Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:37 pm
Flaked wheat needs to be mashed in the presence of enzymes. That recipe above will leave unconverted starch in the beer. While a haze is ok in a hefeweizen, unconverted starch is not the best way to do it.
I'd keep this one simple. You'll be able to add a bit of orange peel and/or the blueberry if the base beer is clean. Just use wheat extract instead of corn sugar. You are talking about a 1.050-ish beer here. There is no need (nor place) for corn sugar in this beer. It will have a nice light body all by itself.
I'd bitter it with about 5 HBU's of Noble or Noble-Type hops at 60 mins, and optionally a 1/2 to an oz more at 5 mins for a touch of flavor and aroma. The Perle you had above is fine, but I'd go with Hallertau, Tettnanger, Mt. Hood, Crystal, Liberty or Saaz for the aroma addition.
You want to keep it so that the
5.5 lbs Wheat DME
1/2 lb Crystal (any Crystal malt from10L up through 60L will work just fine, but the lower the L then you'll have less overwhelming effect on the orange peel and the blueberry)
1 oz 5.5% Perle @ 60
1 oz 5% Mt. Hood @ 5
Your choice of yeast - Bub likes Wyeast 3068 but that turns this into a German Hefe, which IMO, will cause too much going on for a fruit beer. The Wyeast 1010 American wheat yeast gives a very tame Widmer/Pyramid phenolic background note that tends to work well with subtle fruit/honey addtions, if that's what you are going for. Also, the new Fermentis WB-06 (in JP's favorite color packet, purple) is also a nice middle ground yeast for this. It's not as banana-ey as the 3068, but it's definitely more noticeable than 1010/WLP320.
Finally, you can always go with a Kolsch yeast or plain old Cal Ale for a clean version.
HTH-
-B'Dawg
BJCP GM3 Judge & Mead
"Lunch Meat. It's an acquired taste....." -- Mylo
