Homebrewing III: Honey Hefeweizen

This time I decided to brew a hefeweizen, which is a beer that has a grain profile made up of about 1/2 malted wheat and characteristic cloudiness due to yeast in suspension. A hefeweizen is not my favorite style, but I do enjoy it when I'm hanging out with friends, at a BBQ, or when I just want to drink something refreshing without having to think too hard. Again, I started with a Home Sweet Homebrew kit as the base, their Wascal Wheat, what they describe as a Bavarian-style Hefeweizen. To this kit, I added 1 lb each of malted wheat and Carapils and 2 lbs of Honey. The wheat is to add a little more grain flavor and spiciness, Carapils is for body, and the Honey contributes a some floral character but mostly to bump up the alcohol level.

Similar to the Brown Ale I previously brewed, this beer required mashing the grains in 155F water and sparging (rinsing) with 170F water. This liquid and some water were boiled with the malt extract and the Hallertau hops for 60 minutes before being cooled and dry yeast was pitched. I fermented in the plastic bucket for 5 days before transferring to the glass carboy to finish. I made a little mistake and added a bit too much water so the beer didn't all fit in the carboy, but I improvised and made another fermenter out of an extra 1 gallon water jug I had laying around.

This beer has been very interesting to watch because unlike the other beers I've made, the yeast never really settled out. Usually, most yeast will floccuate (coagulate and drop out of suspension) after some time when fermentation is almost over, but this beer after 2 weeks of fermentation was still very hazy with many streams of CO2 bubbles rising to the top. The yeast seems to work a little slower than the yeasts I've used because after 2 weeks the specific gravity was still 1.020, which means there is still a lot of unfermented sugar left in solution. I waited another week to bottle so that the yeast to do some more work making some more alcohol and conditioning the beer.

For Chinese New Year, I bottled one 22 oz bottle a little before it was ready just to be able to share with everyone. This beer wasn't anyone's favorite as it has very distinct clove, banana, and citrus flavors, but I liked it. For this style of beer, the yeast provides the majority of the flavors, so it is important to use a good reliable yeast strain and keep it happy. In the winter, I keep my house on the cooler side, so the beer fermented at a much lower temperature, which keeps down the off-flavors and promotes formation of the good flavors.

I bottled this beer last week, but when it's fully carbonated and ready, I'll post a picture of it.

Geek Stats:
Grain Bill and Sugars: 6.6 lb Weizen Malt Extract, 1 lb Wheat Malt, 1 lb Carapils Malt, 2 lb Honey, 5 oz Honey for priming
Hops: 1 oz Hallertau (60min)
Yeast: Safbrew WB-06
OG: 1.054
FG: 1.017
ABV: 5%

Home Brewed Beer II: English Nut Brown Ale

After the success of the first batch, I decided I would go to Home Sweet Homebrew myself this time and put together a beer. I like hoppy, high alcohol, aggressive beers, but these are not beers that I can easily quaff or share since many people don't necessarily like big beers. So I thought a mild, full-bodied, malty brown ale would be a great idea. Since I was making this beer, I made sure there was enough bitterness and herbal hoppiness to make a balanced beer to suit my palate.


I went to HSH and told them I wanted to take an malt extract kit as a starter and then jazz it up with some fancy hops and actual malted grain. The proprietor was very helpful and started with the Dark Star English Brown ale as the starter, additionally added 1 lb Demerara sugar, 1 lb Crystal Malt, 1 lb English Brown Malt, and Bramling Cross and Kent Golding aroma hops. The Demerara sugar is a special type of raw sugar from the Caribbean, the Crystal hops add a caramel flavor, the Brown Malt is for the rich color and chocolately flavor, and the Kent Golding adds a herbal, low bitterness, fragrant quality.

I decided to buy 5 gallons of spring water this time because accurately measuring all that water last time was a pain and this way I could be sure that I had the right amount of water and didn't have to worry about boiling or water loss from evaporation. I poured a gallon and a half of water into my biggest pot and boiled the malt extract along with the bittering hops (Gramling) for 45 minutes; then I added the Demerara sugar and another pound of dark brown sugar (for extra flavor and alcohol) and boiled for 15 minutes more. I then added half an ounce of the East Kent Golding hops, closed the lid to the pot and let it rest. At the same time, I steeped the 2 pounds of milled grain in 1 gallon of water at 150 F for 45 minutes. After that I boiled for 15 minutes to sterilized. After both liquids were ready I poured them into the fermenter with 2 gallons of cold spring water and let the mixture get back to room temperature, before I added dry yeast.

By the end of the day, the beer was already bubbling the krausen had risen about half a foot, almost to the top of the bucket. I let it go for 3 days and then transferred into the glass carboy for fermentation, dry hopping with the rest of the East Kent Golding hops. After 5 days, it was still going strong, so it must be all that extra sugar from the brown sugars, and malted grain. After another week the fermentation had about stopped and I wanted to start another batch of beer so I added corn sugar and bottled.

After about two weeks after bottling, the beer was fully carbonated. It could use a little more bottle conditioning to develop a little more, but it's great to drink now! The color is a little misleading as it's more of a dark brown than black, but the tan head looks great with a long sustaining head and a sticky lacing. The beer fermented quickly and with good attenuation which makes it clean with a dry finish featuring flavors of chocolate, walnuts, and herbal hops. If I were to brew this again, I think I would use a more complex malt to give a little more sweetness and body, however, for my first partial grain beer I am very pleased.

Beer Geek Stats:
Grain Bill: 6.6 lb Amber Malt Extract; 1lb English Brown Malt; 1 lb Crystal Malt 120L; 1lb Demerara Sugar; 1lb Brown Sugar; 5 oz Dextrose (priming)
Hops: 1 oz Bramling Cross (60min); 1 oz East Kent Golding (1/2 after boil, 1/2 dry hopped into secondary)
Yeast: Safale S-04 English Ale
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.013
ABV: 6.0%

Homebrewing Beer I: Amber Waves

Kim bought me a beer homebrewing kit for Christmas this year and after a hectic holiday season I finally found the time on January 8 to get start brewing. The beer kit was for a hoppy, medium bodied, low alcohol amber ale, Kim bought from Home Sweet Homebrew on 2008 Sansom Street. The kit is made from extract, meaning one uses a malt syrup instead of actual grain, which makes for easier first time brewing--where all you have to do is melt and boil the syrup in the water.
I neglected to plan ahead and realized that I need to sterilize by boiling about 5 gallons of water first and start a yeast culture for brewing the beer, so it set me back a day. But the next day, with football on, I started brewing some beer. In a two gallon stock pot, I brought 1.5 gallons of water to a boil, stirred in the malt extract, and brought it up to a boil. I added some hops for bitterness. At this point, the wort (the liquid that turns into beer after fermentation) needs to be boiled vigorously for 60-90 minutes. After the wort finished cooking, I cooled it in a bath of ice water before pouring it into the bucket with about 3 gallons of water. Then I added the yeast starter culture, sealed the lid and waited for magic.

It took about a day for the yeast to start working, but when it did, CO2 bubbles came out of the airlock once every minute and the krausen (foam from the fermenting wort) rose up about 4 inches from the top of the liquid level. After two days when the yeast start to slow down, the beer gets transferred to a glass carboy for further fermentation. I let this go for about ten more days before bottling.

After a week from the beginning of fermentation, when the beer wasn't bubbling anymore and most of the sugar was turned into alcohol, I siphoned the beer into the bottling bucket and get ready to start filling bottles. I'd been saving bottles since Christmas and after taking off the labels, I run them through the dishwasher on the hottest water setting and dried them. In order to carbonate the beer, you have to add a little extra food for the yeast to consume while in the bottle to make bubbles. So, I dissolved dextrose (corn sugar) in a pint of water and boiled to sterilize it, then poured it into the beer. I mixed this all up, filled the clean bottles with the beer, capped them and waited.

The instructions said to wait 7-10 days after bottle to try, so naturally I waited 6 days and popped one. The cap came off with a satisfying hiss and it was good.