Brew Day: Dark Wheat IPA with Anise & Lavender!!

A dark wheat IPA with anise and lavender, who would have thought....to be honest we do not know where this idea came from. Well, that is only half true. The choice of herbs was inspired by one of our walks through the Jean-Talon market, however the beer style i.e. dark wheat IPA was quite random. This beer was our second batch of the summer. Summer brewing can be difficult, given that the cellar is warmer than it should be, and water temperature from the faucets is higher than we want it to be, all of which leads to higher fermentation temperatures. That is not to say that there are no solutions out there, there are, but at this point we had yet to implement any. On this particular day we decided to brew outdoors, it was a beautiful day for brewing. Now let the brewing begin!

Ingredients

 

Whole Anise Seeds; Table with Perle and Northern Brewer hops, 50g each, and Bavarian Weizen Yeast (WLP351, White Labs); Comestible Lavender; Missing Photos: 2kg CaraWheat, 2kg Flaked Wheat, 2kg Munich malt, 250g Chocolate Wheat Malt, and 500g Crystal 80L.

Mashing

 

Making a tea out of the Crystal 80L to add to the wort; Step-Mashing: Protein Rest @ 120f (target temp) for 20min w/ 13.95L @ 135f (quantity of water at specific temp required to reach target temp), Beta-amylase Rest @ 145f for 60min w/ 6.2L @ 212f, and Mash-out @ 168f for 15min w/  8.75L @ 212f; Stirring the mash to make sure that every grain comes into contact with the water, which helps to increase the total sugar yield (efficiency). 

Lautering

 

Transferring Wort to Brew Kettle; Total of 7 Gallons of Wort; Sweet, Spent Grains.

Boiling

Wort coming to a boil, total boil time 75 min; Hop Additions are noted from the beginning of the boil, @time indicates how long the hops will be boiled for: (Beginning of boil) @75 min 30g Perle, @60 min 20g Perle, @50 min 30g Northern Brewer, and @40 min 20g Northern Brewer; 19g of Perle; Wort Boiling with Hops.

 Adding Hop Addition to Hop Bag; Herb Additions: @20 min Anise10g, @5 min Lavender 6g; Anise 10g; Adding Lavender Boil.  

Cooling

Well, this seems pretty obvious. Wort cooling. 

This beer was made without us checking the gravity once. Why? Well, because we broke our hydrometer....two broken in a month... Though it may look like we finished this beer during the day, we actually finished it at 11 o'clock at night. And, we suffered through more mosquito bites than we could count. Sadly though, during the bottling of this beer we over carbonated it and were left with a gusher. REDO!!

Thanks for reading, and sorry you had to find out that we ruined this batch, but hey that's part of the learning process. We promise that we will get this one right next time!

Cheers!

- Jean