re: Homebrewing: In-Process Thread

BMoney made a peach wheat that was great. I have a plum wheat in the secondary on plums now that I will keg after Memorial Day

About 45% 2-row & 45% white wheat malt. Mashed low so it would be dry so the fruit would come through. 10% acid malt for slight tartness. The base before adding plums was great.

I've also used blueberries in a wheat, and blackberries work well too

whatever you use, smash it up

For extract I think I would get a couple pounds of wheat malt, steep it for about 30 minutes, then add the acid malt to steep another 15 minutes or so.

If you steep them together you might not extract all the sugars from the wheat as you normally would due to the low ph

You can also use lactic acid to add tartness. Add it when you rack to a bottling bucket or keg

I add the fruit to a secondary. it will ferment the sugars out, but you don't want it during primary fermentation because you'll lose the aromatics.

I fermented 6 days, down to 1.007, then racked it onto the plum purée, gave a few gentle stirs, and closed it up

The cool thing about such a simple grain bill is that you can add nearly anything from fruit to herbs to hops

I plan to add some myself even after using the acid malt. I will start with an ounce in the keg, and if that's not enough, add another. Probably won't go over two.

Anyone have experience using flavor extracts instead of actual fruit? Something like this:
Fruit Extract

I've always felt extract tasted fake. But I know that some commercial beers use it and it comes out fine for them.

Beer Line Calculator

That should get you close, unless you're using some of that low resistance tubing.

that says they are too short, not too long

So in an effort to having my hops prolonged, i believe my next IPA, i will dry hop into the primary fermenter. Is there an obvious loss to utilization? The benefits to dry hopping in a secondary is that all of your beer comes in contact with your hops. The only drawback, is the exposure to oxygen. Not worried about the brew being oxygenated, just want my IPA's to last longer. It's either that or i start drinking more.

quote:

---

The benefits to dry hopping in a secondary is that all of your beer comes in contact with your hops

---

Unless you are transferring through the hops, this has never been accurate for me. If I put the hops in an empty carboy then transfer beer into that carboy, the hops end up floating on top. Only coming in contact with maybe the first gallon. Do you get yours to stay at the bottom of the carboy?


Side note, we had our first exbeeriment last night at the club meeting. A brewer brewed a single hop IPA then split the batch to dry hop differently, more specifically for a different duration. He hop'd one for 3 days and the other for 10. In the group of 22 tasters, only 9 could identify the difference in a triangle test. 9 is just barely over the random threshold of 7, so we deemed that there was no perceptible difference between 3 days and 10 days of dry hopping. Cool times.