Happy National Homebrew Day!! Today, May 2nd, is national homebrew day, and to celebrate I decided to make some beer...fitting, no?
With the hot weather coming, I've been wanting to make more of a "lawnmower beer," so that after working outside in the hot weather I'm not stuck with trying to drink a stout...So, this is my attempt at a lighter beer, that should hopefully be pretty clean and crisp...we'll see. I added honey, and before it started bubbling away I tasted it...very sweet. Hopefully a lot of that sweetness will be fermented away (we'll see how good this yeast is!).
I used several different things this go around:
First, I used only dry malt extract, half wheat and half extra pale.
Second, I used dry yeast for the first time. Reconstituted it in about 1.5 cups of 100F water for about an hour. Pitched at about 80F, and it now has a nice thick layer of krausen, so it's obviously working.
Third, instead of trying to cool the hot wort with a surrounding ice water bath (takes forever), I lowered the boil volume to 3 gallons, and then diluted it with 1 gallon of cold water and 1 (7lb) bag of ice. Chilled it to about 85 right away...if it doesn't alter the flavor, this was a much better way to go!
Here's the recipe I used...
3 lb Extra Light DME
3 lb Wheat DME
.50 lb 10L Crystal malt (steeped at 155 for 30 minutes)
.50 lb Honey Malt (steeped at 155 for 30 minutes)
1 oz Hallertauer hops (4.80%; 60 minutes)
1 oz Willamette hops (5.50%; 5 minutes)
.50 oz Lemon zest (one large lemon; 5 minutes)
1 lb Orange Blossom Honey (5 minutes)
1 Package of Safale US-05, reconstituted in 1.5 C of 100F water
OG: 1.072
FG: 1.018
ABV: 7%
IBU = 21.5
Color
Overall comments: This brew turned out quite nice. It was a great summer beer, but it still had a lot of punch to it. Only thing I will change is substituting some of the wheat malt for more pale malt. It had a little too much wheat character for my liking. Otherwise, I had no complaints, nor did those who tried it :)
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