Out of the Bottle: Weizenbock

My first ever Weizenbock is ready to go. I'm pleased with the results, but not overjoyed. It's a nice beer, but it feels like there could be so much more.

Being a glass half-full kind of guy, I'll start with the positives. The beer looks great. It's appropriately cloudy from the yeast, has a nice hue and a rocky head that sticks around. There's also a pleasant baking chocolate and fresh bread aroma, plus a bit of banana and clove. In the mouth, the beer is nice and dense. Bitterness is low and there are no hop flavors on hand.

Where things begin to go off script is in the flavor. The beer is simply sweeter than it should be. I've read that a traditional decoction mash can help, so I may have to track down a stove-top way of doing one. Also, I think that the Gambrinus Munich Light malt I used simply isn't close enough to actual German Munich Malt. Unfortunately, my local homebrew store doesn't carry the stuff. I'm going to have to check the other Denver area homebrew stores or go online to track some down.

Also, a lot of brewers seem to shy away from dry Weiss yeasts, but I've had pretty decent luck with Safbrew WB-06. In the this particular beer, the banana and clove notes were rather subtle, so I may switch to a liquid strain for the next round.

So, to recap, it's a good beer, but not a great one that could benefit from German Munich Malt, liquid yeast and perhaps a decoction mash. Thankfully, I'm planning on brewing a Dunkelweiss soon, so I can try some or all of these things out.

Update 4/21/13:

After a few extra weeks, the sweetness I complained about has subsided somewhat. The beer still leans toward the sweeter end of the flavor spectrum, but the bready flavors have started to catch up.

Comments

Out of the Bottle: Oak Aged La Petite Orange

I said in my previous post that I'd saved some of Northern Brewer's La Petite Orange kit to age with Sherry Infused Oak Cubes. The aged beer is ready to go, so let's see what the Oak and Sherry did. I've had more than a few Barrel Aged beers that were completely dominated by the wood and whatever alcohol (Rum, Bourbon, Sherry, etc) the barrel originally contained. In my beer, the oak and sherry are subtle. That's what I was shooting for, so I'm quite happy with that. The flavors and aromas from the original beer are still present. There's no point in revisiting them. What I really care about is the changes the wood made. Vanilla is the most significant contribution. There's also a very mild almond note at work. The Sherry really cuts through in the aroma. It provides an extra helping of dark fruits, plus a little more alcohol heat. The beer is definitely more wine-like than before. On a side note, I took my own advice and bumped the priming su

Out of the Bottle: Big Beers and a Haze

I'm doing a 4-for-1 with this installment, and will be bundling my finished beers going forward, rather than writing a blog for each. That should leave me space for more brewing oriented posts. This month, I've got beers I posted the recipes for back in November, December and January. First out of the gate is Enchanted Nightmare Imperial Stout. This beer is an amalgamation of extra grains and hops I had that were combined with some 2-Row and additional hops to create a 9.95% ABV Stout for the depths of Winter. So what if it wasn't actually ready until the Spring Equinox arrived? A beer like this can't be rushed. My beer pours nearly pitch black, and has nice ruby highlights. The head could stand a touch more staying power, but is appropriately dense. In the mouth, the body is a little lighter than I expected. The carbonation is very soft, and feels just about right for this beer style. When I bottled this beer, I was slightly worried that the whiskey and oak were a li

Kitchen Brewing Part 3: Sparge and Boil

The mash emerges from the oven. Now that we're finished with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, it's time to Sparge. As you can see from the photo, the grains have absorbed a lot of liquid. In a traditional all-grain setup, your Mash Tun has a valve at the bottom to release the first running of Wort. The grains are then rinsed with the sparge water to extract any remaining sugars. My stove-top method doesn't afford such luxury, so a different method is called for. The grains have gained a little weight. There are a couple of choices at this point. One choice is to lift the grain bag out of Pot A and place it into the sparge water in Pot B to steep for 10-15 minutes or more. The other is to lift the grain bag up, put a colander under it and slowly pour the sparge water through the grains into the original pot. I prefer the former, because I get a better extraction rate from my grains. All that absorption means that the grains weigh a lot more than they did going i

Colorado Kitchen Brew

Search This Blog