The Beer Circle » Brew It Yourself » Novice Homebrewer: Brewing Batch #3
Novice Homebrewer: Brewing Batch #3
My fiancee bought me a Wheat Beer kit from Cooper’s (who recently bought the American company Mr. Beer) prior to her back surgery as a way to say thanks for taking care of her. If you have been following my posts, my first two batches were from scratch, so this was a new adventure for me. The product is a blend of extract malt and hops that comes in a can with directions and a packet of yeast attached to the can. As this was my third batch, I opted to make a personal adjustment to the recipe and add strawberries during primary fermentation.
The first obstacle was that the instructions utilize the metric system since Cooper’s comes from Australia. I had to break out the handy Google to do some quick conversions for water and sugar. Secondly, I did not have enough plain sugar, so I had to improvise. I mixed in organic sugar, regular sugar, and brown sugar to provide enough food for the yeast to eat.
The directions say to heat up 2 litres of water and mix in the malt/hop concoction. It was odd that they only required warm water, saying you could heat it up in the microwave. I opted to boil the water on the stove prior to adding in the mixture. While the water was heating up, I began chopping off the stems of the strawberries and blending them with a little bit of water. About halfway through the strawberries, the water boiled and I added the malt in to the pot. I wanted to keep the mix somewhat warm before I added it to the carboy, so I left the stove on. BIG MISTAKE! All of a sudden, I had a boil over and my ceramic-top stove was covered in syrupy liquid.
Apparently, I have not fully learned about boil overs. But I think I was thrown by using a different system that I was used to. Once I cleaned the mess up, I put the wort into the carboy and filled the carboy up with cool water and then pitched the yeast. The cleanup took longer than the brewing, and was a major pain in the butt. However, I was pretty happy with the addition of strawberries to the wheat beer, and I think it will be a great warm weather beer.
Filed under: Brew It Yourself · Tags: Cooper's, Homebrewing, Lincoln Abbey, Strawberry Wheat
Recent Comments