My Next Batch

Last month, I met my friends Aaron and Mike over at the Green Dragon Pub, and I tried a "Dubble Hefeweizen." I can't remember which brewery it came from (there are like a million of them here in Portland), but I remember it was delicious. Dark, rich, high-gravity...

So I thought, hmm, I should make some of that.

And then the wheels started turning in my head a bit, and I started thinking about wheat beer and all of the things that taste good with it. Honey is one of my favorite flavors in fermented beverages, for example, and it goes great with wheat. So after tweaking things around a bit, I ended up with this.

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Double Honey Wheat
(Double Hefeweizen)

Water:
5 gallons

Malt:
1.50 lbs. Dark Wheat Malt
2.50 lbs. White Wheat Malt
0.25 lbs. Flaked Wheat
5.50 lbs. Pale Malt (Brewer's 2-row)
1.00 lbs. Munich Malt
0.50 lbs. Crystal Malt 40
0.50 lbs. Rice solids

Sugars:
1.50 lbs. Mesquite honey

Hops:
1.00 oz. Hallertauer Gold (@60 min.)
1.00 oz. Tettnanger (@30 min.)

Yeast:
Wyeast American Wheat 1010

Statistics:
OG : 1.064
FG : 1.015
IBU: 36.225
SRM: 13.32
ABV: 6.3%

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The hard part will be finding some mesquite honey; it's out of season right now, and even when it is in season it is rare. If I can't find it, I will just have to go with pure wildflower honey. Which will work, but the beer won't taste as honey-y.

With a little luck, I'll start this batch up this weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out.

EDIT: I had to dial this recipe back quite a bit. The previous version (if you saw it) had a finishing ABV of 9.9%, which I think would be too high to bottle. (If I had a keg and CO₂ system, it would be a different story...but with that much alcohol, I doubt I would have enough healthy yeast to give it adequate carbonation. I'd have to use wine yeast.)

This version is a straight-up "double" brew, which uses twice the ingredients for a single batch of regular hefeweizen. I'm not sure I can call it an "imperial" now.