I Feel A Wheat Beer Brewday Coming On

[mashani]

I have bottled beer of many types that is between 4 months and 2 years of age, all of it stored in my basement in boxes, where it tends to be 55-70 depending on what time of the year - and all of it is still good.

IPAs change over time, wheat beers change over time, but they still are "good" just different with age, IE American IPAs may change into something more like an English IPA when the hops fade, but that's OK with me. Wheat beers may lose some of their esters with age, but they still taste good.

[Brewbirds]

It may seem like a silly question but I've never been faced with this problem before, does anyone ever store their bottled or kegged beer at room temperature for months at a time?

Screwey, my hero, I seriously hope to have that problem someday, I wish we lived in the same town because I have all kinds of storage at the moment.

I assume you are bottling a lot if storage is a problem, even though you keg (?), I found that I could get the case boxes from local stores where the vendor stocks by the six pack by asking.

It allows me to stack and sort the empty bottles but may work for what you need???

[ScrewyBrewer]

It may seem like a silly question but I've never been faced with this problem before, does anyone ever store their bottled or kegged beer at room temperature for months at a time?

Screwey, my hero, I seriously hope to have that problem someday, I wish we lived in the same town because I have all kinds of storage at the moment.

I assume you are bottling a lot if storage is a problem, even though you keg (?), I found that I could get the case boxes from local stores where the vendor stocks by the six pack by asking.

It allows me to stack and sort the empty bottles but may work for what you need???

Haha I bottled ten gallons of Stout last weekend and five gallons of Common Ale two weeks ago after fiilling up two small corny kegs. Once I got into it bottling wasn't all that bad. I forgot how much real estate that much beer takes up to store it all.

I do appreciate your offer to help store some of it though, since mentioning it I've gotten a few offers but there's plenty of room here after all. Actually I'm comforted being surrounded by so much beer.

[Brewbirds]

Actually I'm comforted being surrounded by so much beer.

Oh you lucky dawg you. Here's a current pic of my beer closet...

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I know I'll get some sympathy from you since you just moved yourself.

[mashani]

@Brewbirds, I'm so sorry, that is just a sad state of affairs.

[ScrewyBrewer]

The good news about moving is you'll get to plan out and setup your new brewing area based on the good things of your former brew room. If you're like me unfortunately building the new layout won't materialize until after the rest of the house is all setup. But once it's done your pipeline will be well stocked again in no time.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Well I'm committed, no not that way, committed to brewing a Belgian Witbier this Saturday. The recipe's the flakiest one I've ever brewed before, eleven pounds of flaked oats and wheat and twelve pounds of malted grains, mostly Belgian Pilsener with a dash of German Munich. The Brewers Apprentice had two vials of White Labs WLP400 - Belgian Wit Ale Yeast™, they're batting a thousand at having every ingredient I've needed to brew since moving here.

The yeast starters were simple to make, a cup of extra light DME per two liter flask and both of them are stirring away now keeping me company as I type. The ten gallon batch of 1.055 gravity beer called for nearly 400 billion cells and I estimate the beer's final gravity should be about 1.016 if the yeast gives a 70% attenuation. I'm used to the White Labs vials having a compact clump of yeast in them that you need to shake loose to get the yeast out of the vial, but the two I bought today were already mixed which I thought was interesting.

The dates on the vials are both Jan-22-2015 and there's not much happening other than a very thin ring of foam just forming at the top of the wort where its touching the inside of the flask. The temperature of the room they're in now is 70F and by morning it'll be 67F in here, seven hours from now when I wake up and look in on them I'm expecting to see about an inch of krauzen but for now I'm calling it a day.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Woke up this morning to find both starters had a healthy three inch layer of krauzen on them, it's a warm 68F in here too. I'm off to ride the rails to NYC will check in later today.

[ScrewyBrewer]

As luck would have it my train line was closed because of an accident this morning and now two and a half hours later I'm back at home. Here's a picture of my starters that I took before rushing out this morning, goes to show if I listened to the radio I would've known about the train mess before leaving.

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[ScrewyBrewer]

Yesterday was probably the best day I've ever spent brewing beer. It was cold outside where I live and I don't think the temperature ever got out of the 40's all day but brewing in my garage kept me warm and out of the wind. Watching HBO Go and later listening to some of my favorite music on Pandora while brewing alone was really relaxing. Yesterday was only the third time brewing on the eBIAB system and now that I'm getting more familiar with using it I'm feeling more comfortable and much more confident.

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The original gravity sample I took read 1.054 and was only a point below what qBrew had predicted and that made me feel good knowing it came out so close. I've been sticking with a mixture of 13 gallons of strike water and 23 pounds of grains because I know the kettle will handle that amount based on the initial calculations I made on the prior two batches. I'm ok with getting a 70% efficiency now that I'm getting it consistently, adding an extra pound of grain makes up the difference in the lower efficiency.

I was surprised at how different the WLP400 yeast starters I made behaved though. I'm always interested in working with a yeast strain I've never used before but the way this yeast behaved was pretty extreme compared to the others I've used. After the krausen in the flasks fell I refrigerated the starters to cold crash them before decanting and pitching them. But the yeast cells coated the neck of the flasks as they rose to the top of the starter and floated on the krausen. The weirdest thing was as they warmed up the came back to life and started to ferment the wort again, weird.

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I ended up pitching the yeast without decanting it first since so many cells were in suspension in the starter wort I didn't want to toss out the least flocculating cells and lower the beer's attenuation. This morning I looked in on them and there's bubbling in one fermentor's airlock but the other one's not showing anything yet, go figure same yeast, same wort and same pitching rates.

[ScrewyBrewer]

I don't always drink beer first thing in the morning, but.... Today I tasted a final gravity sample of my most recent Witbier, it finished at 1.011 for a 5.7% ABV. The 4 ounce sample I drank had citrus and spice in the background with no cloying coriander flavors thankfully. The beer does taste refreshing and has a dry almost tart finish with no hop bitterness. Based on my initial taste, I'll have to try a bigger sample later in the day, but there is that nice complex blend of sweet, spice, citrus, tartness with no hop flavor or aroma.

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The beer color is a bright pale gold and very cloudy from all the wheat and the yeast but once carbonated I can already imagine it having a pure white fluffy head with beautiful lacing. Since wheat's are best when young I'll be kegging most of it and bottling a case too. I've never brewed a beer with almost equal amounts of unmalted flaked and malted grains before and I'm happy to say there were no issues with a stuck mash. The WLP-400 although it smelled horrible did a good job chewing through all the sugars ending up with 77% apparent attenuation.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Yesterday I kegged five gallons and bottled the other five gallons of Belgian Witbier, it pained me to have to toss all of that good yeast down the drain though. Brewing so many different beer styles makes it hard to justify washing any one yeast for reuse later since the yeast is used for a specific beer style.

I'm trying to quickly force carbonate a keg of Witbier and have it ready to take to a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Wheat's are best enjoyed young and that'll make this batch just 18 days old when we start drinking them. The bottles will be naturally carbonating and ready to drink just 28 days after brewing, wheat's are also a good brew for the impatient brewer.

[Kealia]

Hey Vince, how did this one turn out for you?

[ScrewyBrewer]

Hey Vince, how did this one turn out for you?

Ron it's really, really good thanks for asking. We killed the five gallons I had kegged already and I just put a naturally carbed six pack in the fridge this afternoon. It's a light refreshing wheat with great lacing and head retention but most of all it's an easy drinking beer.

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It's the first beer I used a temperature controller for fermentation and this yeast strain but I couldn't be any happier with the way it came out.

[JohnSant]

Vince that looks sooooooo goooooooood!