Brewed: Hoppy Wheat

By scot in Beer Recipes, Home Brewing on Sunday, April 28th, 2013

A hoppy wheat beer has been a long time coming. With Three Floyds Brewing Company less than an hour away, hopped up brews are part of the local American craft beer scene. Of course this has crept into my home brewing (Alpha Acid Aspirations line of DIPAs I have been working on). To this point I haven’t tried to emulate any of the FFF beers, merely using the hoppiness as inspiration.

Gumball Head is an American wheat beer that is darn tasty. In spite of my proximity to the brewery, I have a hard time picking this beer up locally. It sells that fast. I researched this beer on the internet, finding many different recipes and even more thoughts on the best way to duplicate this beer. I settled on the recipe below (still not 100% sure on the dry hops) but also have a second recipe that I will be brewing sometime this summer (and based on what I think of this one).

This recipe is quite wheat forward. I had some apprehensions with that amount of wheat, thinking that the bread/wheat aroma during the mash might over power the beer in both aroma and flavor. Enjoy!

General Information
Brew Date: Sunday, April 28, 2013
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Safale U-05
Yeast Starter: none
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.50
Original Gravity: 1.040
IBU: 24.9
Color: 4.2 SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Alcohol by Volume: 4.4%
Primary Fermentation: 21 days @68*F
Secondary Fermentation: 7 days @68*F

Grain Bill:
4.00# 2-Row
4.00# Red Wheat
0.50# Crystal 20L
0.50# Flaked Wheat

Mash:
Saccharification Rest @ 150*F for 60 minutes.

Hop Bill:
1.50oz Amarillo (8.5) first wort hop
1.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) @10 minutes
1.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) @1 minute

2.00oz Amarillo (8.5%) dry hop for 7 days
0.50oz Galaxy (14.0%) dry hop for 7 days

Extras
1.0 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min.
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Useless Fact: In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.