Das Stimmt! Bavarian Weizen

Ah Bavarian Wheat. This style of beer is what got me into drinking beer. I studied in Salzburg Austria for a short bit during my last year of college. On my cab ride from the airport to my apartment, we went past a small bavarian brewery/beer garden and they had a huge cow on a spit roasting over coals. I decided I had to stop for lunch. So, I ordered some cow, potatoes and a beer. I knew nothing about wheat beer, or bavarian beer at all, and I certainly didn't know that it was the oldest bavarian wheat brewery in existence. What I got was a tall cloudy golden yellow glass of pure bananna and clove yeasty wheaty goodness. To make a long story short, I was blown away and ended up going back to the place on almost a daily basis... it helped that my apartment ended up being about a block away. The place was called, "Weissbierbrauerei Bernd Tobsch" But it's now known as "Die Weisse" or "Die Weisse Salzburger Weissbrauerei." If you ever venture into Salzburg give this place a shot. If you're there in the summer then don't forget to check out the beer garden around the corner. Good memories.

This should be a good summer beer. Low-ish gravity with a good bananna smell. We'll be having a few of these in Temecula to be sure. We'll be brewing it up on Saturday morning.

Grain:
5 lb. Pils
5 lb. Wheat

Single Decoction Mash:
152 degrees for 30 min.
Decoction of roughly 40% of the grain for 15 min and then returned to bring the grist to knockout temp.
Sparge at 170 degrees.

Boil:
6-ish gal beginning volume and we should boil off a gallon or so
90 min. boil

Hops:
60 min:
1/2-3/4 oz. or so of some kind of noble hop... keep it around 15 ibu. I think I have some Hallertauer laying around that I'll use.

Yeast:
A 2 starter of White Labs "Hefeweizen Ale" yeast (WLP300) pitched into a carboy with 5 gallons of wort.

Predicted Original Specific Gravity:
1.060

Notes:
I'll pitch the yeast into the carboy cold (~60 degrees) and bring the fermentation temp slowly up to 68.

The Return to Porter

The back story here is that I haven't brewed a porter since the first batch of beer I ever brewed... which is not a recipe or a brewing process that I wish to repeat, but it was fun and that beer started the ball rolling with the whole brewing thing even though I think we did just about everything wrong that time. We put a lid on the kettle, we had 2 boilovers onto my buddie's kitchen stove and floor, we had to let it cool slowly (around 6 hours or more) before pitching the yeast, and I think we had a small sanitation issue. So the beer was extremely vegital/DMS tasting and had a fairly strong buttery/diacetyl smell and flavor, and a minor sour kick in the background.

I think this one will be better. I got the recipe from Jamil Zainasheff. He published it somewhere online, but I can't remember where. The only change I made was with the finishing hops. I was a little short on my EK Goldings, and I had a lot of Cascades around that I had to use up. We'll see how this turns out as it is and adjust it as needed for next time. I'll be brewing it up early Saturday morning (crack of dawn early).

Grain:
11.5 lb. American 2-Row
1.5 lb. Munich Malt
1.5 lb. Crystal 40
0.75 lb. Black Patent
0.5 lb. Chocolate Malt

Single Infusion Mash:
152 degrees for 60 min.
Sparge at 170 degrees.

Boil:
6-ish gal beginning volume and we should boil off a gallon or so
90 min. boil

Hops:
60 min:
1.65 oz. E.K. Goldings

0 min.
0.35 oz. E.K. Goldings
1.5 oz. Cascades

Yeast:
A 2 starter of White Labs "California Ale" yeast (WLP001) pitched into a carboy with 5 gallons of wort.

Predicted Original Specific Gravity:
1.063

Notes:
Ferment at around 68 degrees.

Ok, there's a lot of chocolate and coffee going on in this porter. I like it a lot. A couple guys at my homebrew club helped me out a bit with it. I think I'll cut back on the black patent, and maybe add a little dark crystal to give it some thick sweetness. All in all though it's a very good, rich porter.