Wheat Beer Question.

[finnbar]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

So I have just received my order from Grain & Grape The contents are as follows:

2 kg Bavarian Dry malt wheat extract
1 kg Dextrose
40 gm Tettnang Hops
11 gm Munich WB yeast
1 kg Cracked crystal grain

Having only ever used the Coopers Kits and adding nothing else, using dry malt extract, grain and hops is very new to me.

Are there any tips you could give me? Steeping, boiling, mashing etc.

Will these ingredients give me a decent beer?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

Cheers!

 

[manticle]

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/index.html

 

[fawnroux]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

So I have just received my order from Grain & Grape The contents are as follows:

2 kg Bavarian Dry malt wheat extract
1 kg Dextrose
40 gm Tettnang Hops
11 gm Munich WB yeast
1 kg Cracked crystal grain

Having only ever used the Coopers Kits and adding nothing else, using dry malt extract, grain and hops is very new to me.

Are there any tips you could give me? Steeping, boiling, mashing etc.

Will these ingredients give me a decent beer?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

Cheers!

G'day finnbar,

First up, to me, those ingredients seem a little out of balance if you're wanting to make a wheat beer. Mind you, theres no reason you can't make a wheat beer with 100% wheat malt, i've just never seen one (happy to be corrected by others). As a simple rule, you can usually have 50% barley malt, 50% wheat malt. Thats not set in stone, plenty of beers change their ratios, but it's a good place to start.

What is the AA% of those hops?

1kg crystal is way too much for any one brew. Use a much smaller amount. Seeing as it's cracked, it'll go stale pretty quickly.

Yeast is fine.

Don't use the dextrose (my opinion)

Here's what you could do - First, read the link Manticle posted. Then read it again. It's a good book. Then maybe go and find a low hopped tin of extract (the Canadian one is pretty inoffensive from memory). Mix 1.2kg wheat malt in COLD water (it will keep from lumping). Add about 4 litres of water to a pot and add enough of the wheat malt extract to get to roughly 1.040 and bring to the boil. Boil your hops for 60-45mins. This depends on the AA% of them, the IBU's of the tin and the final IBU you are looking for. There's a good K+K calulator around the site somewhere, do a search. Now just add malt extract tin to dissolve and also wheat malt extract. Bring to the boil again (may need some more water). Add to your fermenter with water as per normal. Add yeast when temp is good and ferment away!

Thats just my idea/opinion. You'll get a drinkable weizen style beer out of that recipe.

Good luck,

Dave

 

[manticle]

Most wheat extracts are a blend of pale barley malt:wheat malt.

I should have linked you to the steeping grains page at HTB as well although you can easily find it. Was in a bit of a hurry.

Some of the dex will be fine as all extract can sometimes end up a bit chewy. However I wouldn't use the whole kilo - between 10 and 20 % of the total fermenatble sugar would be my max range.

I also wouldn't use the whole kilo of crystal (in fact I wouldn't use crystal at all in a wheat if you want anything like a schofferhoffer or a paulaner hefe).

Anyway that aside - essentially what you need to do for the grains is to steep in hot water for about 30-60 mins or cold overnight, then boil the liquid (with grains strained out) with some of your extract, adding hops at the right points. Add the remainder of the extract in the last 10 or so minutes of the boil. The amount of sugar in the boil affects the utilisation of the bittering acids from the hops.

Read this: http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=31202

If making a traditional hefe, you will be wanting to bitter between 10 and 20 IBU. Therefore you should use software, an online calculator or the appropriate formulae to figure out how much of the hops to add. Do you currently use any recipe design aid? What commercial wheat would be an example of what you are after?

 

[fawnroux]

Most wheat extracts are a blend of pale barley malt:wheat malt.

Well, there you go. I learnt something today

Any idea of the ratios? 50/50?

 

[manticle]

I'm pretty sure the Morgans liquid range is 50:50 and many of the others (coopers etc) are probably similar. However I'm not sure of dry as it can be repackaged from bulk by HBS and therefore they may change the ratio. Worth checking with whoever you buy it from.

Morgans website says diddly, coopers says this:

Wheat Malt Extract is produced by mashing finely ground malted barley and wheat with water at a temperature not exceeding 75C, then filtering and evaporating the resulting liquid under partial vacuum until it is the consistency of thick honey with a medium light amber colour (40 – 80 EBC)*.

No amounts specified.

 

[fawnroux]

Thanks for the info.

 

[finnbar]

First of all, thanks for all your replies.
Ok so the AA of the hops is 4.1%. And they are pellets if that that's of much importance. Old mate at the homebrew shop just told me to boil them for about 45 & 60 minutes half the packet for each boil. Does that sound right?
The particular commercial beer I was hoping to emulate was a weihnstephaner heffeweissber ( I realize I am probably totally off with the recipe, so I was actually just hoping for a decent wheat beer for my first attempt). I did a little bit of research for a recipe but came up with none, so I just asked the guy at my local HB store.
So the recommendations of only using 10-20% of the dextrose if any at all, is that because it will effect the flavor, or is it because the alcahol content will be suffice with the amount of extract used?
Thanks for the link to that book, I might just have to purchase it!