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Beekeeper Recipe

Apr 25, 2017

Beekeeper (23 Litres)

Honey can be a welcome addition in Wheat Beer and it carries some favour with the Australian Craft Beer industry. This is shown by the number of interesting Honey Wheat Beer varieties readily available in the local liquor store. Some of the ingredients and features of this style casts similarities to a Weissbier (category 15.A. of BJCP style guidelines) but the inclusion of honey moves it more toward Specialty Beer, category 23. This category covers an eclectic collection of brews that don’t quite fit into existing categories or are yet to reach a level of popularity to warrant the formation of a new category. This Honey Wheat recipe combines more Light Dry Malt than a typical Weissbier, which could make it a bit heavy, but the honey addition helps to lighten the mouthfeel. Blue Gum honey was chosen because its flavour and aroma marries up nicely with that of a typical Wheat Beer but you may like to experiment with different types of honey and yeast. Just be sure to make the apiarists proud!

Ingredients

1 x 1.7kg Thomas Coopers Preachers Hefe Wheat
2 x 500g Light Dry Malt
1 x 335g Beerenberg's Blue Gum "Charlotte" Honey (or honey of your choice)
1 x 11g Munich Wheat yeast (or wheat yeast of your choice)
Dextrose Corn Sugar or Carbonation Drops

Features:

Colour: Gold
Body: Light
Bitterness: Med/Low
Approx. Alcohol Level: 5.1% ABV
Naturally Carbonated: Natural

Instructions:

Step 1: Mix

Add 1kg of Light Dry Malt to a fermenting vessel then add 2 litres of warm water. Immediately pick the vessel up and swirl the contents to dissolve (don’t be concerned if some lumps remain). Add the contents of the Preacher's Hefe Wheat brew can plus the honey and stir to dissolve. Top up with cold tap water to the 20 litre mark, stir thoroughly. Check the temperature and top up to the 23 litre mark with warm or cool water (refrigerated if necessary) to start the brew at 22C. Sprinkle the dry yeast or stir in liquid yeast and fit the lid.

Step 2: Brew

Try to ferment at 22C. Fermentation has finished once the specific gravity is stable over 2 days. It should finish around the 1006 – 1010 mark.

Step 3: Bottle

Bottle the brew with a priming rate of 8g per litre (2 carbonation drops per 750ml bottle).

Step 4: Enjoy

Store the bottles at or above 18C for at least two weeks to allow secondary fermentation to take place. Expect the alcohol content to be around 5.1% AB