Brew Day: Summer Wheat Ale

I brewed a wheat ale some time back, the Honey Orange Wheat, but added orange peels and honey to it and ended up with a very flavourful wheat beer with overwhelming orange (kinnow) notes.

Its been a while but of late I had the urge to brew another wheat beer for some time now and I waited around for some of my grains to come in. There’s nothing interesting or specific about this wheat beer that would make it stand out other than the fact that it was not intended to be fermented with a wheat yeast. I planned to use S-04 from some of the harvested yeast from my previous beer. Which meant that it would be an American Wheat ale. Simple, unpretentious and a good drink on a summer’s day when you want to have a wheat beer.

I stuck to the basics: Pale Ale malt and Wheat, two simple ingredients and nothing else. If this fermented out completely I would end up with 5% ABV or slightly higher. I wanted the wheat to stand out and kept the IBUs close to the early 20s with a single bittering addition of Columbus.

Overall, my intention was to make an American Wheat ale that’s perfect for the summer.

Summer Wheat Ale (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 21

SRM: 5

OG: 1.055

Grains and Sugars

1 kg Pale Ale malt

850 grams Wheat malt

Hops

6 grams Columbus @ 45

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 66°C for 60 minutes.

Batch sparged at 80°C.

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Notes
Because this is a light bodied, simple wheat beer, it gives a chance to lay around with  secondary to see if I can infuse flavours into it with some of the available fruit.