Amer Honey Wheat

[gjrich33]

I am planning to brew an American Honey Wheat over the weekend and was hoping to get some feedback on the recipe below. Relatively new with recipe formulation so I really appreciate any suggestions.

I reduced the boil to 45 min to keep it a bit cleaner and not as malty and added the honey at 30 min, as opposed to flame out, trying to add a bit of the honey flavor.


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 3.91 gal
Post Boil Volume: 3.64 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.053 SG
Estimated Color: 7.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 35.1 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 0.0 %
Boil Time: 45 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 1 7.7 %
0.50 oz Northern Brewer [9.60 %] - Boil 45.0 min Hop 2 13.5 IBUs
6 lbs Wheat Dry Extract [Boil for 30 min](8.0 Dry Extract 3 92.3 %
0.50 oz Northern Brewer [9.60 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 4 11.3 IBUs
1.50 lb Honey (Boil 30.0 mins) Other 5 -
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 6 -
1.00 oz Cascade [4.30 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 7 2.6 IBUs
1.0 pkg American Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP Yeast 8 -

 

[sptaylor70]

The later you add the honey, the more honey flavor you're going to get. Boiling it for 30 minutes is going to wring most of the flavor out of even a bold alfalfa honey. If you add it at flameout, you'll come out much better. Even better is to add pasteurized honey (held at just over ~160 degF for a few minutes; denatures some of the enzymes in honey) just before pitching your yeast.

Your extract bill looks fine, but I think that you can add more flavor to the end product by substituting some amber DME for your some of your wheat DME. Maybe a pound. But that's a small thing and you would likely be fine with all wheat DME.

I think that you'll get more out of your hops if you move the 45 minute addition to 60 minutes (it's bittering, after all), and the 30-minute addition to 15 minutes. Cascade gives great citrus flavors, Northern Brewer I find to be almost piney. I have seen and tasted several beers that pair Cascade with either more neutral hops (e.g. Sterling or Willamette) or fruity hops (e.g. Amarillo or Centennial). I've seen and tasted several beers that pair Northern Brewer with neutral hops or other piney or woodsy hops (e.g. Fuggles or Chinook). But I haven't seen as many that pair Cascade with Northern Brewer.

Post what you do and how it turns out.

 

[benflath]

Adding honey won't get you honey flavor (unless you add it as your priming sugar source at bottling), it will just ferment away. Honey malt is the way to go for that flavor. Don't add too much, though, it can be potent. Maybe do 4 oz of that and cut the crystal back to 4 oz?

 

[JoppaFarms]

Adding honey won't get you honey flavor (unless you add it as your priming sugar source at bottling)

Adding honey to secondary will give you some subtle honey flavor, enough to create complex flavor profile of the beer but not overwhelmingly honey flavor. As in, if you didn't know it was there you might not be able to pick out that it's honey but you can tell something is sweetening the flavor.