Weizenbock

It has been rather moist on the coast the past couple weeks.  Naturally my first brew day in a while was a rainy day, so I setup the canopy and brewed anyway.   The beer was a Weizenbock, which is a german style with a good portion of wheat in it, that ferments in the mid 50s-lower 60s(a perfect opportunity to use the new freezer).  

I haven't brewed a weizenbock before, so the recipe is a modified version of Jamil's Weizenbock from Brewing Classic Styles.  I find myself reaching for that book whenever brewing something for the first time as most of his reciepes are straight forward and make for a good baseline to build my own recipe.  I modify pretty much every recipe I brew(even my own that I'm rebrewing) to accomodate for the hops and sometimes the specialty grains I have on hand.  I am not a competition or commercial brewer, so I am more concerned with experimenting and trying new things rather than using the exact hops, etc. for the style. I also buy as much as possible in bulk, so even though I currently have about 5 or 6 lbs of hops I only have 6 or 7 different varieties, so sometimes the hop substitution is a bit of a stretch and might not have the noble hops in the german style lager.

The grain bill of this beer may seem a bit off, because I was unable to find the dark german wheat at my homebrew shop, so I was forced to make adjustments.   The major substitutions for this recipe included using US White Wheat instead of a more traditional dark german wheat. 

Jammie posing with the weizenbock mash.

Grain Bill:
- 10.0 lb White Wheat Malt
- 5.5 lb German Pilsner Malt
- 2.0 lb German Munich Malt
- 0.25 lb C-120 Malt
- 0.25 lb Pale Chocolate Malt
- 0.25 lb Midnight Wheat Malt

Hops:
- 1.2 oz Legacy (8.5%AA) - 60 min

Mash Temperature: 154 F
90 Minute Boil
O.G. 1.075 - Missed my target gravity by a bit.  I should have boiled it down further, which would have gotten it to the right spot, but collected extra wort for yeast starters for brews later in the week.
Estimated ABV: ~7.5%

I am using WLP300, White Labs Hefeweizen Yeast, for this beer.  I try to do a yeast starter for every beer, but especially for a bigger alcohol beer such as this.  Fermentation started off slow, as I have the temp set at 55 to prevent blowoff and any fusel alcohols from forming.

First fermentation for the new freezer.

My New Fermentation Chamber

My brother and I bought a Blichmann Fermenator conical early on in our homebrewing career, and although it has made a 100 gallons or so of beer, it has been out of commission recently.  When we lived in Denver the basement of the house got cold enough that I was able to control the fermentation temperature just by heating the conical.  (Un)Fortunately here in Southern California my garage doesn't get that cold, so I haven't had the ability to temperature control the thing.  Temperature control is the most important factor of fermentation to prevent off flavors in the finished beer, so I have been fighting a battle to keep beers at the right temp without a proper fermentation chamber.

Introduce my christmas present for myself, a large upright freezer.

It is going to take some modification of both freezer and conical to get it to fit properly inside.  I am also going to have to break down and buy a pump for my system, as that will be the only way to get the beer up into the conical.  I have to wait for some additional fund to come in to finish, so the conical is going to sit idle for a little while longer, but in the meantime I am going to use the freezer anyway.

The first step in creating more space inside was to remove the plastic door shelves.  As you can see in the above picture there was a good bit of moisture behind that panel.  A trip to home depot later and a broken circle saw and I had a new flat plastic panel screwed in place.

New panel, made from a sheet of FRP from home depot.  Cost ~$35

Luckily I had an extra Ranco ETC sitting around, hooked it up and drilled a hole in the side of the freezer for the temperature probe to come through.

Now I need to put it to use!