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