House Wheat Ale Recipe

There's an entertaining and informative channel on Youtube that for several years has served as a great informal homebrew beginners tutorial. The channel is called CraigTube and the guy who runs it and homebrews lives in Canada. Like the channel, his name is Craig. Watch the homebrew videos (he also does some music recordings and recipes) at any point in his decade plus playlist and you'll discover that his primary motivation for homebrewing is: money. Canada apparently puts a heavy tax on purchasing alcohol, but if you make it yourself it's a hell of a lot cheaper. So Craig makes a lot of prehopped kits from Coopers. Over the past few years, in fact, he's pretty much settled on the Coopers IPA kit, which has become kind of boring to hear about, but his past videos cover a lot of different styles of beer, and you get to watch a basic brewer go from prehopped kits to partial mash and all-grain, and from using the yeast that comes with the kits to reharvesting an expensive liquid yeast over and over again and storing it in a pickle jar. One of my favorite videos is the S.S. Minnow Mild Ale.

Craig also interviewed John Palmer a few years back, the author of one of the most popular homebrewing books, How to Brew. The interview focuses predictably on method, tips and and technique, but the host also asks a lot of questions that appear to aim to invoke a defense of all-extract homebrewing by Mr. Palmer. Not only does he oblige, but Mr. Palmer discusses an all-extract wheat ale recipe that he often makes.

The talk inspired me to try my hand at formulating a simple wheat ale recipe. I did some research on the style, consulted Brew Your Own magazine, which really emphasized sticking to a bitterness-to-starting gravity ratio between 0.3 and 0.7 (my recipe landed on 0.48), kept within the BJCP guidelines and came up with the following:

Wheat Ale - American Wheat or Rye Beer (6D)
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Batch Size  2.75 gal   
Boil Size   2.5 gal         
Boil Time   60 min        
Efficiency  70%                
OG          1.043 sg           
FG          1.011 sg           
ABV         4.3%               
Bitterness  20.8 IBU (Tinseth) 
Color       3.6 srm (Morey)    

Fermentables
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Name                       Type     Amount    Mashed  Late  Yield  Color   
Brewer's Best - Wheat LME  Extract  2.300 lb  No      Yes   78%    3.0 srm 
Brewer's Best - Wheat LME  Extract  1.000 lb  No      No    78%    3.0 srm 
Total grain: 3.300 lb

Hops
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Name                   Alpha  Amount    Use    Time        Form    IBU  
Nugget                 13.4%  0.212 oz  Boil   1.000 hr    Pellet  20.8 
Saaz (Czech Republic)  4.5%   0.500 oz  Aroma  15.000 min  Pellet  0.0  

Yeasts
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Name                     Type  Form  Amount    Stage   
Muntons (prehopped kit)  Ale   Dry   1.42 tsp  Primary 

Notes
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The Centennial hops should be added for a 15 min whirlpool once the wort cools to 170.

Tried on 7/3/20 - very good aroma of wheat, floral hops and yeast. Almost smells like a hefeweizen, but not nearly as strong. The taste is very balanced, medium-bodied and thirst quenching. Very pleased with this brew.

If you like wheat beers, give this one a try. If you've never tried a wheat beer, also, give this one a try. It's a thirst quencher for sure!

 

 Clearly darker than 3 SRM, but when it tastes this good, who gives a damn!