Brewing a Big Wheat ... Thoughts?

[ardonthorn5]

Howdy all. Got my ingrediants for a big wheat wine. Grist is as follows:

3# Munich
3.8# 6 row
3#flaked spelt
6# redwheat
3# white wheat

Hops:
2 oz each of:
Pride of Ringwood
Nelson Sauvin
Pacific Jade

I have packet of Wyeast 3739 Flanders Golden,or I could rack onto a yeast cake of French Saison yeast. I also have some US-05 hanging around.

I'm thnking of using one oz of Pride for bittering, maybe 1.5 oz., then basically hopburst the rest.

As for mashing, I have a 10G cooler; I was considering doing a step mash (1st time), but I'm not sure I'll have the space.

Thoughts?

 

[ardonthorn5]

so this here beer came out pretty ... hoppy. very smooth, very easy to drink, but way to bitter. 2.0 will consist of less bittering hops, for sure.

 

[ShaineT]

That sounds great. How much of your wheat was of unmalted variety? I have access to free unmalted spring wheat so I've done several batches pairing with a base malt and have had good conversion. Mostly witbiers and an occasional dark wheat.

 

[ardonthorn5]

both red and white are malted. i definately want to do another wheat wine, just focus more on the malt/breadiness instead of making it hoppy. don't get me wrong, it's good, i just don't like tasting hops when i wake up in the morning after i've had a few the night before.

 

[peterj]

Yeah that sounds like a great beer, but 6oz of hops is IIPA range. Maybe 2 or 3 oz would be good?

 

[ardonthorn5]

i agree. like i said, still a good beer, just too hoppy. v2 might consist of more noble/czech hops or something along those lines, and not nearly as much.

 

[ardonthorn5]

just a follow up.....i entered this beer into an open category competition and scored... not as well as I'd hoped. it did however, make me look at the recipe a little more. i have some ingredients en route for vII, going to use pacific gem hops and malt a little higher to give it some more body. i changed the grain bill around some, and am going to use 10 pounds of red wheat, 1 pound of white wheat, 2 pounds of flaked wheat and 6 pounds of six row. i'm also considering a step mash, i'm just not really sure about it.