Honighopfen

Brew Date: 8/08/10
Bottle Date: 8/27/10

Extracts:
6.6 lb Bavarian Wheat LME

Specialty Grains:
1 lb Gambrinus Honey Malt
1 lb Briess Vienna Malt

Fermentables:
1 lb Clover Honey at 10 minutes

Hops:
2 oz Sterling Pellet Hops AA 6% at 60 minutes
1/2 oz Liberty Pellet Hops AA 4.3% at 20 minutes
1/2 oz Liberty Pellet Hops AA 4.3% at 15 minutes
1/2 oz Liberty Pellet Hops AA 4.3% at 10 minutes
1/2 oz Liberty Pellet Hops AA 4.3% at 5 minutes

Yeast:
Wyeast #3056 Bavarian Wheat Blend
Wyeast #3333 German Wheat

OG: 1.0438
FG: 1.014
ABV: 4.0%

Narrative after the jump...


Well, this one is going to be interesting.  I was taking a stroll through Williamsburg with m'lady and finally went into The Brooklyn Kitchen for the first time. Little did I realize, they sell beer supplies and I was obviously way overdue for a batch.  Unfortunately, they didn't really have any recipes on hand and their selection isn't the best, so I started with a wheat recipe from the back of Palmer but decided to experiment with it and shoot for a strong honey wheat beer that packed a big hoppy punch to balance out all of the sugars.  Note that I started with some base ingredients from Palmer's recipe for a wheat beer, but started to go a little nuts after. 

Palmer also recommended to add half the malt extract at the end of the boil, which helps to keep the ending color lighter.  Of course, you need enough sugars to help isomerize the hops during the boil, but apparently you don't need all of them for the full boil (It would be interesting to see the end result in terms of hoppiness between all of the malt and only half during the boil.  Although with the ridiculous amount of hops I used here, I don't exactly anticipate ending w/ a non-hoppy beer).  Additionally, I added a pound of honey w/ 10 minutes remaining. However, this was also just before I placed the wort chiller in (to sanitize for 10 min), so I don't think my stirring job was the best and my boil at that point wasn't rolling as heavily as I would like.

The point of all this is, well, when I transferred to the fermenter I was left w/ a lot of syrupy goodness on the bottom of my pan...syrupy goodness that should have been dissolved into the wort.  I'm assuming it was pretty much all the honey, but I'm wondering how much of it was the rest of my 3.3 lbs of LME that I added at the end of the boil.  When I plug all the ingredients in to Beer Calculus, it gives me an OG of 1.062, but I measured it out at only 1.0438 (which, interestingly enough, is about what Palmer says the OG should be for his wheat beer which was the base of my recipe).

So that all being said, this one may be a wash, but i'm looking forward to giving it a taste!

[UPDATE] Well this FG and ABV sure suck. Hmmm...

Oh, and P.S., the name "honighopfen" comes from the german "honig" for "honey and "hopfen" for "hops."  I think it's cool that when you search google for "honighopfen," this post is the only thing that comes up. :-)