Inspired by the American Homebrewers Association cover story in Zymurgy about pumpkin ales we thought it would probably be a good idea to start planning for the next change of season. Of course when the recipe suggested a split batch of with pumpkin on one side and a saison on the other I was hooked. This one took a little extra time though... there was a 10 minute protein rest, a 90 minute mash and a 90 minute boil! But we stuck our mash temp at 154 degrees and the cold crash only took 30 minutes so I think we are (finally) getting a little skilled at this ... only took what 10 brews!! Ah well... we haven't had a major flop yet.
Well things have been warming up here in SoCal so instead of brewing fruity beers in the winter like we've done in the past (i.e. our Passion Modelo) we decided to do it the right way and do it in the springtime. Cousin Joe told me about a Honey Wheat he had at a mortgage conference in Texas so Wheat became the base for our next brew. Following our traditional split bath approach we decided to go for a Honey Chamomile Wheat and a Raspberry Wheat. I found a local buckwheat honey from Aliso Canyon Honey and chamomile at Jimbo's. The raspberries were a little more difficult. They sell raspberry purees in large cans at the home brew stores, but that seemed a little unauthentic to me. Fresh raspberries would have been crazy expensive, but I read good reviews on using frozen berries because they are picked at the peak of the season. Pureeing them can't be that hard right? Trials and Tribulations: Still having some issues keeping our temperatures accurate during our mash. It seems to happen about midway through the mash the wort just skyrockets in temperature. We can get in under control but it is a bit concerning. And we don't know how it is affecting our efficiency. When we tested our OG about half way through our boil we were a bit off ... so we added a pound of corn sugar... forgetting we were going to add a pound and half of honey ... which is basically pure sugar. As a result our OG ended up at 1.074!! It is only supposed to be at 1.061 ... which means we are looking at a ~6.5 - 7.0% ABV!! Guess this is going to by a high octane honey wheat! We did a stop motion video this time around with John's GoPro ... check it out below ... kind of cool... |