Saturday I mentioned that I was going to brew Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier Sunday. I didn't lie.
It has been awhile since my wife (aka the SheppyBrew Beer Model) killed the keg of Boo Berry Wheat, and we have not really had anything in the keggerator for her since then. We have bottles of stuff she can enjoy, but she likes being able to pour from a tap.
So, I knew I had to make something for the Beer Model.
In September and October, I had been thinking of brewing a pumpkin beer, but just never got around to it. My wife really targeted pumpkin beers at GABF, so I was pretty sure she would like a pumpkin beer. At one point I had a crazy thought about making Whisky Wife Wit with pumpkin. It was just crazy (whacky) enough to be a good idea.
I had to first convert WWW to all-grain to use as a base beer. Then I just thought I would add pumpkin and appropriate spices to complete this new beer.
Showing posts with label Whisky Wife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whisky Wife. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2012
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Whisky Wife Wit
Recently, I asked my FaceBook friends:
Well, as you may already know, I am married to the Beer Model. You may also know that I'm an extremely whipped husband. She is much hotter than I am, and she has a real easy time influencing me. So, it probably doesn't come as much of a surprise that Whisky Wife Wit won despite the fact that it got the least number of votes. As it turned out, it got the only vote that counted. I suppose next time, I'll just ask her what she wants me to brew. I might have to ask for special permission to brew anything real hoppy or dark. Not sure she'll ever let me brew my IDA as it is both hoppy AND dark.
When it comes down to it, though, I posted the question because I wanted to brew all three of those beers and I don't have a 3-sided coin (or enough fermenters available to do all three). None of those other voters are going to help me drink the beer (I'm sure they would be willing, but they all live outside the SheppyBrew distribution area). It might as well be the Beer Model who decides.
It you've never had Whisky Wife Wit (previously known as Whisky Wife Wheat II), it is a lot like Blue Moon's Belgium White. I think it has a slightly smoother / creamy and fuller bodied mouth feel which really works well with the the orange flavor. It might have a slightly more authentic "Belgium" spicy phenolic character than Blue Moon, but it is still pretty restrained compared to lots of Belgium wits I've had. It has what I would consider the perfect amount of "Belgium" in it. This, along with the oat and wheat flavors combines with the orange and coriander for a nice complexity. I find that every sip I take will bring out a slightly different flavor to my attention. It really is a nice beer IMHO. Apparently the Beer Model likes it too (at the very least she likes it more than APA's or IDA's).
Part of the reason WWW was on the list is because I've had some Belgian Witbier yeast (Wyeast 3944) harvested from when I brewed my last series of wits. I think it has been in my fridge since last May. This is longer than most will suggest that you store harvested yeast. I was not completely sure it would still be viable. So, I have been building it up with a series of starters. It did get real active replicating and fermenting in the starters, so I think it will work fine.
..Just as an aside, I gave the Screwy Brewer my standard link on how to harvest yeast and I think he improved upon it. I will now be using his blog entry as my new standard link. He was also nice enough to mention my name and link to my website in the post. Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog entry ....
If you followed the link above to the recipe, you may have noticed that I am doing this as a partial mash rather than all all-grain. The main reason is that between the flaked oats and the high percentage of wheat, I am a bit concerned about a stuck mash with my usual process. By doing a partial mash in a grain bag and "steeping" the bag containing the mash rather than a traditional sparge, I don't have to worry about that possibility. Someday, I'm sure I'll do all-grain mashes with wheat and / or oats, but just not this time.
I had to get up early on the brew day to purchase the oats and oranges. I used the King Sooper brand quick oats and got 6 (used 5) navel oranges. This time, I "toasted" the oats just at 325 in the oven for about 15 minutes on 2 cookie sheets. Palmer had suggested that on one of his Brew Strong shows and also in a BYO magazine article. The zest came to 2 1/8 oz on my scale. I called it good enough.
My recipe said to use .79oz of coriander. It turns out I only had 5/8oz, so I called that good enough as well. That actually seems like a bunch of coriander, so I am really hoping that I didn't make a mistake documenting the amount last time I made this. RDWHAHB, right?
And then, my partial mash started out sort of badly. The original strike water was the perfect temp (sort of rare in my process), but did not seem nearly enough. The mash was a paste and the temp was way down below 140. I quickly heated up about a gallon of what was going to be my sparge water and dumped that in. The mash temp magically went to 154 (I got lucky there). I guess you could say I did my first (unintentional) step mash.
My water volume was a bit high. So was my OG into the kettle. I think maybe my little kitchen scale is not as accurate as it used to be. But, it isn't big enough a difference to get worked up about. The boil went as usual. I only did a 60 minute boil this time since it was not all grain. The first hop addition went in at the 50 minute mark. The only other addition was right at flame out.
One thing I have to address is getting a wort chiller for my 8 gallon pot. The ice bath is not as efficient at the larger volume of water. Plus, it is almost my birthday, and that will make a great toy (if no one gets it for me).
My OG was high (1.058 compared to recipe 1.050) as well. Part of it is not being used to the bigger pot. The fact that my scale might be having me add too much LME might be an issue too. Well, I'm ok with a higher alcohol beer. The orange aroma from the pot was great.
I'm looking forward to drinking and sharing this with my beautiful Beer Model. I might even share with others.
By the way... I created a RSS Feed for the SheppyBrew website this weekend. If you would like to subscribe to updates, the feed is: http://www.sheppybrew.com/rss/RSSHandler.ashx . I am using twitterfeed to automatically tweet whenever I make an update to a page or if a comment is made on one of the pages. Yes, I'm a geek.
Not sure what to brew next. I have it narrowed down to an American Pale Ale or an Indian Dark Ale or a Belgium Witbier. Any votes?I also tweeted:
What to brew next? Indian Dark Ale or APA or Belgium Wit?I got a pretty decent response on FaceBook. I usually do when I post similar questions. I even got one response from twitter. The results were:
- 3 votes for American Pale Ale (which would have been my Tommy Hawk APA)
- 2 votes for Indian Dark Ale (which would have been my Stone Soup IDA)
- 0 votes for Belgium Witbier (Whisky Wife Wit)
Belgium Witbier! Can I vote more than once? Or does my vote weigh more then these APA/IDA lovers?
When it comes down to it, though, I posted the question because I wanted to brew all three of those beers and I don't have a 3-sided coin (or enough fermenters available to do all three). None of those other voters are going to help me drink the beer (I'm sure they would be willing, but they all live outside the SheppyBrew distribution area). It might as well be the Beer Model who decides.
It you've never had Whisky Wife Wit (previously known as Whisky Wife Wheat II), it is a lot like Blue Moon's Belgium White. I think it has a slightly smoother / creamy and fuller bodied mouth feel which really works well with the the orange flavor. It might have a slightly more authentic "Belgium" spicy phenolic character than Blue Moon, but it is still pretty restrained compared to lots of Belgium wits I've had. It has what I would consider the perfect amount of "Belgium" in it. This, along with the oat and wheat flavors combines with the orange and coriander for a nice complexity. I find that every sip I take will bring out a slightly different flavor to my attention. It really is a nice beer IMHO. Apparently the Beer Model likes it too (at the very least she likes it more than APA's or IDA's).
Part of the reason WWW was on the list is because I've had some Belgian Witbier yeast (Wyeast 3944) harvested from when I brewed my last series of wits. I think it has been in my fridge since last May. This is longer than most will suggest that you store harvested yeast. I was not completely sure it would still be viable. So, I have been building it up with a series of starters. It did get real active replicating and fermenting in the starters, so I think it will work fine.
..Just as an aside, I gave the Screwy Brewer my standard link on how to harvest yeast and I think he improved upon it. I will now be using his blog entry as my new standard link. He was also nice enough to mention my name and link to my website in the post. Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog entry ....
If you followed the link above to the recipe, you may have noticed that I am doing this as a partial mash rather than all all-grain. The main reason is that between the flaked oats and the high percentage of wheat, I am a bit concerned about a stuck mash with my usual process. By doing a partial mash in a grain bag and "steeping" the bag containing the mash rather than a traditional sparge, I don't have to worry about that possibility. Someday, I'm sure I'll do all-grain mashes with wheat and / or oats, but just not this time.
My recipe said to use .79oz of coriander. It turns out I only had 5/8oz, so I called that good enough as well. That actually seems like a bunch of coriander, so I am really hoping that I didn't make a mistake documenting the amount last time I made this. RDWHAHB, right?
And then, my partial mash started out sort of badly. The original strike water was the perfect temp (sort of rare in my process), but did not seem nearly enough. The mash was a paste and the temp was way down below 140. I quickly heated up about a gallon of what was going to be my sparge water and dumped that in. The mash temp magically went to 154 (I got lucky there). I guess you could say I did my first (unintentional) step mash.
 |
See my new(ish) 8 gallon pot? |
One thing I have to address is getting a wort chiller for my 8 gallon pot. The ice bath is not as efficient at the larger volume of water. Plus, it is almost my birthday, and that will make a great toy (if no one gets it for me).
My OG was high (1.058 compared to recipe 1.050) as well. Part of it is not being used to the bigger pot. The fact that my scale might be having me add too much LME might be an issue too. Well, I'm ok with a higher alcohol beer. The orange aroma from the pot was great.
I'm looking forward to drinking and sharing this with my beautiful Beer Model. I might even share with others.
He has a whisky wife
He has a vodka wife
He has a lager wife
He has a cider wife
By the way... I created a RSS Feed for the SheppyBrew website this weekend. If you would like to subscribe to updates, the feed is: http://www.sheppybrew.com/rss/RSSHandler.ashx . I am using twitterfeed to automatically tweet whenever I make an update to a page or if a comment is made on one of the pages. Yes, I'm a geek.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Whisky Wife Wheat
One of my very first beers was named Whisky Wife Wheat. It turned out well. It was a nice light American Wheat beer.
The next time I brewed it, I changed the recipe to make it more of a German Hefeweizen. That beer turned out well too.
But, I got to thinking that really something named after my wife (Whisky Wife ... the Sheppy Brew beer model), should be a bit more Blue Moonish in its flavor character, so the 3rd time I made it, I used a Witbier yeast and some coriander and orange peel along with a healthy dose of flaked oats (oatmeal for most of you). 3rd time was a charm, because Whisky Wife Wheat II is absolutely worthy of the name. Its silky smooth light slightly oat - wheat flavor with just enough orange coming through is really a nice summer, blue-moon-type beer.
Just because I had some Mr. Beer wheat ingredients, I made another Whisky Wife Wheat with the Witbier yeast and orange with corriander. On this one, I over-did the orange peel, and it really does not have the nice smoothness that comes with the flaked oats, but it is still a nice light summer orange beer if you are in the right mood.
The beer on the left is Whisky Wife Wheat. The beer on the right is Whisky Wife Wheat II. II is better, but I is not bad either. II is the recipe that I am going to follow whenever I brew a Whisky Wife Wheat.
The next time I brewed it, I changed the recipe to make it more of a German Hefeweizen. That beer turned out well too.
But, I got to thinking that really something named after my wife (Whisky Wife ... the Sheppy Brew beer model), should be a bit more Blue Moonish in its flavor character, so the 3rd time I made it, I used a Witbier yeast and some coriander and orange peel along with a healthy dose of flaked oats (oatmeal for most of you). 3rd time was a charm, because Whisky Wife Wheat II is absolutely worthy of the name. Its silky smooth light slightly oat - wheat flavor with just enough orange coming through is really a nice summer, blue-moon-type beer.
Just because I had some Mr. Beer wheat ingredients, I made another Whisky Wife Wheat with the Witbier yeast and orange with corriander. On this one, I over-did the orange peel, and it really does not have the nice smoothness that comes with the flaked oats, but it is still a nice light summer orange beer if you are in the right mood.
The beer on the left is Whisky Wife Wheat. The beer on the right is Whisky Wife Wheat II. II is better, but I is not bad either. II is the recipe that I am going to follow whenever I brew a Whisky Wife Wheat.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Sugar Free Honey
Making beer is a pretty easy process. Yeast does all the hard work. Yeast eat sugars (mostly from malted barley mashed to convert its starches to sugars). The main waste product from eating all those sugars is alcohol. Yes, yeast eat sugar and poop alcohol.
Another important byproduct of this process is carbon dioxide. Most home-brewers rely on this carbon dioxide to carbonate their beers. When I bottle my beer, I add some more sugar and let the yeast eat that up ... voila ... the little yeasties burp up just enough CO2 to dissolve into my beer and I've got carbonation. Most commercial breweries and some home-brewers carbonate in other ways. When you let the yeasties do it for you, it is called "natural carbonation".
Well, in my Whisky Wife Wheat beer, the sugars that I use to feed my little beasties come from honey. Or at least, that is the plan. When I was getting close to bottling time, I was in my local super walmart and grabbed a little bottle of honey. I'm not that picky about the type of honey, so I just grabbed what was the least expensive per once. Did not really look at it.
When I bottle my beer, I almost always do 2 or 3 liter PET (plastic) bottles and the rest in 12oz recycled glass beer bottles. The nice thing about the PET bottles are that they firm up as the yeasties carbonate the beer, so you know that the process is progressing.
This time, though, my PET bottles were not firming up at all. This has never happened to me. I figured my yeast had gotten lazy, so I sort of shook all the bottles to maybe get the little guys working again. But, after about 10 days, still nothing. I assumed my yeast must have completely died for whatever reason. So, my plan was to prepare a yeast slurry and re-open all the bottles, added a couple of drops per bottle.
For some reason, before I did this, I took a look at the bottle of honey. Right there on the front were the words "Sugar Free Honey". I turned the bottle over, and the nutritional information on the back confirmed: Sugars ... 0 grams.
What!?! Ok ... I probably should have at least looked at the honey before buying it, but sugar free honey? I do not know how a beer keeper teaches his bees to make honey with no sugars in it. I do not want to know. I do not even really know why anyone would want honey with 0 sugars of any type in it. I thought honey was a healthy processed-sugar substitute. Is the really honey? Do bees make this stuff? Again, I do not really want to know.
It is lucky that I looked, because the fix I was going to attempt (more yeast) would not have helped at all. More yeast with nothing to eat will not burp any more CO2 than my existing yeast could with nothing to eat. I ended up opening up all the bottles and added table sugar to each one. My existing yeasties attacked that sugar and when I left for the TRASH reunion, the PET bottles were firming up nicely.
So, I guess there is a lesson in there somewhere. My home-brewing blog-readers will probably check their honey now to make sure it is not sugar-free. I suppose my non-home-brewing blog-readers might also check.
Another important byproduct of this process is carbon dioxide. Most home-brewers rely on this carbon dioxide to carbonate their beers. When I bottle my beer, I add some more sugar and let the yeast eat that up ... voila ... the little yeasties burp up just enough CO2 to dissolve into my beer and I've got carbonation. Most commercial breweries and some home-brewers carbonate in other ways. When you let the yeasties do it for you, it is called "natural carbonation".
Well, in my Whisky Wife Wheat beer, the sugars that I use to feed my little beasties come from honey. Or at least, that is the plan. When I was getting close to bottling time, I was in my local super walmart and grabbed a little bottle of honey. I'm not that picky about the type of honey, so I just grabbed what was the least expensive per once. Did not really look at it.
When I bottle my beer, I almost always do 2 or 3 liter PET (plastic) bottles and the rest in 12oz recycled glass beer bottles. The nice thing about the PET bottles are that they firm up as the yeasties carbonate the beer, so you know that the process is progressing.
This time, though, my PET bottles were not firming up at all. This has never happened to me. I figured my yeast had gotten lazy, so I sort of shook all the bottles to maybe get the little guys working again. But, after about 10 days, still nothing. I assumed my yeast must have completely died for whatever reason. So, my plan was to prepare a yeast slurry and re-open all the bottles, added a couple of drops per bottle.
For some reason, before I did this, I took a look at the bottle of honey. Right there on the front were the words "Sugar Free Honey". I turned the bottle over, and the nutritional information on the back confirmed: Sugars ... 0 grams.
What!?! Ok ... I probably should have at least looked at the honey before buying it, but sugar free honey? I do not know how a beer keeper teaches his bees to make honey with no sugars in it. I do not want to know. I do not even really know why anyone would want honey with 0 sugars of any type in it. I thought honey was a healthy processed-sugar substitute. Is the really honey? Do bees make this stuff? Again, I do not really want to know.
It is lucky that I looked, because the fix I was going to attempt (more yeast) would not have helped at all. More yeast with nothing to eat will not burp any more CO2 than my existing yeast could with nothing to eat. I ended up opening up all the bottles and added table sugar to each one. My existing yeasties attacked that sugar and when I left for the TRASH reunion, the PET bottles were firming up nicely.
So, I guess there is a lesson in there somewhere. My home-brewing blog-readers will probably check their honey now to make sure it is not sugar-free. I suppose my non-home-brewing blog-readers might also check.
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