This brew is straight from a kit bought from Midwest Brewing Supplies in St. Louis Park, Mn. The last batch - the first kit I had used in a long time - turned out so well that I decided to work with another kit. I also decided to use Culligan water bought at the local HyVee. Good beer is the product of three things: good ingredients, good water (also an ingredient, but singled out here), and clean equipment.
Ingredients:
- 6# wheat malt extract
- 12 oz rye malt
- 4 oz. wheat malt
- 6 oz caramel malt (40L)
- 4 oz. flaked rye
- 1/2 oz. German Tradition alpha = 5.7% (used in place of the usual Hallertau hops)
- 1 oz. Tettnang hops alpha = 4.3%
- 1 t Irish moss
- White Labs American Hefeweizen yeast (WLP 320)
- 3/4 c corn sugar (priming)
I heated 2 gallons of water to 159F and added specialty grains and flaked rye to a fine mesh bag and steeped them for 30 minutes. I find that setting the burner on my smooth-top range (which I am growing to like) at 3 lets me keep the "mash" at the desired temperature.
During this time, I heated 2 gallons of sparge water in a separate pot to 170 degrees. The burner I used is a dual burner and after heating the water to 170, I turned the burner to 2 to hold the water at the desired temperature. This did the job.
After mashing the specialty grains, I emptied the contents of the mesh bag into a stainless steel collander and slowly sparged the grains using a 1-cup glass measuring cup. It took about 10 - 15 minutes. I then added the malt extract (after heating the container to about 140 degrees to help the syrup come out) and heated the wort to a rolling boil.
I added 1/2 oz. "German Tradition" plug hops (used in place of the usual Hallertau hops which are apparently a casualty of the hops "shortage") to a fine mesh bag, added sanitized glass marbles to help it sink to the bottom of the pot, and added to the wort. I boiled the wort for 30 minutes.
I added the Tettnang hops to the mesh bag and boiled for another 15 minutes.
I then added the Irish moss to the wort and boiled for another 15". At this time I placed my wort chiller in the boiling wort to sanitize it. Total boiling time is 60 minutes.
At the end of the boil, I ran cold tap water through the wort chiller to bring my wort to approximately 75 degrees F. I added enough Culligan water to make 5 gallons.
Once again I forgot to take a hydrometer reading. Other than that the process went fine, no troubles at all.
Total brewing time today: 3.5 hours from start to finish, including clean-up.
Update: 4/06/08 I racked the brew to the secondary today. Sp Gr was 1.011 (pretty typical for this stage) and the beer that I used to measure Sp Gr tasted good.