Pegas Wheat beer.

[Spirits]

Hey guys i was recently in Europe and as you do, i developed a taste for beer super enthusiastically. Up until then I had mostly drunk everything else but beer, and made a few ciders as well as had a go at making the harder stuff.

I found all the European beers to be a ton better than the regular crap we get down here, and I found one beer that was absolutely amazing in Brno, Czech Rep. I'm sure that there would have been a few here that have gone to Pegas and had one of their amazing meals (the pork ribs were sutpidly amazing and I'd say in the top 5 meals I've ever eaten), plus a glass of their own brand of beer. The one that stood out to me the most was their simple wheat beer that really didn't have to much of a defining taste, but it was just so clean and balanced that I have decided it's now my favourite beer (I find lighter beers more to my taste).

Does anyone know of this beer and what a replacement recipe may be?

 

[Nizmoose]

Any description of the flavours aromas? I would imagine a lot of people would be able to make some cracker suggestions based on that but I'm not very experienced in the hop department :/ However for the basic wheat recipe I would suggest something reliable and basic to begin with which is basically going to be 100% wheat and then whatever yeast and hops you decide on. Did you ask the guys there about the beer at all? I'd look into CZ Saaz to begin with

 

[Spirits]

Hehe, just before I posted this I went out and bought a basic wheat beer kit and some saaz hops. I may be on the right path here, but I was really
after a very exact recipe (well as close as possible). No sorry, I'm very novice to beer and would be hopeless at explaining the flavours etc. Just
hoping someone on here has had the beer...

 

[Nizmoose]

Yeah fair enough, I did have a quick search but it sounds like a beer that isn't really commercially available? Which would make it very hard to find a recipe assuming not many people have consumed it :/ , If it were me I'd do a lot of searching online and try and fill as many blanks in as I could. after that I'd look at some of the hops used in a wheat typically made in that area then I'd look at the descriptions of all of those hops to see if any seem more or less likely, Once you had a list of ingredients its a matter of amounts which people here would be able to help with, then its a matter of brewing it and then seeing what its missing or if theres something there that shouldn't be. Once you establish this you can brew it again until you narrow down on it. Small 10L batches are great for this and means you dont have 23L of mistake to consume before you can move on

EDIT: all I've been able to find is that it has 12 degrees plato FG so ~1.008 not much but is something

EDIT again: Just hopped onto IanH's spreadsheet and got 1kg of Bavarian Wheat DME and about 300g of Dex gets you to 1.048OG and 1.009FG and then a 10g CZ Saaz addition at 60 minutes gives you around 14 IBU which is within guidelines and I'm not sure about any later additions. This is all for a 10L batch

 

[Spirits]

Oh wow this is amazing! I have no idea how you worked all this out!

After this batch I'm making I'll have to try it out and experiment. Thanks so much Nizmoose!

 

[Nizmoose]

Haha no worries hopefully it was helpful I definitely recommend downloading Ian's spreadsheet from this forum it's really helpful and pretty easy to use, if you ever get stuck send us a pm more than happy to help!

 

[Weizguy]

Oh wow this is amazing! I have no idea how you worked all this out!

After this batch I'm making I'll have to try it out and experiment. Thanks so much Nizmoose!

Results so far?

Please try a genuine wheat beer yeast, to get the right flavours you're seeking, either dry or liquid wheat beer yeast.

 

[Spirits]

Ok, so here is what I have so far;

I got one of the cans of Muntons wheat beer (I was told this is one of the better ones)
I added Saaz hopps (I realised that the can said it already contained some! But it still doesn't have a bitter taste)
I added 500g of light malt powder, 200g of honey (now here may be the bad part...) 200g of raw sugar and 100g of plain sugar.(yes I know this generally isn't a good idea, but I had run out of malt and honey :/ ).
I added roughly a liter or two less water than the recipe suggested for a little more flavour and chucked in the yeast included.

My thoughts after 1 weeks worth of fermentation;

Sensational! This is so bloody close to what i was after I would be happy to stop here, but the FG reading was at 1.025 so i thought
it best to keep it bubbling away so i don't blow any bottles.

My thoughts after 1.5 weeks;

Damn...

The sweetness had gone (obviously) and had taken half the flavour with it, no longer did it have a honeyish hint with that lovely wheat beer flavour. It now tastes a bit more crude, strong and flavourless.

So, where do i go from here. Has the main perpetrator been the raw and cooking sugar I put in? Or should i consider stopping the fermentation half way through next time? (But then for bubbles I'd need a keg right?)

Hey, by the way. Does anyone on here know a couple of brothers called Simeon or Andre?

 

[Vini2ton]

This beer you speak of. The yeast, the water, the hops, the grain and the love is a family secret. You will never replicate it, nor should you try lest the curse aaargh.....

 

[Spirits]

Hehe, I'm not going for an exact replica, just something nice and similar, and it looks like I have nearly found it (perhaps it's just the fact it's wheat beer!).

Now I just need to figure out the best way to stop the fermentation half way through. I'm thinking about a combination of cold crashing, kegging then bottling, but I'll have to look into and then buy a keg. But should be a good long term investment.

What do you guys do to halt a fermentation and not get bottle bombs?

 

[Nizmoose]

I wouldn't halt fermentation I would make the sugars in the recipe less fermentable so you have more sweetness, so you had 300g of sugar (table or brown) change that to something like light dry malt extract and you should retain some sweetness, also if it was still not sweet enough you could raise the amount of extract in the same amount of water and the beer will come out sweeter. Another thing to look into is yeast, hop wise some yeast strips hops a bit but idk anything about the yeast you're using, a packet of US05 is clean though and probably worth a try

 

[Nizmoose]

Just had a thought, theoretically, and its a big inconvenient theoretically, you could wait till it tastes how you like it then keg it via a filter which would remove the yeast and stop fermentation, not an option with bottles. to be honest I'd simply aim for a recipe which can have a higher fg and thus be slightly sweeter, I just had a play around with the recipe and your recipe is looking at an OG of around 1048 and a final gravity of 1010 which is quite low. By replacing your raw and plain sugar with 300g of maltodextrin I got your OG to remain exactly the same at 1048 but your FG is looking at 1017 which is a fair bit higher and should result in a sweeter beer. might be worth looking into

 

[Spirits]

Wow! really!? that's a significant increase!

How does honey compare to light malt? I Really liked the honey flavour early on, but it got stripped somewhat. More honey should help this though...

So is filtering, kegging, forced carbonating, then bottling a good idea or not? I know some people think that filtering can remove some flavours... What's your view?

 

[Nizmoose]

Im not sure bottling after kegging is really feasible, yeah you should be able to get the honey to come through, try adding a tad more and see what its like I think when a beer is not tasting like you want it too I think instead of changing your methods (as long as they're good), changing your recipe and experimenting a bit is a: fun and B: useful and helps you to learn what different ingredients do to your final product. If it were me I'd do one 10L batch then bottle it taste it and see what I like and don't like, then make some more changes accordingly until you get what you're after. Hell even do one small batch with something along the lines of what I've suggested and then write in this post the results and what you didn't like and what you did like and I'll help make some suggestions. Take good notes on recipe and methods and make sure everything is done properly (temp sanitation) and at the end of it i think you'll have created a beer you love and have learned a massive amount about what ingredients do what and as a bonus you'll have a few slabs of great beer! I think as a brewer you'll get much more out of that than trying to be sneaky and fiddle with kegs and filters, and it makes it much easier to replicate if you make the recipe to do the work

 

[Spirits]

Ok that's a good idea for the beer... I was also thinking about this from the perspective of cider. Quite often I have thought that it would be lovely if I could stop the cider fermenting at a certain point. Does noone do this method that I suggested? Surely this would be somewhat similar to what the major companies do?

 

[Nizmoose]

Ok that's a good idea for the beer... I was also thinking about this from the perspective of cider. Quite often I have thought that it would be lovely if I could stop the cider fermenting at a certain point. Does noone do this method that I suggested? Surely this would be somewhat similar to what the major companies do?

The general idea is that if a beer or cider is not sweet enough (ie too dry) then you would make the wort less fermentable with more complex sugars which will make the end product more sweet. One really good reason not to cut fermentation short is that during the yeast life cycle they will eat simple sugars, then move onto the more complex sugars and finally they will clean up some of the by-products they create during the fermentation and these by-products are usually off flavours. So cutting fermentation short would prevent the yeast from removing these off flavours and they'd end up in the final product.

 

[Spirits]

Ok thats makes sense... Only problem with cider being you don't really get a choice how much/ what type of sugars you use

Also, while I have tasted these off flavours you talk about, most of the time if I have used a specific style of yeast I haven't come across them until later
in the fermenting cycle...

 

[Spirits]

Ohhh... I just came across crystal malt... Not sure how I didn't realise this already! So this will probably solve the "too dry issue".
*Miss information. What should I use to have more unfermentable sugars? I thought honey was the way to go, but I have learned that that's wrong too!*

I hope this lets me keep a bit more of the wheaty flavour. What would be the best method to retain as much of the wheat flavour as possible?

I bought some Matilda bay honey wheat beer, and to be honest. It was very disappointing. It had that cheap frothy carlton flavour, was quite dry, and lacked almost any wheat or honey characteristics... Even though I don't like bitter beers I much prefer their Fat Yak line to this.

 

[Nizmoose]

Ohhh... I just came across crystal malt... Not sure how I didn't realise this already! So this will probably solve the "too dry issue".
*Miss information. What should I use to have more unfermentable sugars? I thought honey was the way to go, but I have learned that that's wrong too!*

I hope this lets me keep a bit more of the wheaty flavour. What would be the best method to retain as much of the wheat flavour as possible?

I bought some Matilda bay honey wheat beer, and to be honest. It was very disappointing. It had that cheap frothy carlton flavour, was quite dry, and lacked almost any wheat or honey characteristics... Even though I don't like bitter beers I much prefer their Fat Yak line to this.

The funny thing is you'll soon find you can quite easily make beers that are much better than commercial examples, don't discount your crystal comment! It's a brilliant way to get sweetness, crystal will provide much more sweetness but for a wheat you'd want to use the lightest colour possible and you do use it sparingly. If you want more wheat flavour then I'd simply add more wheat

 

[toncils]

I bought some Matilda bay honey wheat beer, and to be honest. It was very disappointing. It had that cheap frothy carlton flavour, was quite dry, and lacked almost any wheat or honey characteristics... Even though I don't like bitter beers I much prefer their Fat Yak line to this.

Thought I was the only one who thought Matilda Bay tastes like megaswill. It's almost like they were bought out by Carlton (or was it LION?). Ive taught you well, cuz.


Go get a Four Pines Hefewizen and see if you like it. It's an excellent example of a wheat beer with that wheat yeast taste. I don't much like that taste so I ferment with Saf red (a basic and largely flavourless ale yeast). That lets all of the delicious wheat taste, but doesn't give me that ester taste (usually described as banana or clove).

Crystal malt, lactose, longer boil or MORE honey are all good ways to make your beer sweeter. I'm inclined to disagree - if you like the taste of more crystal then throw more in, colour means nothing!
Have you messed around with adding specialty grains?

You let me know as soon as you're ready to go all grain.