Bookend Brews

On a whim I decided that Saturday morning would be a good day to brew beer. What to make? Looking over my current is-fermenting/conditioning/carbonating/on-tap list I see a Kölsch (always on tap!), a Double IPA, and a Christmas Ale on tap; some Maibock fermenting away at 50°, and 10 gallons of Porter carbonating. Problem being, the Christmas Ale and Double IPA are almost gone! I have a few jars of yeast slurry in the ol' kegerator, namely Kölsch yeast, English Ale yeast, and the standard WLP001 California Ale yeast. And then there's that little bottle of raspberry extract that's been sitting on my shelf for months.

Then I decided I'd give it a shot at making a Raspberry Wheat. The only thing I had missing was the wheat malt, and I'll be using the WLP001 yeast instead of a hefeweizen yeast (basically an American wheat). So here we are:

Raspberry Wheat

Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.00
Anticipated OG: 1.053
Anticipated SRM: 3.5
Anticipated IBU: 16.8

5.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
4.00 lbs. Pilsner Malt
1.00 lbs. Honey

0.75 oz. Hallertauer (Pellet, 4.00% AA) 75 min.
0.25 oz. Hallertauer (Pellet, 4.00% AA) 15 min.

Raspberry extract added at kegging

White Labs WLP001 California Ale

And of course the week stated out with brewing 5 gallons of Maibock for the Spring with a couple of fellow brewers over to assist. Drank a little too much homebrew for brewing, but I hit my starting gravity and volume dead-on. I used Jamil's Yeast Pitching Rate Calculator and used the stir plate to get 2L of lager yeast going. By the next morning the Maibock was chugging away, very good considering lager yeast ferments more slowly than ale yeast. All-in-all, a great day.

Prost!