Brew U

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: M. Rasmussen

Going into the third and final beer of this series was a bittersweet feeling for me. On one hand I was starting to grow a little bored of the small set of ingredients; on the other hand, I was excited for the challenge of coming up with a recipe for a beer that didn’t seem like it was made from the exact same ingredients as the previous two in this series, and I was feeling quite comfortable and confident that I’d be able to deliver.

Recipe

Since my first two beers in this series were ales, my first thought for the final installment was that I needed to make a lager. After brainstorming possible styles with the rest of the crew, I decided that I wanted to shoot for some kind of German lager. The main reason for that was because, firstly, I love drinking a bold, crisp Bavarian lager. Secondly, since the other beers I brewed were American ales, this felt like as far from a similar style as I could go.

I knew that the majority of this beer would be consumed during the hot summer months, so I wanted to go for something lighter than a Munich/Marzen lager, which is my favorite German style. A close cousin to that Munich-heavy beer is a Festbier. The BJCP defines the Festbier style as “A smooth, clean, pale German lager with a moderately strong malty flavor and a light hop character. Deftly balances strength and drinkability, with a palate impression and finish that encourages drinking.” That sounded like exactly the kind of beer I wanted to drink after mowing the lawn or to share with friends around a backyard fire.

After doing a bit of research on the style, I came up with the recipe rather quickly. The malt bill was simple to construct, as my main goals were getting the right SRM and OG; I was aiming for an SRM of 6 and an OG between 1.055 and 1.060.

I like simple, rounded numbers when it comes to recipe creation. If I can use whole numbers for grain and hop weights, as well as hop addition timing and ABV, I’m a very happy brewer. The hop additions were constructed mainly to add a low amount of bitterness, but I wanted to use the Amarillo to get a slight bit of hop character layered into the flavor profile. Lastly, the yeast choice was beyond simple because I wanted this to be as close to a German lager as our ingredient list would allow.

• Mashed for 60 minutes at 152°F
  • 64% Maris Otter
  • 18% White Wheat Malt
  • 18% Light Munich
• Boiled for 75 minutes
  • 1 oz. of Nugget (60 minutes) @ 14.2% (23.0 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. of Amarillo (30 minutes) @ 7.7% (10.4 IBUs)
• Vitality starter of WLP810 pitched @ 58°F
  • Fermented at 58°F for 5 days
  • Slowly raised to 70°F over 5 days
  • Cold crashed to 38°F over 2 days
  • Lagered at 38°F for 4 weeks
• Target OG: 1.059
• Actual OG: 1.052
• FG: 1.008
• Target ABV: 6.6%
• Actual ABV: 5.8%
• Closed transferred, kegged, and quick-carbed overnight

Brew Day

This was an odd, unpredictable brew day for me. From the weather to the brewing metrics, everything felt slightly off. The first mishaps resulted from leaving the yeast vitality starter on too high of a heat setting whilst prepping the mash. The starter boiled over twice before I had the sense to turn the heat down, add some fermcap, and actually pay attention. The other big headache came from the refractometers.

I was brewing a ten gallon batch of this beer so that I could have five gallons and my brewing partner could take the other five. My refractometer uses Brix percentage as the measurement scale, and my friend’s uses the SG scale. We usually use both during the brewing process and compare the numbers to ensure everything is on track. Although we both calibrated the refractometers prior to reading the first sample of the day, over half of the samples we took throughout the process gave different readings—sometimes on the same refractometer. Now, it wouldn’t be abnormal for the two of us to be a little more than buzzed on our previous batch while we’re brewing the next one; however, that was not the case this day. I’m still not quite sure what was going on with gravity readings on this brew, and I’m not quite sure if I absolutely trust the OG that I wrote down for this beer.

Despite those issues, the brew day felt very successful. The yeast was visibly ripping through the vitality starter within an hour of hitting the stir plate, I nailed my target mash pH, and the wort chilled down much quicker than I anticipated.

Once the wort was transferred and chilled down to my target pitching temp, I was more than happy to let the yeast take over. After a quick and seemingly healthy fermentation, I then fined, kegged, and carbonated the beer. After that, I did what all brewers hate to do: I exercised patience and waited four weeks so that the beer could properly “lager” before I began drinking and evaluating it.

Tasting

Appearance: Deep, golden color. Crystal clear. Looks very “clean.” Light, steady carbonation. Thick, white head that dissipates and leaves a white ring as it subsides.

Aroma: Light, and slightly bready. Sweet, caramel. Straw.

Flavor: Caramelly, sweet straw notes from the aroma come through in the middle of the swallow. Sweetness hangs out on your tongue as the dry, bitter finish settles in to create a pleasing finish. Biscuit, light cracker. Little to no yeast coming through here. Crisp, dry, slightly bitter finish. Unmistakably a lager.

Mouthfeel: Full. Crisp. Nearly over-carbonated, but not quite. Medium body.

Aftertaste: Slight hop flavor. Crisp, mildly bitter, residually sweet.

Overall: It’s a darn good, easy drinkin’, summer lager. Hard to tell the inspiration was a staple German style, but still very good in its own right.

If I were to brew this beer again with the same limitations on the recipe, I don’t really think I’d change anything—at least, not with the recipe. I would definitely try to tighten up my sloppy brewing practices from the first go, but I’m quite pleased with how this recipe lined up with my initial goals.

If I were to brew this recipe/style again without these limitations, the first (and most obvious) change would be to use a German lager yeast. The trademark characteristics of a Bavarian lager yeast are noticeably absent from this beer; a hint of banana being the most apparent (and also my favorite) of those missing notes. I’d also switch out the Maris Otter for a more traditional pilsner malt. Surprisingly, I probably wouldn’t even bother changing the hop schedule at all. The hop profile in this beer is exactly what I intended.

Overall, this resulted in a very satisfying beer. It’s my favorite of the three beers I brewed for this project by far. Although I don’t think this project turned out to be exactly what we were all expecting, I feel like I understand these ingredients, my process, and recipe creation as a whole much better than before.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6	Beer 7	Beer 8	Beer 9	Beer 10
Style	California Common	Hoppy Wheat	American Pale Ale	ESB	Sticke Altbier
Maris Otter	30%	21%	50%	80% + 10% baked	9.3%
Light Munich	60%	12%	41%	5%	72.1%
Wheat	10%	67%	9%	5%	18.6%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	16.8 IBUs Nugget (60 mi.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo (0 min.)	6.1 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	15.8 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)	N/A	N/A	2.4 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	14.2 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)
Hop Addition 4	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	5.7 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo	1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days	1 oz. Amarillo & 1 oz. Nugget day 1 of fermentation; 2 oz. Amarillo day 4 of fermentation	1 oz. Amarillo	N/A
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F	WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days	WLP090	WLP810 at 65°F for 4 days; raised to 70°F over 4 days	Wyeast 2112 (WLP810 equivalent) at 60°F; raised to 67°F over 7 days
OG	1.050	1.059	1.055	1.057	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009	1.010	1.014	1.014
ABV	5%	6.6%	5.9%	5.6%	5.4%

	Beer 11
Style	Festbier
Maris Otter	64%
Light Munich	18%
Wheat	18%
Hop Addition 1	23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	10.4 IBUs Amarillo (30 min.)
Hop Addition 3	N/A
Hop Addition 4	N/A
Hop Addition 5	N/A
Dry Hop	N/A
Yeast	WLP810 at 58°F, raised to 70°F
OG	1.052
FG	1.008
ABV	5.8%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: M. Willis

As is often the case for me, on my first-round Limitations beer I jumped into the lake rather than wading in. My first brew in this series was a big hoppy wheat. Like the shock of cool water, I didn’t quite end up with the beer I had set out to make. Given the limitations, it was a tasty beer, but still fell short of my goals. For this second round, I quickly set my eye on an Altbier.

Altbier is somewhat of a German-style brown/amber ale. Altbiers share history with Kolsch, as both originated out of Cologne, but it is now associated with Dusseldorf. Traditionally these beers were aged for longer than normal at cool temperatures (resembling lagering), and this extended conditioning mellows it out. The end result is something like a brown/amber ale that is smooth, clean, and delicate. A friend of mine brews mostly traditional German styles, and his Sticke Altbier is the best of his many tasty beers. The Sticke is an assertive version with higher amounts of malt and hops. Think of it as a “Double” Alt. I fondly remember a boot of this beer being passed around at a holiday party, but I had never made one before.

Recipe

After a little research, I saw that most of our limited set of ingredients actually lend themselves pretty well to the Sticke Alt. It’s possible to use a single malt for this style—Munich. Munich is delicious on its own, but we have two other malts in the set of ingredients that can contribute some depth. The Sticke is a bitter beer (for German styles), so I was looking for around 50 IBUs. This could be akin to a hoppy Vienna Lager. Armed with this info, it didn’t take long to put together the following recipe:

• Mashed at 152°F for 60 min.
  • 72.1% Light Munich
  • 18.6% Wheat Malt
  • 9.3% Maris Otter
• Boiled for 60 min.
  • 0.4 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13% (16.8 IBUs)
  • 0.4 oz. Nugget (45 min.) at 13% (15.8 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Amarillo (15 min.) at 8.6% (14.2 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 8.6% (5.7 IBUs)
• Pitched Wyeast 2112 California Common
  • Fermented at 60⁰F
  • Increased to 67°F by day 7
  • Cold crashed on day 10
• Kegged using low-oxygen methods on day 13
• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.014
• ABV: 5.4%

Brew Day

I recently switched to a Mash in a Bag system and an electric brew kettle. This two-vessel Mash in a Bag system allows me to run back-to-back batches with most of the pros of Brew in a Bag. I batch sparge in a cooler because I find it more repeatable. The kettle provides strike and sparge water for mashing as well as boiling. In effect, the one kettle is both a Hot Liquor Tun (HLT) and Boil Kettle. Heating is provided by a 5500-watt element controlled by a home-built electric system. It took many months to design and build, but I wanted to remove as many negatives of my old turkey fryer setup as possible. I now use a pump to transfer, a counterflow chiller instead of an immersion, automatic heating controls, and all my equipment, tools, and ingredients are close. Most importantly, it’s inside. 

Our house water now flows through a water softener, but brew water still runs through reverse osmosis filter, which regularly tests to <10ppm of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). After collecting my RO water, I added brewing salts and Campden. I milled my grain, mashed in, and hit my target temps and pre-boil gravity. I then raised the grain bag with a pulley. I transferred the wort into my kettle and started the boil. I also have a steam condenser that allows me to keep the kettle lid on, and also results in no ventilation being necessary in the basement.

After the boil, I took a gravity reading that showed I’d hit my target OG of 1.055. A quick recirculation through the chiller to drop the temp of the entire kettle’s contents got the wort to about 100°F. This happens in minutes, so theoretically there should be little loss of hop aroma due to the minimal evaporation of volatiles once the boil is complete. I then switched hoses so I could quickly run the beer through the chiller and into the fermenter. I prefer this method rather than one slow crawl through the chiller since the quick runoff creates splashing in the fermenter to help aerate the wort.

This was a back-to-back brew day, so two fermenters were placed in my fermentation fridge and blow off tubes connected. This yeast ripped through the wort. Using my Bluetooth hydrometer, I watched fermentation start fast and the gravity just plummet.

I raised the temperature gradually to coax the yeast into finishing fermentation. Once the gravity remained unchanged for three days, I started the cold-crash phase. After another three days I kegged using a closed transfer method.

Tasting

Appearance:

• Copper, more golden than red
• Thick white head that dissipated to a lingering ring
• Clear for a beer with this much wheat, although it was hard to see with the condensation

Smell:

• Honey and bread
• Grapefruit and pear are faint, but present

Taste:

• Like a good brown ale should; this has big malty flavor without being overly sweet
• Medium bitterness and medium sweetness, but not perfectly balanced

Mouthfeel:

• Crisp lager and high carbonation bite
• Sticke-y from the residual sugars and malts

I like this beer and have been hoarding it for about three months now. It’s not fallen off, and it gives my friends and I a nice break from the IPA’s and stouts I always have on tap. That said, this current recipe is too bitter and could probably use less Munich and more Maris Otter. It’s not intended to be thin like most lagers, but if I brewed this again with the same ingredients, I’d be tempted to lower everything from the stronger version (Sticke) to more of a true Alt character.

If I were to brew this again with no limitations, I’d stick to my friend’s Sticke Alt recipe. His recipe was the other beer I brewed that day, and that contributed to the reason I still have some of the Limitations Alt left. I intended to do a comparison of both at a club meeting and public event, but illness prevented that. Honestly though, these two recipes of the same style were not at all close in aroma or taste.

Of the few that did sample both beers (non-blind), my friend’s version was deemed superior. It quickly disappeared, and rightly so. A lot of time has been spent developing that recipe and the results are exemplary. He uses German yeast, so there are less fruity esters. Huell Melon is the late addition hop; I find the Huell Melon’s strawberry and honeydew melon flavors pair better with malts. He does use Munich and Maris Otter like this recipe did, but he also adds Vienna, Victory, and Aromatic. Ooof—too many different grains, right? While there’s a lot, it works in this beer and adds depth that’s missing from my Limitations Alt. Instead of a heaping dose of Munich malt, there is more to ponder in a glass of his recipe without it becoming crowded.

Maybe I have my takeaway already from this experiment we’re running. Simple works in most cases, but occasionally you need to step out of the bounds of conventional wisdom. Go ahead and put six different grains in a beer when the malt is the star. The same can be said for hops in a big IPA. My best NEIPA variations have at least three different hops. Other times a SMASH or almost SMASH works for a clean German lager or ale. One thing I’m sure of is that this hobby is limitless.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6	Beer 7	Beer 8	Beer 9	Beer 10
Style	California Common	Hoppy Wheat	American Pale Ale	ESB	Sticke Altbier
Maris Otter	30%	21%	50%	80% + 10% baked	9.3%
Light Munich	60%	12%	41%	5%	72.1%
Wheat	10%	67%	9%	5%	18.6%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	16.8 IBUs Nugget (60 mi.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo (0 min.)	6.1 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	15.8 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)	N/A	N/A	2.4 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	14.2 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)
Hop Addition 4	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	5.7 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo	1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days	1 oz. Amarillo & 1 oz. Nugget day 1 of fermentation; 2 oz. Amarillo day 4 of fermentation	1 oz. Amarillo	N/A
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F	WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days	WLP090	WLP810 at 65°F for 4 days; raised to 70°F over 4 days	Wyeast 2112 (WLP810 equivalent) at 60°F; raised to 67°F over 7 days
OG	1.050	1.059	1.055	1.057	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009	1.010	1.014	1.014
ABV	5%	6.6%	5.9%	5.6%	5.4%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: C. McKenzie

After producing what I thought was a fairly decent but by no means spectacular beer with my first go at brewing within the set of limitations we’d put in place, I wanted to try my best to really push for something interesting and that might not be an obvious style choice given the list of ingredients. Thinking through some of my favorite styles, I knew the fact that I only had Maris Otter, Munich, and Wheat to work with would limit my choices in terms of any darker color and the toasted or roasted flavors that come with the more highly kilned malts. Several pale ales, IPAs, and wheat beers had already been brewed for this project, so I eliminated those from my list of possibilities. I’d already brewed a lager within the given limitations, so I wanted to do something that was more of an ale style this time around. Ultimately, I decided to try to replicate an ESB using the limited set of ingredients.

Recipe

Having Maris Otter as a malt to use seemed fortuitous enough, but there were some serious things I had to take into consideration if I wanted to have this beer taste anything like an ESB. The first item I had to take into account was that something was glaringly missing from the malts I could use: crystal malt. A hallmark of the style, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to go about achieving the characteristic malt profile of an ESB without crystal malt.

This limitation alone seemed to preclude the possibility of brewing this style successfully, but as I continued to ponder my options, I remembered reading a blog post recounting a beer style that makes use of an oven to bake the mash instead of the standard infusion mash. The author indicated that the resulting beer had a toasty caramel flavor, which makes sense, as after conversion, the sugars would continue to be heated to and above the temperature required to caramelize them. While keptinis (the farmhouse beer style mentioned above) is made by placing the entire mash in the oven, I realized that I could bake only a small portion of the mash in an attempt to replicate the caramel flavors of a crystal malt. I decided to take 10% of the malt (the amount of crystal malt I would normally use in an ESB) and set it aside for a baked mash. I also decided that this portion of malt should be made up solely of Maris Otter instead of being a mix of the malts.

The biggest issue potentially solved, I turned my attention to the lack of English yeast strains and English hops in the ingredient choices. Though I’ve not yet used WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast, everything I’d heard and read about it indicated that it was a very clean yeast—which would not provide the esters typically produced by English yeast strains and desired in an ESB. WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast was, well, a lager yeast; however, my mind began to turn back to a rye brown ale that I made with WLP810. I fermented that beer at the top of the optimal temperature range for that yeast, and to my surprise, that beer turned out with a decent level of esters (and was absolutely delightful, by the way). This made me wonder if, although a lager strain, WLP810 might get the job done in terms of the desired esters if I fermented it at the top of its range. After this idea, I also realized that this strain attenuates and flocculates similarly to most English yeast strains, whereas WLP090 attenuates a bit more (but is apparently highly flocculent as well). This solidified my unconventional yeast choice—yes, an “ESB” brewed with lager yeast.

The lack of English hops bothered me the least since Nugget is generally earthy, woody, and sometimes floral, much like many English varieties. In fact, on one hop-based website I looked at, Nugget is listed as an appropriate and good choice of hop for an ESB. Amarillo, on the other hand, is more pungently and distinctly American as a hop variety. That said, I wondered if the peach, apricot, and orange notes I tend to perceive in Amarillo could very well make up for any lack of esters if WLP810 didn’t perform in the same way that I had previously experienced when using it at higher temperatures. Granted, the fruity characteristics of Amarillo are quite different from the fruity character of esters produced by English yeast strains, but I thought it might be a somewhat comparable substitute if done correctly. I decided to lean more heavily on Nugget for the hop flavor in the beer, but I chose to dry hop with Amarillo to add some fruity aromas—not to mention that a small charge of dry hops is appropriate for the style.

All of these workarounds and choices resulted in the following recipe:

• Mashed at 151°F
  • 80% Maris Otter (8 lbs.)
    • 10% Maris Otter (1 lb.) baked at 450°F for 2 hours
  • 5% Light Munich (0.5 lbs.)
  • 5% Wheat (0.5 lb.)
• Boiled for 60 min.
  • 0.5 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13.3% AA (24.4 IBUs)
  • 0.25 oz. Nugget (15 min.) at 13.3% AA (6.1 IBUs)
  • 0.25 oz. Nugget (5 min.) at 9.3% AA (2.4 IBUs)
• Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager
  • Fermented at 65°F
  • Raised temperature to 67°F on day 5
  • Raised temperature to 69°F on day 7
  • Raised temperature to 70°F on day 8
• Dry hopped
  • 1 oz. Amarillo for 7 days
• OG: 1.057
• FG: 1.014
• ABV: 5.6%
• Kegged and burst carbonated

Brew Day

This brew day was a little different than most of my other brew days in terms of logistics. I’ve been brewing on Friday evenings after work recently, and I wasn’t initially sure how long to bake the mash in order to get the sugars to caramelize. The blog on keptinis that I referenced above indicated that the mash was baked for quite a long time (6 hours), and I didn’t have that much time in my evening. Frankly, I also didn’t want to run my oven for that long since we were experiencing temperatures in the upper 90’s the week that I brewed this. After some research on the temperature at which sugars begin to caramelize, I decided that 2 hours in the oven would probably suffice since I would only be baking a small portion of the mash.

I poured out 1 pound of Maris Otter into a loaf pan and added 1 quart of water. I then put the pan into the cold oven and turned the temperature up to 450°F. I chose to put the mash into the oven while it was cold so that it would heat up slowly and still hopefully undergo saccharification before the enzymes were denatured by the heat. Once this portion of the mash was heating up, I went to my garage and mashed in as usual with the remaining grains, ensuring I had enough room at the top of my mash tun to add the additional pound of malt that was baking at the moment.

After 2 hours, I checked on the baking mash and saw that the top was somewhat browning, but not to the extent I wanted. There were some darker syrup-like sugars stuck to the sides of the pan, but I wasn’t sure the mash as a whole was as caramelized as I’d hoped. So, I turned on the broiler for a few minutes in an effort to expedite the browning on the top of the mash; this turned out to be a terrible idea. The top very quickly went from brown to black and smoking. I quickly pulled the mash from the oven and then frantically fanned a dish towel in front of my smoke detector, hoping beyond hope that the loud beeping hadn’t woken my sleeping children.

Thankfully, my kids somehow stayed asleep, and I took the baked mash out to the garage to add to my mash tun. I scooped the baked mash into the tun and stirred it around gently to mix it in without disturbing the bottom of the grain bed.

I then drained my mash tun, and after a couple batch sparges, I had my desired pre-boil volume of wort. I began the boil and added hops at the times noted in the recipe.

After the boil, I chilled the wort with my immersion chiller and took a gravity reading. I ended up couple points higher than expected, but nothing outrageous. As I gathered my wort, I pulled off about half a gallon of wort into a small carboy and added my yeast to that while I moved the carboy with the rest of the wort into my fermentation chamber to finish cooling.

Once the wort was at my desired fermentation temperature, I pitched the vitality starter and let the yeast do its thing. Fermentation was a little sluggish, and I thought the beer looked mostly finished when I added my charge of dry hops. Fermentation continued after this for longer than expected, so my dry hops were added for several days longer than I had planned for them to be in contact with the beer.

Once I was certain the beer was finished fermenting, I kegged up the beer and burst carbonated it. This beer took quite a while to drop the least bit clear (though it never did fully, and I’ve found that beers made with WLP810 really taste significantly better once the yeast drops out of suspension, so I didn’t even really start drinking this beer in earnest until a few weeks later.

 

 

Tasting

This beer was golden and fairly cloudy. Despite a decent time of cold-conditioning, the yeast never dropped out completely. This beer had a large white head with excellent retention.

The aroma of this beer was fairly muted. Initially, there was a decent amount of peach aroma from the dry hop, but there was also a large yeasty scent that made me give this beer a few more weeks to condition. By the time I sat down to take notes, the dry hop aroma had largely faded, but so had the unpleasant overly-yeasty character. What aroma there was had a hint of peach but was mostly earthy and bready.

The flavor of this beer was earthy and herbal. A pleasant bread-like character was present and prominent, and there was just a hint of caramel sweetness. Unfortunately, there was also something that I can only classify as “lager” to the taste. It’s a flavor I’ve not yet been able to identify, but it’s a distinctive flavor that I get from almost all lagers (including well-made and well-respected commercial examples). In fact, that flavor is the main reason I don’t like lagers, and it therefore drives me crazy that I’ve not been able to place exactly what that flavor is over the years. It’s also a flavor I’ve not gotten when using WLP810 in the past, so I was surprised to see it crop up in this beer.

Overall, this was absolutely not an ESB or even a good imitation of the style. Actually, it wasn’t a very great beer either. I was rather disappointed at how this turned out not just because it wasn’t super delicious (though also not a dumper), but also because of the fact that the baked mash didn’t impart the character I wanted it to.

In retrospect, I think I did several things wrong. The first thing was choosing WLP810 as my yeast. When I chose this yeast for the character that I’d gotten before from it (the esters and not-at-all-lager quality in the brown rye ale I used it in), I quite honestly forgot that San Francisco Lager Yeast tends to emphasize the malt character over the hops. That malt-forward character and thus muted bitterness was not appropriate for the style (even if it was a pseudo-ESB to start).

If I were to brew this beer again using the same ingredients, I wouldn’t.

Ok, jokes aside; if for some reason I ended up brewing this beer again I would absolutely increase the length of time the mash spent in the oven. I don’t think that the time I let it bake for was sufficient to get enough caramel flavors to come through. I also would rearrange the hop schedule to add a little more bitterness and not use as much Amarillo in the dry hop. Though a delicious hop, Amarillo really just did not work in this beer.

If I were to brew this beer again with no restrictions on ingredients, I would absolutely use an English yeast strain, use caramel malt instead of the baked mash (though it could be fun to try that again in the future and ensure it spends sufficient time in the oven), and not use Amarillo. I might still use Nugget, but I would opt for EKG or Fuggle over Amarillo for an ESB. I tried to pull off some fruity notes with it to make up for the lack of esters, and it just didn’t work.

 

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6	Limitations: Beer 7 (Hoppy Wheat)	Limitations: Beer 8 (American Pale Ale)	Beer 8
Style	California Common	Hoppy Wheat	American Pale Ale	ESB
Maris Otter	30%	21%	50%	80% + 10% baked
Light Munich	60%	12%	41%	5%
Wheat	10%	67%	9%	5%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo (0 min.)	6.1 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)	N/A	N/A	2.4 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo	1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days	1 oz. Amarillo & 1 oz. Nugget day 1 of fermentation; 2 oz. Amarillo day 4 of fermentation	1 oz. Amarillo
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F	WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days	WLP090	WLP 810 at 65°F for 4 days; raised to 70°F over 4 days
OG	1.050	1.059	1.055	1.057
FG	1.012	1.009	1.010	1.014
ABV	5%	6.6%	5.9%	5.6%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: R. Goyenko

Recipe

After brewing an IPL for the first round of this series, I felt that I had a good idea of how the specific malts and hops that we were limited to worked together—at least in the combination that I used for the IPL. This time, I wanted to get a better idea of how the yeast worked with these ingredients, and since that was the one place where we had some choice (lager or ale), I decided to try out the ale strain on this recipe.

I like the IPL that I brewed before, so I wanted to make a similar wort to use with the ale strain. For those reasons, I decided to brew up an American Pale Ale for this round. I wanted to keep some of the flavors and aromas I got from the IPL: fresh-baked bread, orange zest, herbal, and spicy notes all worked pleasantly together. Using WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast in the IPL resulted in a very clean beer with no detectable esters, and that was something I wanted and expected to change with using WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast.

Another change I wanted to make from the IPL was the hop choices in the late kettle additions and dry hops. In the IPL, I only used Amarillo as late and cold-side additions, and I wanted to see how Nugget worked in at least one of those roles. I was hoping by adding Nugget later in the process, the result would be a woody/piney character that would be a nice addition to the floral/tropical notes from the Amarillo. These choices ended up as the following recipe:

• Mashed at 152°F
  • 50% Maris Otter
  • 41% Light Munich
  • 9% Wheat
• Boiled 60min.
  • 0.5 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 14% (21 IBUs)
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (0 min.) at 8.6% AA (23 IBUs)—whirlpool at 212°F for 30 min.
  • 1 oz. Nugget & 1 oz. Amarillo (dry hop) at 1 day after start of fermentation
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (dry hop) at 4 days after start of fermentation
• Pitched WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast
  • Fermented at 63°F for 3 days
  • Raised temperature to 65°F for 1 day
  • Raised to 68°F until fermentation was complete
• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.010
• ABV: 5.9%
• Kegged and burst carbonated

Brew Day

As I decided to make basically the same recipe as before and only change the yeast, this was a simple brew day since I had everything planned out from before. I gathered 8 gallons of water and added 6 grams each of gypsum and Calcium Chloride. 

I measured out my grains and milled them.

I then mashed in using my BIAB setup.

The mash temperature came in as expected at 152.4°F. 

I boiled for 30 minutes before adding the first hop addition (Nugget), then boiled half an hour more. Right after the end of boil, I added the Amarillo hops and waited for 30 minutes. Since I brew outside, the temperature drops during my whirlpool/hopstands. It’s not really a whirlpool, as I just add the hops to the kettle and cover it, but I do stir the wort two or three times throughout the process.

I chilled the wort, transferred it to the fermenter, and added the yeast, direct pitching one pacakge. Fermentation went well with no surprises, and I transferred to the keg after fermentation was complete and burst carbonated.

Tasting

Appearance: Gold to copper color, tall white head that dissipated slowly to a thin film that stays.

Aroma: Citrus (mandarin), pine, light alcohol on the nose, floral. Bready/doughy malt. It was pretty clean, but the esters from the ale yeast was more prominent than in lager version.

Flavor: Big malt flavor—bready, toasty grain. There was a touch of huskiness from the malt when it was young, but that dissipated with conditioning. The ale version was definitely fruitier from esters that the yeast imparted and felt rounder/not as crisp as the lager version. I added Nugget to this beer dry hop and I don’t quite like the results. The Nugget seemed to impart a flavor that I can describe only as wet kitchen rug. It was not pleasant, rough/earthy, grassy, and distracting from the nice Amarillo hops. I don’t think it works well with this malt bill and would probably work better in something more robust like a stout. I would also not dry hop with it and boil for at least 5 minutes. The Nugget did add a woody/piny character, but I think if I was going for that in dry hop I could have used some other hops that impart it without unpleasant part.

Comparing this beer to the IPL I brewed before, I think IPL was better. I believe that both the yeast and hops contributed to that. I liked the crispness and dryness that San Francisco Lager yeast provided; the taste was also quite unique and not a typical, over the top hoppy IPA.

If I were to brew this beer again using the same ingredients, as you probably could guess, I would not use Nugget in the dry hop as I did not like the character it contributed to the beer.

If I were to brew this beer again without the limitations on the set of ingredients, one item I would change would be the malt bill. I like using flaked grain in my hoppy beers; oats add mouthfeel, and flaked wheat and barley make it feel fresher to me. Another thing I would do is to add another type of hops—and actually, that’s what I did. I had brewed a SMaSH beer with 2-row and Mosaic that had a wonderful hop character, but the malt wasn’t coming through as much. I blended 60% of the SMaSH beer with 40% of this pale ale. I actually submitted this blend to the National Homebrew Competition, and the beer actually took first place in its category. Now I only need to figure out how to rebrew it.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6	Limitations: Beer 7 (Hoppy Wheat)	Beer 8
Style	California Common	Hoppy Wheat	American Pale Ale
Maris Otter	30%	21%	50%
Light Munich	60%	12%	41%
Wheat	10%	67%	9%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo (0 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 4	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo	1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days	1 oz. Amarillo & 1 oz. Nugget day 1 of fermentation; 2 oz. Amarillo day 4 of fermentation
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F	WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days	WLP090
OG	1.050	1.059	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009	1.010
ABV	5%	6.6%	5.9%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: M. Rasmussen

I was quite pleased with my first beer in this Limitations Series. I felt like I gained a greater understanding and familiarity with the ingredients we’d chosen even after only one brew. I knew going into this second round that I wanted to try to branch out of my comfort zone when it came to style; I also wanted to avoid duplicating any of the styles/beers that were being brewed by the other contributors to the project. That being said, the ultimate goal here was to brew a beer that I would be satisfied with and that helped me become a better brewer.

Recipe

With the warmer weather rapidly approaching, I figured I would want something on the lighter end of the scale on tap. With that in mind, I knew right away that I wanted to brew a wheat-based beer. I’ve never brewed a wheat beer before, so I welcomed the challenge of drawing up a recipe for a new style, even though I didn’t have full reign of the ingredients in play. After playing around in BeerSmith and conceptualizing the flavors at hand, I decided to take this beer one step further: a heavy-handed dry hop.

The reason for adding the dry hop was two-fold; I wanted to push the limits of my brewing comfort even further, since I normally don’t dry hop my beers. The other reason was that since I couldn’t choose a less flocculent yeast strain based on the limited ingredient choices, I decided to approach the cloudiness from a different angle, and I figured I could try to use the fabled biotransformation reaction with some early dry hopping to add some cloudiness to the beer that I prefer in wheat beers. With those goals in mind, I sat down and hashed out the final recipe.

• Mash at 152 for 60 minutes
  • 67% White Wheat Malt
  • 21% Maris Otter
  • 12% Light Munich
• Boiled for 45 minutes
  • 0.5 oz. of Nugget (45 minutes) at 14.2% AA (23.0 IBUs)
  • 0.5 oz. of Nugget (15 minutes) at 14.0% AA (8.2 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. of Amarillo (Dry hop for 9 days)
  • 1 oz. of Amarillo (Dry hop for 4 days)
• Pitched WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast
  • Fermented at 65°F for 5 days
  • Slowly raised to 72°F over 5 days
  • Cold crashed at 38°F for 1 day
• OG: 1.059
• FG: 1.009
• ABV: 6.6%
• Closed transferred, kegged, and quick-carbed overnight

Brew Day

This brew started out like most of my brews lately—with a trip to the local homebrew store the day before. The guy that was helping me get the grains together was quite concerned that I didn’t want any rice hulls to accompany the heavy amount of wheat in the grist. He asked me at least three times about the rice hulls, and he finally seemed to be settled when I informed him that I use the brew in a bag method. When I got home with all of my ingredients I immediately got a quick vitality starter of the San Diego Super Yeast going to ensure a quick and healthy fermentation.

I’d never brewed a wheat beer before, so I was very enamored by the look and smell of the grain bag. Once I got the mash going, the heavy aroma of the white wheat malt filled my garage with a sweet, malty magnificence. This was the first brew in a while where I hit all of my estimated gravity numbers throughout the process right on the dot, which is such a rejuvenating feeling for any brewer that’s struggled with that aspect.

The 45 minute boil went off without a hitch, with the two hop charges adding to the incredible smell filling my brew station. After a few glasses of beer and then 20 minutes of chilling, I got the wort transferred into the fermentation chamber to get it cooled down to pitching temperature. After I got all of my equipment cleaned and stored, I pitched the yeast from the vitality starter and let it go to work.

I woke up the next morning to some early signs of fermentation activity, which was no surprise given this yeast strain’s propensity for fast and furious fermentations. When I got home from work there was serious activity in the airlock and a thick layer of foam on top of the beer. The next morning I pulled out the first ounce of Amarillo and tossed it directly on top of the krausen that was bubbling like crazy. The height from which I tossed the hop pellets allowed for the hops to get past the foam and into the stirring beer.

Once the krausen had subsided and airlock activity slowed down, I gradually raised the temperature in the fermentation chamber to encourage complete attenuation of the yeast. With only a few days before I was set to transfer the beer, I tossed in the second ounce of dry hops. At that point I’ll usually add gelatin to the beer instead of hops, but I decided to forego my normal fining method on this beer since I was actively aiming for a cloudy wheat beer.

After a few more days, I gave the beer a quick cold crash and transferred to the serving keg using my gravity-fed closed transfer method. I cranked my CO2 regulator up to 50 PSI for an overnight quick-carb, and in the morning the beer was carbonated and ready to serve.

Tasting

Appearance: Cloudy and golden. Medium carbonation. Thick, white head that persists quite nicely. Good lacing down the glass. Thick, pillowy head that slowly dissipates into a thin blanket of foam on top.

Aroma: Grapefruit, stone fruit, slight pear. All coming from the Amarillo dry-hop. Slight maltiness takes a back seat to the fruity hop aroma. Slight bit of alcohol.

Flavor: All of the fruity notes from the aroma combine with a moderate hoppy bitterness that hits your up front and gives a slight pucker to the initial flavor. The hoppiness fades throughout the sip into muted, light malt flavor. Hops are the main and supporting actors here, with a strong character role played by the wheat malt. Citrus notes come through at the end of the sip as the bitterness gives way to the wheat.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation. Medium body. Smooth finish.

Aftertaste: Fruity bitterness. Reminiscent of grapefruit/orange pith.

Overall: Very hop-forward wheat ale. Fruity, bitter, and a slight wheat flavor round out this cloudy concoction.

If I were to brew this beer again with the same limitations, I’d probably forego the second dry hop charge. I wasn’t trying to make quite as hoppy of a beer as the one I ended up with. I think the second ounce of dry hops gave this beer a more aggressive bitterness than what I was aiming for.

If I were to brew this beer again without limitations, which I definitely will, I’d switch the Maris Otter out for American 2-Row and reduce the Munich by at least 30%. I was expecting a lackluster malty character in this beer because of the yeast strain I chose, but I think the yeast did a fantastic job with what it was given. I was quite surprised with how cloudy this beer has remained, given WLP090’s reputation as a highly flocculent, quickly clearing strain.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6	Beer 7
Style	California Common	Hoppy Wheat
Maris Otter	30%	21%
Light Munich	60%	12%
Wheat	10%	67%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)	N/A
Hop Addition 4	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo	1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F	WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days
OG	1.050	1.059
FG	1.012	1.009
ABV	5%	6.6%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: T. Bowen

For my second beer in the Limitations Series, I decided to do something a little different—at least, different for me. I’ve never brewed a lager because they don’t really appeal to me. But, since one of our available yeast strains was a lager strain, I figured now was as good a time as ever.

Looking at the BJCP style guidelines, California Common (19B) was going to be my best option. I knew it certainly wouldn’t be “to style,” but I’ve never cared much about stylistic parameters anyway. For starters, I wouldn’t be able to get the color that Cali Commons exhibit. I briefly considered toasting some of my malt to get some darker colors, but that wouldn’t work because I didn’t have time to let the grains rest in a bag post-roast (required to let the harsh and bitter characteristics of the roasted grain volatilize). Moreover, the guidelines call for “…traditional American hops (often with woody, rustic or minty qualities)…” Maybe Nugget could fall under these parameters, but I certainly would not put Amarillo in that camp.

 

Recipe

First, I decided to only do a 2-gallon batch, primarily because I just was not sure how this beer would turn out. That, coupled with the fact that I don’t really like lagers anyway, made me concerned that I wouldn’t want n full 5-gallon batch of this in the keezer.

Even though I needed as much color as I could get from the available malts for this style, I didn’t want this to turn into a malt bomb, so I tried to strike the balance with getting my color but still keeping the Munich in check (the darkest available malt). Finally, you’ll notice that I’m doing a 30-minute mash and 30-minute boil here. I’ve started doing 30-minute boils because I rarely use any hops as boil additions, and it’s another way of shortening the brew day. And with no crazy amount of oats or other adjuncts, I felt comfortable shortening the day even more with a 30-minute mash. Here’s what I landed on:

• Mashed at 152ºF for 30 minutes
  • 60% Light Munich
  • 30% Maris Otter
  • 10% White Wheat
• Boiled for 30 minutes
  • 0.25 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 13.3% AA (28.2 IBUs)
  • 0.25 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 7.9% AA (4.35 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)
• Dry hop: 2 oz. Amarillo
• Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast
  • Fermented at 65ºF
• Water: Amber Balanced (Bru’n Water)
• OG: 1.050
• FG: 1.012
• ABV: 5%

 

Brew Day

In another effort to shorten my brew day, I did a full volume, no sparge mash. Although I planned to mash at 152ºF, I came in a little high at 155ºF and rolled with it instead of attempting to correct it.

The boil was rather uneventful save for some crazy foaming during the boil that would not seem to calm down. I think this was due to some extra grain/husks in the boil kettle as I must have done a crappy job lautering.

One thing I did not consider was temperature drop during my whirlpool. I typically lose no more than a few degrees during my whirlpool. However, I did not consider the fact that this was a much smaller volume of wort, and I would therefore lose a lot of heat quickly. If my notes are correct, I lost almost 40ºF during the whirlpool. The bonus here was the final chilling didn’t take long at all.

I racked to the fermenter and pitched WLP810 at 65ºF. Fermentation kicked off relatively quickly and I slowly ramped temps up the last week or so. On Day 15, I racked the beer to the dry hop keg for a few days before putting it in the keezer and force carbing.

 

Tasting

Appearance: Pours a light copper golden/straw color, with a thick fluffy head. It has some substantial haze to it, but that could be because this was one of the first pours off the keg, and it definitely had some crashed out dry hop debris.

Aroma: My first thought was, “I can’t smell a thing!” And I felt it was severely lacking in aroma, despite the ~1oz./gal. dry hop. I let my better half try to see if she could pick up anything. She picked up a very faint, almost leathery note in the aroma. But, as another participant in this series told me, lagers don’t usually have much in the way of aroma. Thankfully, I picked up no sulfur or any other off-aromas.

Flavor: The beer is full bodied, which I like. One of my main issues with lagers is a lot of them seem thin to me. There’s a nice, subtle orangey bitterness that I’m picking up from the Amarillo. The residual sweetness is very well-balanced with the light, but substantial enough malt backbone.

Overall, this beer turned out a little better than I was expecting. Not so good that I regret only brewing a 2-gallon batch, but I’m also not dumping it immediately. If I were to brew this beer again, I would like to try toasting some of the malt to try and tease out a little roast and toast that could really round things out. Overall, it’s solid as is, but I’ll have to see what some more knowledgeable lager drinkers have to say about it.

 

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

	Beer 6
Style	California Common
Maris Otter	30%
Light Munich	60%
Wheat	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)
Hop Addition 2	4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 3	1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)
Hop Addition 4	N/A
Hop Addition 5	N/A
Dry Hop	2 oz. Amarillo
Yeast	WLP810 at 65°F
OG	1.050
FG	1.012
ABV	5%

 

 

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: C. McKenzie

I have a confession: I’ve never brewed with wheat before, and I don’t really care for most beers that have wheat in them. There are some exceptions to that rule, but in general, wheat just doesn’t do it for me. Because of this, wheat was never an ingredient I expected to brew with, and it certainly wasn’t something I was excited to see make the list of required ingredients for this Limitations series. But that’s part of the spirit of this project; not only did I have the challenge of only using the ingredients on the list to make a beer, but I also had the added challenge of brewing a beer that I would like with wheat.

Recipe

Wheat, light Munich, and Maris Otter are all base malts, so two ways to approach this beer came to mind immediately: a light malt beer with a heavy focus on hops, or a light beer with a characterful malt profile as its focus. Since several of the other contributors were planning on going hop-heavy in this first round of beers, I decided to go for something that highlighted the malt. I also wanted highlight the malt with the boldest character, so I decided upfront that I would go heavy on the Munich. It’s been my experience that WLP810 San Francisco Lager yeast really emphasizes the malt character in a beer, so I decided to use that yeast over WLP090 San Diego Super yeast (the other option for yeast in the list of limited ingredients). I began to consider styles that would work with the two parameters I’d set in place: large portion of Munich malt and lager(ish) yeast. Reading through style descriptions, none of them really captured what I wanted this beer to be—though perhaps my desired characteristics fit soundly in a category and I just didn’t realize it. Because of that, I’m just going to refer to this beer as a Munich-heavy lager.

I’ve not used light Munich before, though I have used a dark Munich malt in previous beers. My impression of that malt was that it was intensely bready. I wasn’t sure how a light Munich would compare, but I assumed it would have a similar character. This, coupled with the malt-accenting yeast, meant that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the hops at first. Initially, I wanted to just let the earthiness of Nugget do all the heavy lifting in the hops department and downplay the peach flavor I tend to get from Amarillo (the two hops on the ingredient list). However, I also tend to get some level of fruitiness from Nugget, though I know that’s not a common descriptor for that hop. So instead of downplaying the Amarillo by only using it early in the boil, I decided to let it shine and shoot for a bread and jam type of character. Toast with peach jelly sounded quite nice, so I took that idea and ran with it.

Once I had this mental flavor and aroma profile, I had to get it out of my head and onto paper before I could get it into the kettle and carboy and, subsequently, into my glass. As mentioned above, the light Munich would be my main malt focus, so I decided I’d use it for at least half of the grain bill. I didn’t want to use a ton of wheat, but I also didn’t want to just hide it in the beer by using a super small percentage. I did want to see what it would bring to the party (and hope I cared for it), so I figured around 10% of the grain bill would be about right for that purpose. I filled in the rest with Maris Otter to help lighten the intense breadiness of the Munich and add a different kind of toast/bread character to the mix.

I didn’t want the malt character of this beer to be unbalanced and therefore seem too heavy or give the perception of being overly sweet, so I decided I’d give this beer a hefty dose of bitterness. Not wanting to leave Nugget as a bittering addition only, I chose to add both hops as late additions to see how those earthy and peach characters would play together.

Since WLP810 isn’t super attenuative, I opted to mash at a fairly low temperature. These choices resulted in the following recipe:

• Mashed at 152°F for 1.25 hours
  • 60% Light Munich (6 lbs.)
  • 30% Maris Otter (3 lbs.)
  • 10% Wheat (1 lb.)
• Boiled for 60 min.
  • 0.5 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13.3% AA (24.4 IBUs)
  • 0.5 oz. Nugget (10 min.) at 13.3% AA (8.9 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 9.3% AA (6.8 IBUs)
• Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager
  • Fermented at 60°F
  • Raised temperature to 63°F on day 5
  • Raised temperature to 65°F on day 6
• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.013
• ABV: 5.5%
• Kegged and burst carbonated

Brew Day

After getting home from work on a Friday, I gathered my volume of strike water and lit the flame beneath it. While the water was heating, I quickly calculated what temperature the strike water would need to be in order to hit my desired mash temperature of 150°F. I then preheated my mash tun by adding hot water and letting it sit while the strike water rose to temperature.

Once the water had reached the temperature calculated for my target mash temperature, I mixed the water and malt in my mash tun and stirred until I was satisfied no dough balls were present. Taking a temperature reading, I realized I’d overshot my target mash temperature by 2 degrees. 152°F was still on the low end of mash temperature, so I didn’t make any adjustments.

While the mash did its thing, I ate dinner and attended to some parental duties. Once my kids were in bed, I drained the wort from my mash tun and batch sparged twice to get my desired volume of preboil wort (7 gallons).

While the wort was heating and (thankfully) before it had reached the boiling point, I ran out of propane, so I put the lid on my kettle and made a quick trip to the store. Once I returned and got the propane tank hooked back up, the rest of the evening went smoothly. I added hops at the times noted in the recipe.

Once the boil was complete, I chilled my wort down using my immersion chiller, stirring the kettle to speed up the process. Then I put the lid on the kettle and let it sit for 15-20 minutes to let everything settle out before transferring to my carboy. Once I’d cleaned everything else, I moved the wort to my carboy and stole roughly half a gallon of wort to use as a vitality starter. I added that wort to the yeast that had previously been in an appropriately sized starter earlier in the week.

Then I placed my carboy in my fermentation chamber to cool down a few more degrees to the desired temperature and returned to pitch the yeast an hour or so later.

Tasting

This beer poured golden orange with a fluffy and persistent white head. It still had some haze to it after several days of cold crashing and a few weeks in the keg. It’s been my experience that WLP-810 drops crystal clear and easily achieves a commercial beer level of clarity without finings when given enough time, but the slight haze persisted beyond the normal amount of time I was used to seeing with this strain. It’s possible that this was due to using a slurry that was several generations in, but that’s simply a guess; it might not even be a very good guess since, using the yeast harvesting method that I do, I should theoretically be gathering the most flocculent yeast in that population. Whatever the reason, the haze was there, and with a lack of variety in my keezer, I unfortunately wasn’t patient enough with this beer to wait on it to drop as clear as I wanted.

The aroma of this beer had notes of peaches, orange zest, whole wheat bread, and fresh dough. To clarify, the aspect of the aroma that reminded me of fresh dough wasn’t yeastiness—rather the scent reminded me of being in the kitchen while my mom made biscuits.

The flavor was very prominently one of peaches and bread. It was richly malty and full on the palate. It reminded me of peach cobbler, but without the caramelized sugar/dark crust component.

If I were to brew this beer again using only these same ingredients, I would likely add a little more bitterness into the mix. The way WLP-810 emphasizes the malt makes for a delicious beer, but this particular beer was a little “full” for what I wanted. I might also lower the amount of Munich in exchange for a little more Maris Otter or wheat to help reduce the richness of the bready character to make this beer a little more drinkable.

If I had no limitations on ingredients and brewed this beer again, I’d add some Crystal 80 or 120 to add some of that burnt sugar character that would really push this beer over the edge into the peach cobbler arena. The other change I’d consider is using an English ale yeast strain to add a little more fruitiness into the final product and still balance the rich maltiness, though the likeness to peach cobbler might be removed with this change.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4	Beer 5
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA	Munich Lager
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%	30%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%	60%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%	10%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)	8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)	6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8	N/A
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090	WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063	1.055
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012	1.013
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%	5.5%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: T. Bowen

After deciding on ingredients for the Limitations Series, the first thing that jumped out to me was IPA or APA. However, I didn’t want to brew a “Standardtown” IPA/APA, but rather I wanted to use this opportunity to do some independent testing on biotransformation. Coincidentally, I brew a lot of NEIPAs, with just about every other batch I brew being an NEIPA. Although biotransformation is a big part of NEIPAs, I had yet to do any sort of testing on it in my homebrewery.

What is biotransformation (“biotrans”)? We homebrewers that like to get down in the weeds and nerd out on this stuff are very fortunate to have Scott Janish around, as he has done piles and piles of research into this topic (and I am very excited for his upcoming new book). At its most basic level, biotrans is the transformation of hop oils in the presence of yeast. More specifically, biotrans comes down to polyphenols and proteins. Proteins may seem familiar, yet it’s easy to not be as intimately familiar with polyphenols. I know I was not until I jumped on the haze train and floored the throttle.

In brewing, about 80% of polyphenols come from malt, and about 20% come from hops. Polyphenols have no aroma, and their primary impact is the perception of astringency. Typically, proteins in your mouth act as lubrication on oral surfaces. Yet, when polyphenols combine with proteins in saliva forming insoluble complexes, it robs the palate of lubrication and gives the puckering sensation of astringency. Anecdotally, I believe this is a key reason why many heavily hopped and dry hopped beers can seem a little astringent, at least to my palate.

What does this have to do with NEIPAs? As we know, most well-made NEIPAs are hazy, some to their detriment. When oxidized polyphenols react with proteins, they bind together permanently resulting in hazy beer, i.e., more proteins and more polyphenols lead to more permanent haze. Additionally, one key similarity in most (though certainly not all) NEIPAs is that they are dry hopped early, during active fermentation, e.g., at “high krausen.” And since we know that protein content in beer decreases during fermentation, it makes sense that dry hopping early would lead to more permanent haze in beer. In this way, high krausen dry hopping for the purposes of biotransformation and the haze commonly associated with fermentation dry hopping could potentially be related.

Recipe

With all of this information at my fingertips, I set out to test some of this research in my homebrewery. Another reason I wanted to test biotrans with these ingredients was that flaked oats was not available as an ingredient for this Limitations series. I always put a healthy portion of flaked oats in my NEIPAs, which boosts the content of protein in the grist significantly. So I wanted to see if I could have successful haze relying on the boost in protein from the wheat (and whatever I got from the Maris Otter and Light Munich). Additionally, I opted to use my standard NEIPA whirlpooling technique, which is a double whirlpool at high(er) temps and then low temps. I’ve been doing these low temp whirlpools for a while now and I absolutely love them for hoppy beers. I’ve found, anecdotally, that I get more flavor from the 170ºF WP, whereas I get much more saturated aroma from the 120ºF WP. Finally, for dry hopping, to test biotrans, I decided to split the batch evenly, with one half getting a double dry hop and the other getting the standard single, late dry hop. Here’s where I landed:

• Mashed at 153ºF for 60 minutes
  • 82% Maris Otter (11 lbs.)
  • 11% White Wheat (1.5 lbs.)
  • 7% Light Munich (1 lb.)
• Boiled for 60 minutes
  • 1 oz. Nugget (13% AA) @ FWH [41.8 IBUs]
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (7.9% AA) @ 170º WP, 20 minutes [4.8 IBUs]
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (7.9% AA) + 1 oz. Nugget (13% AA) @ 120º WP, 20 minutes [0.8 IBUs]
• Dry Hop – Batch A [Biotrans Batch]
  • 1 oz. Amarillo + 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2
  • 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8
• Dry Hop – Batch B [Late DH Batch]
  • 2 oz. Amarillo + 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 8
• Yeast: WLP090 (1.8 L starter)
• Water: 3:1 chloride:sulfate
• OG: 1.063
• FG: 1.012
• IBU: 48.9
• ABV: 6.7%

Brew Day

My brew day was fairly uneventful as far as brew days go. After mashing in, I checked temp and was perfectly satisfied even though I came in one degree shy of my target mash temp of 154ºF. I attribute this to the fact that this was only my second brew day with my new pump and I’m still on the learning curve figuring out temp losses and such pumping from my HLT to my MT.

The boil proceeded as usual and as soon as I cut the flame, I briefly ran water through my immersion chiller to drop the temps to 170ºF, tossed in the first WP hops and let the pump recirculate for 20 minutes. I don’t typically lose a ton of heat during my WPs, so after the first, I briefly ran the chiller again to get me down to 120ºF for my second and final WP.

Following the second WP, I finished chilling and racked 2.5 gallons of wort into each fermenter.

Both fermenters went into the ferm chamber where I split the starter evenly between the two and let them ferment out at 68ºF.

Fermentation kicked off relatively quickly and aggressively, as San Diego Super usually does. I added DH1 to Batch A on Day 2 of fermentation, at “high krausen.” Both beers were showing signs of being done, so I added DH2 to Batch A and the lone DH to Batch B on Day 8. I let them sit on the dry hops for 3 days, and racked roughly 2 gallons of each to serving kegs.

Tasting

Appearance – Of note: I was having some trouble with a leaky poppet on the keg for Batch A, which is absolutely the reason for the significantly less foam. Both beers poured almost identically. If anything, Batch B (late DH) was ever so slightly hazier than Batch A. But this is so slight I attribute it to chill haze, nothing more. Both are golden amber, dark straw colored, like a west coast IPA.

Aroma – Batch A has an almost Cheerios-like nose to it, slightly bready, almost sourdough note to it. There’s a slight stone fruit, possibly peach note, but overall the aroma is fairly subdued on Batch A (biotrans batch). Batch B has a more citrus-y nose, with some stone fruit in the background, and has significantly more aroma than Batch A.

Flavor – Batch A has a slightly sweet, sourdough flavor. On the back end of Batch A, I pick up something reminiscent of licorice. Batch B is brighter, rounder, fuller flavor, and not as sweet as the biotrans batch. I can pick up much more of the Amarillo-like citrus in Batch B. Overall, the standard, late dry hop batch far exceeds the batch hopped during active fermentation.

Discussion

I know that this split batch experiment was far from scientifically sound. Yet I am still shocked at the appearance of the biotrans batch compared to the late DH batch.

You could read a newspaper through that glass. How did I not get any of my beloved NEIPA-like haze when I treated it and brewed it almost exactly like I do NEIPAs? I think this came down to yeast strain and grist composition.

There’s evidence that shows certain yeast strains are capable of biotrans and others are not; however, I was unable to locate a list of those known strains at the time of writing. Perhaps San Diego Super is not (or is less) capable of biotrans. The similarity in hop flavor would also indicate that not much (if any) true biotransformation occurred (at least relying on sensory alone, without any lab tests). I do know, in my homebrewery, I’ve used at least 8 different yeast strains in hazy beers. I’ve used standard commercial strains like WLP008 and WY1318. I’ve used strains I’ve propped up from commercial cans I’ve enjoyed. I’ve tried the dry yeast blend that Treehouse allegedly uses (S04/T58/WB06). I’ve used a Conan x 644 hybrid I got from a homebrewer in Finland. And lately my current favorite is the NEEPAH blend from Bootleg Biology. My point is, all of those yeasts made hazy beers when I wanted them to. This is the first time I’ve attempted (for the most part, sans grist) to make a hazy beer and failed. Although, to fully test WLP090’s ability to create a hazy beer, I would like to try it again in my standard house NEIPA recipe.

Another culprit, I believe, is the protein, or lack thereof, in the grist. I always use a healthy portion of flaked oats (~20%) in my NEIPA grists which boosts the protein content significantly. With these beers, the majority of malt proteins came from the wheat malt. I know what you’re thinking: plenty of people make hazy beers without any flaked adjuncts, and you’re absolutely right. Treehouse supposedly does not put any flaked anything in their hazies. Whether or not the lack of protein contributed to my lack of haze is undetermined. But I do think more protein would have helped haze formation.

Although this experiment did not yield much fruitfulness, it was interesting and has motivated me to do more trials in this area and I plan to split more batches in the future when I brew my standard NEIPAs.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3	Beer 4
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL	NEIPA/IPA
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%	82%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%	7%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%	11%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)	41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F)
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A	0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F)
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4	1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F	WLP090
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050	1.063
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010	1.012
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%	6.7%

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

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Author: R. Goyenko

I had so much fun with the Stout project that when this project was presented to me, I subscribed pretty much immediately. I liked the idea of limited ingredients, but it took us a while to decide what limitations we would have and what ingredients we would use. While the ingredients I voted for mostly didn’t get selected, I didn’t mind since the exercise is to try to work within those limitations.

Once we had decided on the ingredients and I started considering my first recipe, I started my thinking with the yeast—yeast choice makes a big impact on the resulting beer. We had WLP090 San Diegog Super Yeast and WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast to choose from. I wanted to try making a Pale Ale type beer or an IPL with the San Francisco Lager Yeast, so that’s where I started from.

The malt choices also played into the consideration of what I could make. We chose Maris Otter, Light Munich, and Wheat Malt, and all three malts had to be used. I thought a pale ale or NEIPA-type malt bill would work well with these three malts.

I wanted to achieve a clean, malty, and hoppy beer with Maris Otter and Munich providing the backbone of the malt and the wheat malt providing some body and nice foam. I have been brewing some pale ales recently and have been experimenting with malt bills. For reference, some of the recent malt bills for my (5 gallon) recipes have looked like this:

1	2	3
8 lbs. Pale Malt	4 lbs. Maris Otter	8 lbs. Pale Malt
2 lbs. Vienna	4 lbs. Pale Ale	2 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
0.5 lbs. Honey Malt	2 lbs. Vienna	0.75 lbs. CaraPils/Dextrin
0.5 lbs. Golden Naked Oats	1 lb. Munich

I wanted to make this beer a bit maltier than my recent brews since I was planning for more hops and I know that lager yeast produces a cleaner fermentation profile; I wanted the malt to support the hops since the yeast wouldn’t provide the typical fruitier ale flavor to support the hops.

The hops we chose to use were Nugget and Amarillo. I decided to bitter with Nugget and use Amarillo in the whirlpool and dry hop. Since Amarillo is a nice hop that can provide floral, citrus, and tropical fruit aromas/flavors, I decided to use it in the whirlpool and as a dry hop.

The recipe I ended up with looked like this:

• Mashed at 152°F for 60 minutes
  • 50% Maris Otter (6 lbs.)
  • 41% Light Munich (5 lbs.)
  • 9% White wheat malt (1.1lbs.)
• Boiled for 60 minutes
  • 0.5 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 14% AA (21 IBUs)
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (0 min.) at 8.6% AA (23 IBUs)—whirlpool at 212°F for 30 min.
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (dry hop) at 1 day after start of fermentation
  • 2 oz. Amarillo (dry hop) at 4 days after start of fermentation
• Pitched WLP810
  • Fermented at 63°F for 3 days
  • Raised temperature to 65°F for 1 day
  • Raised to 68°F until fermentation was complete
• OG: 1.050
• FG: 1.010
• ABV: 5.3%

Brew Day

I brew using the brew in a bag method, and for this brew day I decided to try low oxygen method, so there was a bit of alteration to my normal process. As a first step, I wet the grains before milling to condition them, using 1-2% of the weight of the grain, and mixed the grains up until it was spread out. I let the malt condition for about 20 minutes to absorb the water. After that, I milled the malt; I noticed that wetting the grains indeed affected the crush—the hulls were almost intact but the cores were crushed. I then prepared the water for the mash by pre-boiling it and treating with potassium metabisulfite (which was part of low oxygen process, though I also add potassium metabisulfite to remove chlorine from my water). After chilling the pre-boiled water, I lowered the bag of grains into the water (trying not to disturb it too much), mixed the grains, and covered it with foil to prevent oxygen ingress.

After mashing for an hour, I removed the bag and brought the wort to a boil, adding the hops as specified in the recipe. I didn’t boil too vigorously to prevent oxygen mixing with the wort. The wort did look different—there were clumps formed that I hadn’t seen before, but I am not sure if it’s a function of it not being mixed a lot by the calm boil or the low oxygen things I tried. One thing that happened as the result of not mixing my grains much, trying to avoid squeezing the grain bag too much, plus not boiling the wort very vigorously, I undershot my OG. Instead of 1.056 like I expected, I ended up with a wort of 1.050. I thought about it a bit, and it was still within the range for pale ale/IPL, so I decided not to modify anything about it.

During fermentation, the beer produced a lot of sulfur starting around day 4-5. I was worried a bit, but was told that’s expected from this yeast and that it would clear up (it did). When fermentation was almost, done I tasted several samples and it was overwhelmingly malty and grainy. I was worried that the hops didn’t come through as much as I wanted, even though I added a decent amount (4 oz. total at whirlpool and dry hop), so I decided I would add another 2 oz. into the keg.

Tasting

• Aroma: Malt and hop combination – bready like a fresh baked bread, passion fruit from hops, orange, herbs, and spice.
• Appearance: Deep gold, very clear (it was hazy at first, but cleared by itself over two weeks in kegerator), head is frothy, about 2 inches, and lasts for a while.

• Flavor: Hops are dominating – citrus (orange) skins with its bitterness; herbal, fresh, and spicy, but malt comes though too – bready with a hint of biscuit. Finish is dry and bitter with bitterness lingering for some time. The flavor is pretty clean—there are no detectable esters; it’s all malt and hops.

If I were to brew this again still using only these same ingredients, there are a few things I’d consider changing. When I was testing the beer in the fermentor, it was very malty—overwhelmingly so. I think bottom of the fermenter had somehow accumulated the malty part of the beer, and usually I would get hops there, which is why I decided to add a dose of dry hops to the keg. I think I could have omitted that dry hop charge—the beer ended up a bit too bitter, and I think it would have been better with less hops.

I actually was aiming for a higher gravity beer at first, so I might try brewing this at the original expected gravity as well—I think it would have been more balanced with the bitterness. Another thing I might try is to change the ratio of Maris Otter to Munich malt to see how the malt profile changes. I’d like to try it both ways, where the ratio favors the Maris Otter and then where the ratio favors the Munich to see which I like better. It is a pretty malty beer, and it cuts through the big hop charge, but I would like to see how it changes with a different ratio. Also, I didn’t use any Nugget in the dry hop, and I think it could be interesting to see how it works for this beer.

The beer actually kept changing as I tasted it—at first there was a big malty/grainy taste that I assume came from the MO/Munich malt, but it rounded out as time passed, and the hops and malts melded and rounded out more. It also had a much more bitter finish that was a bit unpleasant at first, but after some time that went away and actually ended up being really nice. I like this beer a lot.

If I were to brew this beer again with no limitations, there’s honestly not much I’d change. I actually like this beer, and I like the cleanness of the yeast and how it brings the malty and hoppy flavors out. It makes the bitterness come out more, but I like bitter beers so there is a challenge there to make it balanced. I don’t think I would change much—just try to find a golden ration in the malts and exactly how much hops to add. That said, the one thing I might do is to try this recipe with different hops. I think they really come through here, and you don’t need as much as you do in an IPA for them to shine.

 

Recipe Comparison

 Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

	Beer 1	Beer 2	Beer 3
Style	Hoppy Wheat	Pale Ale/Lager	IPL
Maris Otter	34.4%	50%	50%
Light Munich	5.5%	25%	41%
Wheat	60.1%	25%	9%
Hop Addition 1	28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.)	41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort)	21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.)
Hop Addition 2	5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.)	5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.)	23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool
Hop Addition 3	7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.)	N/A
Hop Addition 4	16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool	0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout)	N/A
Hop Addition 5	22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool	N/A	N/A
Dry Hop	2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days)	N/A	2 oz. Amarillo 1 day after start of ferm.; 2 oz. Amarillo 4 days after start of ferm.
Yeast	WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F	WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F	WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F
OG	1.059	1.058	1.050
FG	1.012	1.009/1.014	1.010
ABV	6.2%	6.5%/5.8%	5.3%