Brewed Slowly: #4 American Cherry Wheat
I've been MIA for a while as far as posting new material goes, but I've got some beer to write about. This bitch don't write itself, yo.
About two weeks ago, I cooked up a batch of American Wheat, which was/is to become a Cherry Wheat beer--and hopefully not as overwhelmingly cherry as a certain cherry beer I've publicly berated. This beer has already been bottled and should be primed sufficiently about a week from now. If you want to find out what kinds of frog legs and tennis shoes I tossed in the pot, you know what to do.
The software:
6 lbs Northern Brewer Wheat liquid extract (65-35)
1 lb Weyermann Pale wheat grain
1 oz Cascade pellets
0.5 oz Williamette pellets
Wyeast 1010 American Wheat yeast
2 oz. cherry extract
(I've been cruising on autopilot with these last few beers, for better or worse, and basically follow the same steps while brewing. This'll read familiar if you've followed any of the last few entries.)
the beginnings of an american wheat
I steeped the pale wheat grain for 30 minutes at a temp. between 150 and 160 F. I started with only 1.5 gallons of water. After that half hour, I added another 1.5 gallons of water and brought it all to a boil. Then the extract and Cascade pellets went in. I let this boil for 90 minutes, which is longer than I usually boil, and to be honest, I don't remember why I let it go this long. There's certainly nothing wrong with cooking it the extra 30 minutes, but I don't remember having a reason for doing so.
After the wort boiled for 90 minutes, I took it off the heat and tossed in the 0.5 oz. of Williamette pellets and let the pot sit in an ice bath. (I still haven't gotten a wort chiller, but if anyone wants to donate one to the cause, it will be accepted.)
This beer was only the second one I got a Wyeast smack pack for (the first time I used a smack pack, I didn't actually pop the nutrient pack on the inside--nonetheless, the yeast worked), and I made damn sure to bust the nutrient pack this time. The yeast pack swelled, so I know I got it. I pitched the yeast when the wort had cooled to about 75 F.
fully proofed smack pack meeting wheat wort
When I bottled this beer I added a little less than half of a 4 oz. bottle of cherry extract.
The starting gravity was 1.050, and when I bottled the beer, it was 1.010. When it's ready to drink I'll update.
Related Posts:
Drinking It All: #3 Sam Adams Cherry Wheat
Drinking It All is a document of my attempt to try every beer in circulation. It's a Herculean and tragic attempt at best. But it's the means, not the end that counts here.
--
cherry coke for adults
Between end-of-the-semester grading, painting and installing moulding and baseboards in a living room, and getting a Xmas tree and decorating, I'm trying to squeeze in this humble post this week so I don't fall completely off my 12 readers' radars. Like I've said before, I'm not much for fruity beers and can't think off the top of my head of one that I really, really like. But while Steve and I were making our holiday cherry stout this past weekend, we had some of Sam Adams' Cherry Wheat.
And I'm drinking the last one right now. That's correct. Beer review in real time. Get one and drink along. Let's get interactive.
When they made this Cherry Wheat, nobody told the man with the cherries no. The label says the brewers combined cherries with a generous portion of wheat malt, but, for me, they could have been much more generous. At first, the beer tastes almost exactly like cherry coke. Or at least what I remember cherry coke tasting like from when I was a kid. There's little about the taste or smell that says "beer." And that little is only noticable at the very end--actually, I could be imagining it altogether. The aftertaste is of beer.
None of this is to say that the beer is necessarily bad. Steve, an accomplished beer drinker, is a fan of the beer (he bought it), so I imagine there are plenty of other people who'd tell me I'm missing something or just being a dumbass. (I want to hear from you people.)
Thumbs up or thumbs down? Down (The 1st). It just doesn't seem much like beer. Cherries or no. (It probably doesn't help that I'm listening to Neil Young's Arc, which my friend Scooter lent me and called the "listenable equivalent of Metal Machine Music." Arc and Cherry Wheat do not mix. Don't try at home.)
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