Brew Day: Wheat Stout

I have professed my love for simple wheat beers but I am hopeless in getting to make an all grain Hefeweizen. I have WB-06 yeast at home, but some of my wheat beers have turned out to be awful. I can drink them but I just couldn’t share them with anyone. While those beers were simple wheat ales, and with a Summer Wheat Ale bottled up, I have jotted down a stout recipe with 50% wheat in the mash.

While we’re on the topic of stouts, the later bottles of the Foreign Extra Stout that I brewed had a certain pronounced roasted flavor to it. This flavor may be very welcome in a stout and there are people who appreciate a hearty roasted flavor, it did make the drinking difficult for me. I later googled to find that Black Patent Malt or Black Malt contributes quite a bit to this dark, roasted characteristic. I’m not stating that this is bad; I’m just stating a personal opinion and the opinion is that I would prefer to have a stout without a heavy roasted note to it.

With the grains available with me, I could have easily made an all-grain, low ABV stout with Pale Ale malt, but decided to lower the quantity of Pale Ale in the grain bill and add wheat to the mash along with a few dark grains minus the Black Malt. I haven’t had a wheat stout before so I do not how this would turn out until I drink it a few weeks later. The only wheat beer that I have had that was slightly different from the regular Hefes and Wits was the Wheat IPA at Toit. And it was good. Perfect bitterness, moderate to heavy hop aroma and a thick, chilled, slightly opaque beer.

For now this would be a slightly lower in strength than the Foreign Extra Stout. I had initially planned on brewing just 8 liters but then I bumped it up to 10 liters as I wanted to make an Eis Stout with 2 liters of the beer and then age it a couple of months. I will have a separate post for those interested in making Eis beers.

Wheat Stout (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 10 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 38

SRM: 35

OG: 1.056

Grains and Sugars

1 kg Pale Ale
1 kg Wheat Malt
150 grams Crystal 120
150 grams Roasted Barley
150 grams Chocolate malt

Hops

15 grams Northern Brewer @ 45 min.

Yeast

Fermentis WB-06 Wheat Beer Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 65.5°C for 60 minutes

Sparged at 80°C for 30 minutes

Boiled for 45 minutes.