The first brew of 2013 - Water into Wheatwine

I usually do not post anything about upcoming brew sessions, but it is a slow day and I am pretty excited about what we will be attempting.

Once again we will be brewing a style that I have never had a chance to try. I would guess that many a beer lover have never tried this style either. It's sort of a hybrid and has no official BJCP category.

Sundays brew will be a wheatwine. It's closest relative is the barleywine, but it uses a large amount of malted wheat instead of being all barley. There are no official style guidelines, but in my mind you need at least 50% of the malt bill to come from wheat. There are less than 100 wheatwines listed on beerAdvocate (there are almost 600 barleywines). Wheatwine seems to be one of those styles created by the American craft brew movement. Rubicon Brewing Company claims to be the first brewer of the style back in 1998. They have won several awards with it including gold at GABF.

In building the recipe I did some research on other brewers attempts to create this beer. Some people seem to take a Weizenbock recipe and scale it up to get a high ABV. The big difference is that you want a more neutral yeast and American hops.

My take on it is slightly different. I definitely wanted to use German wheat, but I am forgoing some of the more traditional Weizenbock ingredients such as Pils, Munich, Vienna, and/or CaraMunich/Vienna.

Wheatwine

Batch Size: 15.00 gal	Style: American Barleywine (19C)
Boil Size: 19.64 gal	Style Guide: BJCP 2008
Color: 14.6 SRM	Equipment: Stainless Pots (26 Gallons) - All Grain
Bitterness: 76.9 IBUs	Boil Time: 60 min
Est OG: 1.105 (24.6° P)	Mash Profile: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge (155°)
Est FG: 1.021 SG (5.3° P)	Fermentation: 14 days @ 65
ABV: 11.2%	Taste Rating: ?

Ingredients

Amount	Name	Type	#
30 lbs	Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)	Grain	1
20 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain	2
2 lbs 8.0 oz	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)	Grain	3
8.0 oz	Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM)	Grain	4
3 lbs	Dememera Sugar (2.0 SRM)	Grain	5
4.0 oz	Apollo[17.0%] - Boil 60 min	Hops	6
2.0 oz	Willamette [5.5%] - Boil 30 min	Hops	7
4.0 oz	Willamette [5.5%] - Boil 15 min	Hops	8
8 pkgs	American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056)	Yeast	9

The idea was to use more traditional American malts because of the roots of this style are entirely American. As for the honey malt, a lot of people feel honey and munich malts are pretty similar, but I feel it gives a bit more complexity and of course sweetness. For color I have always been interested in a newer offering form Briess called midnight wheat. It was mainly created for use in Black IPAs where very dark color is desired, but little to no traditional dark malt characteristics are wanted. While I am not going for big color, I do want some, and it's wheat!

For the rest of the recipe I went all American hops and yeast.