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.