This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

Author: C. McKenzie

I have a confession: I’ve never brewed with wheat before, and I don’t really care for most beers that have wheat in them. There are some exceptions to that rule, but in general, wheat just doesn’t do it for me. Because of this, wheat was never an ingredient I expected to brew with, and it certainly wasn’t something I was excited to see make the list of required ingredients for this Limitations series. But that’s part of the spirit of this project; not only did I have the challenge of only using the ingredients on the list to make a beer, but I also had the added challenge of brewing a beer that I would like with wheat.

Recipe

Wheat, light Munich, and Maris Otter are all base malts, so two ways to approach this beer came to mind immediately: a light malt beer with a heavy focus on hops, or a light beer with a characterful malt profile as its focus. Since several of the other contributors were planning on going hop-heavy in this first round of beers, I decided to go for something that highlighted the malt. I also wanted highlight the malt with the boldest character, so I decided upfront that I would go heavy on the Munich. It’s been my experience that WLP810 San Francisco Lager yeast really emphasizes the malt character in a beer, so I decided to use that yeast over WLP090 San Diego Super yeast (the other option for yeast in the list of limited ingredients). I began to consider styles that would work with the two parameters I’d set in place: large portion of Munich malt and lager(ish) yeast. Reading through style descriptions, none of them really captured what I wanted this beer to be—though perhaps my desired characteristics fit soundly in a category and I just didn’t realize it. Because of that, I’m just going to refer to this beer as a Munich-heavy lager.

I’ve not used light Munich before, though I have used a dark Munich malt in previous beers. My impression of that malt was that it was intensely bready. I wasn’t sure how a light Munich would compare, but I assumed it would have a similar character. This, coupled with the malt-accenting yeast, meant that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the hops at first. Initially, I wanted to just let the earthiness of Nugget do all the heavy lifting in the hops department and downplay the peach flavor I tend to get from Amarillo (the two hops on the ingredient list). However, I also tend to get some level of fruitiness from Nugget, though I know that’s not a common descriptor for that hop. So instead of downplaying the Amarillo by only using it early in the boil, I decided to let it shine and shoot for a bread and jam type of character. Toast with peach jelly sounded quite nice, so I took that idea and ran with it.

Once I had this mental flavor and aroma profile, I had to get it out of my head and onto paper before I could get it into the kettle and carboy and, subsequently, into my glass. As mentioned above, the light Munich would be my main malt focus, so I decided I’d use it for at least half of the grain bill. I didn’t want to use a ton of wheat, but I also didn’t want to just hide it in the beer by using a super small percentage. I did want to see what it would bring to the party (and hope I cared for it), so I figured around 10% of the grain bill would be about right for that purpose. I filled in the rest with Maris Otter to help lighten the intense breadiness of the Munich and add a different kind of toast/bread character to the mix.

I didn’t want the malt character of this beer to be unbalanced and therefore seem too heavy or give the perception of being overly sweet, so I decided I’d give this beer a hefty dose of bitterness. Not wanting to leave Nugget as a bittering addition only, I chose to add both hops as late additions to see how those earthy and peach characters would play together.

Since WLP810 isn’t super attenuative, I opted to mash at a fairly low temperature. These choices resulted in the following recipe:

Mashed at 152°F for 1.25 hours 60% Light Munich (6 lbs.) 30% Maris Otter (3 lbs.) 10% Wheat (1 lb.)

Boiled for 60 min. 0.5 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13.3% AA (24.4 IBUs) 0.5 oz. Nugget (10 min.) at 13.3% AA (8.9 IBUs) 1 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 9.3% AA (6.8 IBUs)

Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager Fermented at 60°F Raised temperature to 63°F on day 5 Raised temperature to 65°F on day 6

OG: 1.055

FG: 1.013

ABV: 5.5%

Kegged and burst carbonated

Brew Day

After getting home from work on a Friday, I gathered my volume of strike water and lit the flame beneath it. While the water was heating, I quickly calculated what temperature the strike water would need to be in order to hit my desired mash temperature of 150°F. I then preheated my mash tun by adding hot water and letting it sit while the strike water rose to temperature.

Once the water had reached the temperature calculated for my target mash temperature, I mixed the water and malt in my mash tun and stirred until I was satisfied no dough balls were present. Taking a temperature reading, I realized I’d overshot my target mash temperature by 2 degrees. 152°F was still on the low end of mash temperature, so I didn’t make any adjustments.

While the mash did its thing, I ate dinner and attended to some parental duties. Once my kids were in bed, I drained the wort from my mash tun and batch sparged twice to get my desired volume of preboil wort (7 gallons).

While the wort was heating and (thankfully) before it had reached the boiling point, I ran out of propane, so I put the lid on my kettle and made a quick trip to the store. Once I returned and got the propane tank hooked back up, the rest of the evening went smoothly. I added hops at the times noted in the recipe.

Once the boil was complete, I chilled my wort down using my immersion chiller, stirring the kettle to speed up the process. Then I put the lid on the kettle and let it sit for 15-20 minutes to let everything settle out before transferring to my carboy. Once I’d cleaned everything else, I moved the wort to my carboy and stole roughly half a gallon of wort to use as a vitality starter. I added that wort to the yeast that had previously been in an appropriately sized starter earlier in the week.

Then I placed my carboy in my fermentation chamber to cool down a few more degrees to the desired temperature and returned to pitch the yeast an hour or so later.

Tasting

This beer poured golden orange with a fluffy and persistent white head. It still had some haze to it after several days of cold crashing and a few weeks in the keg. It’s been my experience that WLP-810 drops crystal clear and easily achieves a commercial beer level of clarity without finings when given enough time, but the slight haze persisted beyond the normal amount of time I was used to seeing with this strain. It’s possible that this was due to using a slurry that was several generations in, but that’s simply a guess; it might not even be a very good guess since, using the yeast harvesting method that I do, I should theoretically be gathering the most flocculent yeast in that population. Whatever the reason, the haze was there, and with a lack of variety in my keezer, I unfortunately wasn’t patient enough with this beer to wait on it to drop as clear as I wanted.

The aroma of this beer had notes of peaches, orange zest, whole wheat bread, and fresh dough. To clarify, the aspect of the aroma that reminded me of fresh dough wasn’t yeastiness—rather the scent reminded me of being in the kitchen while my mom made biscuits.

The flavor was very prominently one of peaches and bread. It was richly malty and full on the palate. It reminded me of peach cobbler, but without the caramelized sugar/dark crust component.

If I were to brew this beer again using only these same ingredients, I would likely add a little more bitterness into the mix. The way WLP-810 emphasizes the malt makes for a delicious beer, but this particular beer was a little “full” for what I wanted. I might also lower the amount of Munich in exchange for a little more Maris Otter or wheat to help reduce the richness of the bready character to make this beer a little more drinkable.

If I had no limitations on ingredients and brewed this beer again, I’d add some Crystal 80 or 120 to add some of that burnt sugar character that would really push this beer over the edge into the peach cobbler arena. The other change I’d consider is using an English ale yeast strain to add a little more fruitiness into the final product and still balance the rich maltiness, though the likeness to peach cobbler might be removed with this change.

Recipe Comparison

Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.

Beer 1 Beer 2 Beer 3 Beer 4 Beer 5 Style Hoppy Wheat Pale Ale/Lager IPL NEIPA/IPA Munich Lager Maris Otter 34.4% 50% 50% 82% 30% Light Munich 5.5% 25% 41% 7% 60% Wheat 60.1% 25% 9% 11% 10% Hop Addition 1 28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) 41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort) 21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) 41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort) 24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) Hop Addition 2 5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.) 5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.) 23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool 4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F) 8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.) Hop Addition 3 7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.) 2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.) N/A 0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F) 6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.) Hop Addition 4 16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool 0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout) N/A N/A N/A Hop Addition 5 22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool N/A N/A N/A N/A Dry Hop 2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days) N/A 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4 1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8 N/A Yeast WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F WLP090 WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F OG 1.059 1.058 1.050 1.063 1.055 FG 1.012 1.009/1.014 1.010 1.012 1.013 ABV 6.2% 6.5%/5.8% 5.3% 6.7% 5.5%