just finished a mystery wheat. Whats a mystery wheat you ask? When I bought my home, i made a deal with the previous owner to buy all the brewery equipment, kegs, bottles grains, hops freezers etc as-is, basically a walk-in walk-out home brewery deal. In the freezer was 5 bags of milled grain, with unknown grain mixes. Some had reaonable labels, some dont, and 1 is just a smudge. Last weekend I decided to play roulette, and pulled out the bag labeled "wheat", grabbed some T-58 (2 years expired) and a pack of Amarillo for my hops.
The morning of brew day I made a quick sugar water starter and pitched 2 packs of T58 to see if the yeast was viable... the yeast said a resounding hell-ya, lets go. So the brew day began. 5 hours later 25 L of mystery wheat headed into the conical, and the 1L of starter was added, the fridge temp was set, and awwway we went.
A few hours later, I looked in on the conical, and there was a massive krausen on top and the spunding valve sounded like a rocket on the verge of exploding. I dialed down to 4-5 psi, and said good night. The next morning I checked the RAPT portal and saw the beer was about 6 degrees above the fridge set point, and I way warmer than I wanted, almost 26c. So I dialed up more cooling, and headed to work. Got home checked on things, and found I over cooled the beer to 15c, so i bumped the temp up a bit. A gravity check showed the beer at 1.015 vs an OG of 1.053. The heck? Had this beer really nearly fully fermented in 24 hours? Over the next 5 days it dropped 0.006 more points. On Friday I started the chill to serving temp, and put it under 25 PSI to carbonate it up.
Invited a mate over for Saturday arvo beers, and he pronounced it a darn nice drinking beer, and said he was feeling it after one pint. I think it needs a bit more carbonation, but thats an easy fix. Flavors are ok, but mild for T58 yeast, its more American wheat than a German weissbier. I suspect the very rapid fermentation, and poorly controlled temps didn't let the yeast character develop properly. I've not done another gravity measurement, but the RAPT pill is reporting 6.3% ABV, and from how it hits, I can believe it is at least 6%.
So for a bit of random unknown, old ingredients on a brand new to me brewing system, I think its a heck of a first run on the new kit. I wasn't going to be surprised if this batch turned out to be a dump beer.
I've got a bunch of fresh ingredients headed my way for some other planned batches, so more to come. And there are at least 4 more mystery beers to brew.
