BREWDAY: Red River Dunkelweizen

I have named this beer "Red River" in honor of my family's move to Texas. Also, I am hoping it will be red. My process is still working out the kinks, and there's just no way to be sure that I'm going to nail the color red. The name is hopeful. I am placing the name upon the beer, as if it might cast the spell upon it that encourages the color red to appear. (A brewer's mantra: A red river flows through you... A red river flows through you... A red river flows through you...?)

Why red? Because with the hint of chinese five spice and bay leaf, I'm really hoping to get a little taste of autumn in the glass.

Recipe:

2 lbs and 11 ounces of Rahr Red Wheat

1 lb of 2-row pale

4 ounces of homemade caramel/crystal malt

2 ounces of homemade chocolate wheat malt

.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja at 60 minutes for 8.81 IBU

.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja at 15 minutes for 4.37

1 bay leaf at 15 minutes

.5 tsp homemade Chinese Five Spice Blend at 15 minutes

.2 ounces of Cluster at 5 minutes for 2.73 IBU

Mashing this, I put all the grain in to room temperature water, and brought it up gently to 120-125 degrees, and held it there for ten minutes, stirring and allowing to settle. I thought it might help with the haziness of the last brew, even though such things are to style. After that, I brought it up to mash temp for medium body at 154, and then threw it into the pre-heated oven. 

Concerned about my conversion last time, and still sans refractometer, I went the other extreme. I did an overnight mash, in the oven. After about an hour, I flipped the oven off, and left it closed. I let the grain and water rest until the next day in the warm oven, hopefully converting everything. (My PH and water chemistry research continues, naturally, but I'm trying simple solutions first.)

In the morning, I put it all out on the stove and it was 144 degrees! (I'm sure I got about as much conversion as possible when it stayed successfully warm for so long!)

From there, I brought up the temperature to mash-out at 170, and then drained out the grains. (With those grains, I brewed up some bread to go with the beer. See prior post!)

This was the easy boil I had heard about in a biab, with no boilovers and not even a moment's unrest over such things. Additions were added. Coffee was enjoyed. Cooling off in the sink was simple.

Breaking up the brewday process with an overnight mash was very nice. It gave me something to look forward to in the morning, and spreads the time spent brewing out a while.

Once the wort cooled to pitching temps, I put this straight down onto the yeastcake from the Golden Cloud Ale, and it seems to have made beer. I hit it with lots of ice during the week, and kept it down. The smell out of the fermentor has a lot more balance of banana against the clove. I'll be bottling soon. Hopefully, I'll be drinking soon, too!

Pictures:

 <-filtering out the hops and escaped grains before the primary! In small batch brewing, I want all the beer I can get, and I don't want to lose any to trub and crud like this!

Man, I need to get me one of these:

Roasted Chocolate Wheat Experiment #1

This process looked like it was going to be the easiest one, yet. Stovetop roasting of Rahr Red Wheat, half an hour at a medium/low heat, with constant stirring, followed by degassing in a paper bag for a week. Simple right? For this recipe, I wanted 2 ounces of Rahr Red Wheat roasted into something resembling chocolate malt. I wisely measured out extra, because I suspected I would lose weight once the milling started. Little did I know, I would also lose weight while roasting the grains! Yeah, these suckers kept popping out of the pan! I tried to gather up lost grains, but it seemed, as I stirred, they got bouncier and bouncier and as they "popped" they left the pain entirely. It wasn't a mass exodus, or anything. But, it was significant enough of a loss that I thought that I should use a much taller-sided pan in the future. Soon, it will be time to bottle the Golden Cloud Ale, which smells done, and seems ready to leave my primary. Then, I will be brewing up a Dunkelweizen on the yeast cake, with my newly roasted grains. We'll see how things taste. I'm not sure how far I got from Amber Wheat Malt to Chocolate Wheat Malt. I stopped when I smelled burning and chocolate and I was tired of making a big, huge mess. Also, I stopped because it was half an hour, and that was all the recipe said to do. This time, my first time, I wanted to be conservative and not risk the creation of black patent malt... Regardless, I expect to drink the evidence.

I like the oven better for evenness and cleanness. Next time, I'll use the oven. My wife has a super-awesome cast-iron pot I could use, too, but I'm sort of afraid I'll be the one who damages the enamel finish first. I would be that guy, in our household! Oven. Definitely the oven.