching Beer Wars, thanks to Netflix streaming. Thanks to a friendly reminder from the microwave timer, I now add my wort chiller to the boil. When the boil finishes, I'll pump cold water through this twisted copper tube. The cold water will quickly chill the wort, and also create a cold break. The cold break is another way to prevent haze in beer.

Here's the chiller inside the boiling wort. Notice the two tubes. One is for water-in, and the other is for water-out.

It's time to add the whirloc, which is basically a tablet form of Irish moss.

The whirloc bubbles ferociously for a few minutes before it drags all of the protein down to the bottom of the kettle.

59 minutes have passed, so it's time to add some more hops! The Cascade hops, added at this stage, will contribute to the hoppy smell in the beer.

In they go. 

One minute later, the boil is done. I quickly shut the burner off, and pull the hops out. Here they are, cooling in a cooking bowl.

And now for the scariest part of the boil. I have to move 5 gallons of boiling wort from the kitchen to the garage for cooling. Luckily, things go as planned, and I quickly get my wort chiller hooked up to the laundry room sink.

Steam pours out of the kettle as the chiller does its job.

While the wort is chilling, I start cleaning up. The first thing that I do is dump the boiled hops into the garbage (away from Benny).

Then I rinse the grain bags that held the hops.

After the kettle has cooled to the touch (~85 degrees fahrenheit), I move it over to the work bench, and attach a drainage tube to it. The tube pipes straight into the sterilized carboy that I cleaned earlier.

It's filling up!

While the carboy fills, I prepare a small pot with some sterilized water. When the carboy is full, I'll plug a tube from the carboy's spout into this pot, so that CO2 can escape from the carboy without allowing air to come into it. You'll see how this trick works in a few pictures below.

Back to the carboy. It's full, and it's time to take a measurement of the wort's specific-gravity. This will allow us to calculate the ABV when we go to bottle it. To calculate specific gravity, you extract some wort from the carboy.

Here, I'm measuring the specific gravity. The floating bob in the wort is a measuring device that tells you how much thicker your liquid is than water. This measurement can be plugged into a formula to tell you how alcoholic your beer is. In this case, we've got a 1.052 reading, which is right on target for a 5% ABV beer! Johnny will be pleased.

Back to the carboy again. Time to pitch the yeast.

And here it is, all sealed off in the carboy. Note the tube coming out of the carboy into the sterilized water. As yeast consumes the sugars in the wort it will release CO2, which has to go somewhere to release pressure. With the blow-off tube set up in the water, the CO2 will be allowed to escape through the tube by making bubbles in the water that float to the surface. All of this will happen without letting any (bacteria filled) oxygen in. Tricky.

And of course, more cleaning. I'm preparing to dump a whole bunch of PBW (powdered brewery wash) into my kettle to get rid of any stains from the hops and wort.

It's time to drain the sterilization bucket.

And, last but not least, a quick taste of the wort. Everything tastes good. I think that I'm going to have a pretty good American Hef brew that Johnny will be happy with.

Notes
Ingredients:

• 4 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME
• 2.5 lbs Light DME

Hops:

• 1.5 oz Cascade (60 minutes - bittering)
• 2.5 oz Cascade (1 minute - aroma)

Tweaks:

• Added extra 1 lb of Bavarian DME compared to recipe
• Added extra .5 lb of Light DME compared to recipe