Wheat, standard.

[stz]

Last time I brewed a wheat beer it was 50/50 and I had a horrific sparge. Easy fix, just thin it out again, mix it up and basically batch sparge, but lots of protein comes through the disturbed grain bed into the copper unless you want to vorlauf every time which kind of defeats the point because the vorlauf is basically sticking it again.

This time I went 50/30 and had it relatively easy. Also 0.5% special b for 'interest'.

65C mash. 150ppm chloride, 100ppm sulphate, lactic to bring rA down to 10ppm. Collected 50L at an og of 60. Boiled for 30 minutes. 100g or so of hallertau blanc at flame out. 30 minute whirlpool then split to 2 FV's.

One got mangrove jacks saison yeast. The other a mixture of US05 and CML KristallWeizen. The saison is getting some gin botanicals and the american wheat a citra dry hop and 1.8kg of mango puree. Ferm temperature is 24C, would like higher for the saison, but they share a chamber so .. 24C it is.

Been making some trial infusions of the gin botanicals and learnt quite a lot. At first I felt like you want all sorts of crazy flavours because I've all these things to play with, but after a while I've realised I like my gin quite dry and clean. Settled on ..

20g juniper
4g coriander
3g angelica root
2g orris root
2g grains of paradise
1g black pepper
2g licorice root
10ml bitter orange extract

Previous batches included lemon peel, lime peel, tons of licorice, star anise and some other things I'm likely forgetting. The licorice especially is nice, but really gets quite overpowering and not gin like the more stuff you bomb in. The angelica root could be scaled back by a gram or so as it is very musty, mushroom, earth, sandalwood and bitter and almost like you want to balance it by making it a background note, but I like it, it is really distinctive.

 

[The Baron]

Try using oat husks next time it will not cure the stuck sparge completely but will help a lot so you could up the wheat grain if needed

 

[stz]

Beers are kegged now and left to condition. Sample of the saison was not stupidly spiced which was a pleasant surprise as initially was looking at a 30g total weight of junk. I scaled the botanicals to 50g total which were milled and left in 200ml of vodka for a few days before being added to fermenter on the last day before cold crashing. The wheat was dry hopped at 6g/L and the citra is a little 'zesty', expect this to mellow quite quickly. The real mango flavour is as always in the solid fruit pulp which was left behind at the bottom of the FV, but you get plenty from it regardless. Best way to make something taste like pure mango is to package it with the puree, but then you've got to contend with the secondary fermentation. In the past had good results with adding it directly to cask, setting the cask up with an airlock in the shive and then pegging it once it has calmed down somewhat, that or adding it before sending it out and hoping they have a cool cellar. Ok for a one off here and there.