Kealia/Foothiller RCE

[Kealia]

While we connected quickly and hammered out a recipe just as quickly, neither of us has brewed it yet nor posted what we came up with.

We decided on a wheat steam beer just to mix things up a bit. Being a steam beer, we're going to use the traditional Wyeast/Whitelabs yeast along with Northern Brewer hops, but to that we're adding some Simcoe + a good dose of wheat malt.

I'm hoping to get this brewed this weekend, but we'll see. Either way, we'll try to keep this updated.

[mashani]

Steam of Wheat? Mikey likes it. (I just gave you a label idea LOL).

[Dawg LB Steve]

Steam of Wheat? Mikey likes it. (I just gave you a label idea LOL).

[Kealia]

Yes you did! And I will be bottling this batch versus kegging it so I may just use that!

[Foothiller]

Thanks for getting this post started, Ron. I have been meaning to do the same, but things have been busy, and also wondering if you got yours brewing yet. For the Borg FYI, I keep my beer fridge at 52 F and plan to brew this at about 65 or maybe a little less, so I need to wait until the temperature in my work room drops some more. But as it's dropping now, the thermal mass around where it will brew is down to 68 now, so it could be getting close. Ron was great in working with on the recipe, and I think this is the fastest I have had a RCE recipe come together.

I love the Steam of Wheat name, and I may use that too!

Let me share our recipe, in my case for a 2.5 gallon batch in a Brewdemon fermenter:

OG = 1.054 OG, estimated FG = 1.014, estimated ABV = 5.2%, IBU = 32, SRM = 8

Two-row - 2.25 lb
Malted Wheat - 2.00 lb
Crystal 40L - 0.38 lb
Munich (US) - 0.38 lb

Simcoe - 0.25 oz, 13.0% AA, 45 minutes
Northern Brewer - 0.25 oz, 9.4% AA, 15 minutes
Northern Brewer - 0.25 oz, 9.4% AA, 1 minute
Simcoe - 0.25 oz, 13.0%, 1 minute
Hops may need adjustment based on what's available at homebrew stores.

White Labs WLP810 - San Francisco Lager Yeast or Wyeast equivalent

Irish Moss - 1 tsp in last 10-15 minutes of boil
In my case with soft mountain water in the Sierra foothills: minerals for 50-100 ppm Calcium, 100-200 ppm Sulfate, 50-100 ppm Chloride, 40-80 ppm Alkalinity.

I'm looking forward to how this turns out, and will also post how it turns out.

[Kealia]

Fingers crossed - I'm hoping to brew this on Sunday.

[Kealia]

I did brew this on Saturday, as planned. But, I came up short on the gravity (as per the "old grain") thread so I add some DME on Sunday.

It chugged away good for a few days, and has now settled down so the blow off was pulled and replaced with an airlock.
All looks good. Pay no attention to the painters tape, it's not holding the carboy together. It's holding the Ferm Wrap on to help maintain the temp.

I fermented for 5 days at 62 and just bumped it to 65 to help it finish off and clear up a bit. I'll leave it be until next Thursday when I'll crash it and then bottle/keg by next Sunday.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Kind of liking this yeast ferments out like a lager at yeast temps and gives off some nice clean presence.

[Foothiller]

Looks good, Kealia! Our temperatures are staying cool enough now that I'm starting to plot the schedule for brewing mine.

[Kealia]

I'm not sure well this picture will show how well it is clearing, but it is. I'm going to cold crash it on Thursday to bottle on Saturday because I'm leaving for a week after that and wantto have this packaged up before I go.

If there's any longer conditioning needed it can do it in the bottle dammit!

[Foothiller]

I'll look forward to hearing how yours turns out. With luck I'll get mine going this weekend. I think the household chores will leave enough time even though last Sunday was a busy brew day, bottling a low-calorie Belgian Pale that's for my wife, starting 3 small-batch meads, starting a 1-gallon cider batch, and racking a larger cider -- a sign of the season as summer ends and the temperature drops.

[Kealia]

Wow, you're busy. When the time comes, I'll be sending one your way so you don't have to rely on my review

[Foothiller]

Luckily getting ciders and meads started is not as time-consuming as batches of beer. Some of them have additional steps over the next few days, some racking as they condition, then seeing if adjustments are needed at the end. Now I need more space in my work room.

[Kealia]

I wasn't sure if I would have time to get to this over the weekend, but I did. Then I couldn't decide if I was going to bottle it or keg it when a keg blew.
So, I used the small 2G keg I have and got a few bottles done as well.

The name for this beer also came to me via a discussion with a friend: Cthulhu

Now I just need to find the right image for the label creation since I have a few of these in bottles. A Google search turns up plenty of options but I have a certain "feel" in mind that is black-and-white, or sketched-looking. Maybe that will change as I continue searching, though.

Maybe something like this:

[Foothiller]

You must have had an interesting discussion, and that's quite an image for your label! Mine might stay with the name Steam of Wheat, and have a more boring image -- oh well.

I got mine brewed on Saturday, and after a couple of weeks of watching my work room's temperature and planning when to brew, one mishap is that it turned out to be a warm weekend instead of the cold temperatures that start again tomorrow. (Another mishap resulted in loss of some wort between steps in brewing, so with needing to make up that water, I also ended up needing to add a few ounces of DME. I had felt so proud until then in hitting my initial mash temperature of 154 F exactly, to keep a reasonable mash temperature in the cylindrical cooler during that hour.)

The warm weekend, resulting in a fermentation temperature of 70 instead of 65' as planned, might be what is causing this yeast (WY2112 California Lager) to be quite a beast: bubbles in the airlock starting soon after the swollen smack-pack was poured into the wort, at least an inch of krausen, one of the few times I could easily see yeast clumps swirling around the Brewdemon fermenter's sides, and 74% attenuation after 48 hours of fermenting, still going strong.