Wheat beer, and Wheat in Beer

Wheat beers have a long history and wheat was quite possibly the original grain used to make the first grain-based alcohol beverage, but in reading the history of that matter, there seems to be quite some argument about what came first, so we won't get into that. In either case, while these days barley certainly is king when it comes to the base grain used to make beer, the addition of wheat can make for a very refreshing and palatable drink that can come in many forms. Hefeweizen is probably the most obvious, but there are also Dunkelweizen, Weizenbock, American Wheat, Belgian Witbier, Berlinerweisse, Gose, Grätzer, and other styles where a little wheat is appropriate. In fact wheat can be added to almost any style to gain some extra body and head retention.

The June recipe was an American Wheat with Citra hops. This is a really easy beer to brew, and an easy beer to drink that can be enjoyed by almost all beer drinkers. The trick with many wheat beer styles is time. Many beers benefit from a few weeks of aging/conditioning before they are drank. However, the low alcohol and hazy nature of wheat beers lend themselves to drinking young. This is opinion of course, when any fermented beverage is “best” is entirely up to the drinker. But, drinking a wheat based beer fresh is a different experience than letting that same beer age. The nuanced flavor of the wheat shines through, with a soft “wheat flavor” reminiscent of wheat crackers and fresh baked whole wheat bread. Unfortunately this character tends to fade pretty quickly.

There are some tips when brewing your own wheat beer:

Use rice hulls. If your grain bill includes more than 20% huskless grain, such as wheat, rye, or flaked grain, then you need to add the husk back in. Rice hulls are a great way to do this. If you do brew-in-a-bag mashing, then I wouldn't worry about rice hulls until you get into the 80% range.

Use a blow-off tube. Wheat beers can ferment pretty aggressively, and if you have a 5 gallon batch in a 6.5 gallon fermenter, you will likely lose beer out the top. Using a blow-off tube can make this loss less violent.

Watch those fermentation temps. This is a good idea with any beer, but especially when using the weihenstephaner hefe weissbier strain of yeast, you can get a drastically different tasting beer with the temperature you ferment at. Warmer (69º+) can give you big banana flavors, while cooler temps (low 60ºs) can emphasize the clove phenolic flavors of the yeast.

We always hear people say, “I don't like wheat beers.”, but after talking with them, they have really only tried German Hefeweizen style beers, that probably are not very fresh. Wheat can do so much more. So, experiment with this versatile grain and maybe try something you haven't had from the liquor store. If you have been a wheat naysayer, you might just change your mind.

Using Fruit In Beer!

Should you add fruit to a beer? Well, fruit in beer isn't just a recent fad, in fact it is probably how most fermented grain beverages started. While there may be a lot of debate to what came first, wine or beer, from the research I have done, it seems like early feremnters put whatever items could ferment together into a fruit/grain mixture that would get them drunk. Fast forward several thousand years, and the German/Belgian/France area of Europe started adding fruit mixes to their (now well defined) beer in the early 1900. These were called Radlermass or just Radler, and then in England changed to Shandy. These were typically 50/50 blends of citrus juices mixed with a light beer style. These big fruity beers can stretch the definition of what most beer lovers call "beer", but they are a nice drink to have in the hot summer months.

You don't have to go to a 50/50 mix however. Both homebrewers and craft brewers alike, love to add subtle fruit flavors to their base beer styles, and when done correctly, can be pleasing to even the most staunch beer geek. So, how do you do it?

There are a couple things to consider when adding fruit to beer:
Simple is probably better. You don't want to muddy up the waters too much. While you can find complex mixtures that work well, having a simple beer style for the base will let the fruit flavor show up better and brighter in your beer. Also, too many fruits can leave people confused about what they are drinking. You might like Bananas, Strawberries, and Cantaloupe on a fruit plate, but those might not mix well in a beer.

Pasteurize your fruit. Picking up apples from your backyard, crushing them and throwing them in your fermenter might feel like a throwback to simpler times and more "natural", but there is wild yeast, mold, and bacteria all over the fruit even when washed and throwing them into a sugary environment could create off flavors, or spoil your beer. Mash up your fruit and heat it to 160 degrees for 10 minutes to kill the unwanted microbes. Don't boil it though, this can kill some of the fruit flavor and coagulate proteins that can leave your beer hazy. Using a pre-packaged puree can let you skip the pasteurizing process, since it has already been done for you.

You can put fruit in your beer at any time during the process. The mash, the boil, the primary fermentation, or secondary. As a rule-of-thumb however, the later on in the brewing process any flavoring is added, the brighter that flavor will be during consumption, so there are some things to consider. If you want to simultaneously make your beer and pasteurize your fruit, you can add your fruit to the end of your boil (flameout, while cooling). If you don't typically do secondary, you can add pasteurized fruit to the end of your primary (it will ferment again for a bit and push out the oxygen that was introduced when adding the fruit). If you want to add it to secondary, you can add the pasteurized fruit to a sanitized bag and add it there too. The bag will help with clarity before you bottle or keg.

How much fruit to add is a popular question, however this is very subjective. What is a lot to one person may be too subtle for another. I would say that 2-5lb of pureed fruit is most common in a 5 gallon batch of beer, but remember, that the base style of beer matters too. While 2lbs of raspberries might be almost too much for cream ale, it may barely register as a fruit beer in an imperial stout. See the AHA chart for a good jumping off point.

Extract vs. actual fruit? Chances are, if you have had a commercially made fruit beer, there was no actual chunks of fruit used in the process. Most of the time a "natural" fruit extract is used. These can be quite good, and leads to a brightness or fruitiness that you might not be able to achieve with real fruit. Unlike actual fruit which contain high amounts of sugar, Extracts don't ferment, so there is an advantage to adding them right before you bottle or keg, so you can get the flavor level you want in real time. In my opinion there is a flavor base, or a backbone, that brewers get when using real fruit, that just can't be achieved with extract only. Conversely there is a brightness that just can't be achieved when using only fruit. Some of the best beers I have tried used a secret ratio of both... the secret is... it's up to you.

So, go out and try different fruits in different beers and do what sounds good to you!

Make this beer a lager... if you want.

We always like to encourage people to try their hand at lagering. Lagers are crisp and clean, and typically really easy to drink, and they don't have to be light in color and flavor, but if you are new to brewing you might have some questions about lagers. Cold fermentation temps is the key difference between ales and lagers, but there is more to know about it if you want to start lagering your beers. Here is a quick breakdown of cold fermentation using most lager strains of yeast. 

 

PITCH RATE:

Lagers typically have a reduced ester profile with discernible malt character. It is very important to recognize that pitch rate is directly related to the amount and intensity of ester production. Increasing the quantity of yeast pitched is the most effective method of reducing the ester profile in the finished beer. You will need to double the yeast you would typically need in an ale fermentation.

PRIMARY FERMENTATION TEMPERATURE:

Fermentation should take 2-4 weeks at 52 °F. The best temperature will depend of the yeast strain used and what you want to get out of the flavor profile. After fermentation you will want to raise your temperature as close to 62ْF as possible. This is called a diactyl rest. The increase in temperature will both assure fermentation is complete, drive of any remaining CO2 that might cause “of favors”

and clarity issues, and finally, it will allow the yeast to absorb the diacetyl produced by fermentation. 

SECONDARY FERMENTATION:

source: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/

A secondary fermentation at a temperature below the primary fermentation allows for a slow reduction of any remaining fermentable sugars. This secondary fermentation can take from one to three weeks at temperatures starting between 39-45 °F and slowly falling to as low as 33 °F. The length of the secondary depends on the amount of fermentable sugars remaining.

CONDITIONING OR "LAGERING":

Lager roughly means “store” in German. It is a time when harsh favors from fermentation are mellowed. Yeast re-absorb some of the ester compounds from fermentation as well as some of the sulfur compounds. Malt tannins coagulate with haze-forming proteins and precipitate out along with some sulfurous compounds. Temperatures should remain very stable during lagering, generally in the range of 33-36 °F. Contact with oxygen at this point is very detrimental to beer favor and should be avoided at all costs. Lagering time depends on many factors. If a cold secondary fermentation was employed, then the length of the lagering period can generally be decreased. A lagering period of two to eight weeks is typical.The higher the ABV of the beer the longer you may want to lager also.

While many homebrewers have converted refrigerators or freezers with external thermostats to carefully manage their lagering temperatures, you can make a good lager with just a cool basement. If you can get sub 60 °F in a basement or cellar for your primary fermentation and secondary fermentation, then keg or bottle from there, you can make a decent lager that can be crisp and refreshing without the added cost of a dedicated feremtation chamber. Give lagering a try this winter if you can, the worst thing that will happen is you will make beer... and that's not so bad.

 If this quick rundown peaked your interest in lagering there is another article you can read from the American Homebrewers Association

Adding Coffee To Your Beer

We usually like to include a historical reference to what we are writing about, but there doesn't seem to be much historical documentation on this. The Founders brewery seemed to have stumbled upon their Breakfast Stout when a chocolate covered espresso bean was eaten at a bar, then washed down with a stout. The resulting beer has been a popular seasonal ever since. Homebrewers however, have been adding this for decades, from what we have heard stories of, and it makes sense since beer and coffee have a lot in common. We're sure there is a big middle section to the Ven diagram showing the crossover between people that like coffee, and people that like beer. There are even similarities in the detractors of these beverages. Prohibition against beer consumption is well known, but attempts have been made over the history of coffee to outlaw its use as well. Not to mention some religious opinions on the consumption of both coffee and beer.

The similarities are not just social however. Indeed, when talking about the popularity of IPAs and how some do or don't like the bitterness of them, we liken it to coffee drinkers. More than likely when someone starts drinking coffee they don't love the bitterness, and end up buffering the seemingly acrid taste with milk or cream, or sugar, or chocolate... or all of these, but as coffee drinkers become more used to the taste, they realize it is the bitterness that is drawing them in. Same with bitterness in beers. It is there to balance the sweetness of the drink, but people find themselves pushing that bitterness level to the extreme, because there is an appeal to that sensation when done correctly. So, it makes sense to add coffee flavor to not only stouts, but even light colored beers. Combining the two products is something akin to providence (take that religious groups), it was just going to happen.

So how do you do it, well we pieced together the following from several sources including our own experience.

Directions:
Grind or smash whole beans to a coarse or medium grind then cold brew or hot brew the coffee to add to your beer. Or, you can add the grounds (or whole beans) directly to your secondary fermentation.

Hot vs Cold brewing coffee:
- Hot brewing is just regular old coffee making. It’s an easy way to pasteurize your coffee if you are adding it later in fermentation, and while it does pull flavor out of the beans quickly, it can pull some acids and bitterness out of the beans.
- Cold brewing uses cold or room temperature water to get the flavor out of the beans, but without as much bitterness. leave sit for 12-24 hours then strain your grounds from the water.

When to add the coffee to your beer:
- Pre-boil/boil additions can give you better head retention in your final beer, and totally pasteurize your coffee, but can minimize the coffee flavor and kill delicate aromatics of fancy coffee you might be using.
- Primary fermentation additions will increase coffee flavors and retain most subtle flavors of beans, but can reduce the head retention of your beer. Coffee bean oils = reduced head.
- Post fermentation additions are easy to do, and you can do it to taste before you keg or bottle. Just add till you get the desired coffee flavor amount you like in your beer. Head retention could suffer, and using cold brewed coffee could potentially be harboring infection causing contaminates.




How much coffee to add:
- 12-20 oz of coffee per 5 gallon batch
- Amounts can very wildly however due to the strength of coffee being brewed, the kind of beer it's being added to, and personal preference of the person drinking it.

Dry Beaning (like dry hopping):
- Add your ground beans to secondary. Use a fine mesh bag, to reduce grounds in your final product. Leave beans whole for less color extraction of the bean, but this will extend the steeping time needed to achieve the desired flavor contribution to your beer.
- Use whole beans if your want less dark color extraction, but you will want to increase your steeping times for the same amount of coffee flavor. 

Or take it from the experts.
Cold extraction process =
Add .5 lbs of coffee to 24 oz of cold filtered water in a sanitized container. Allow to sit in the fridge for 24 hours. Then run it through a coffee filter. All or part may be added depending on taste.
-from "Radical Brewing" By Randy Mosher.

 For subtle coffee notes try a coffee malt like the recipe found on the Montly Brews site.