Wheat ale base - blackberry / dry hop

OG - 1.038, way off.

used starter, 2 nights 2 days shaken every once in a while on the table, overnight in the fridge on brew day.

Full volume boil.

recirculated mash - yes.

mash temp - too hot. 159~ for 25 minutes, 152 for 35 minutes.

Didn't sparge.

1/3 gallon over what I should have been.

Shook the bucket.

Pitched at 58~60F.

Fermented at 62~64F (temp control is 62F, stick on thermometer reads 64 throughout the fermentation)



Next time:


Make recipe to finish at 6 gallons, design recipe that way

Start with 5~5.5 gallons. Sparge to get up to 6.5~7 gallons (or whatever I need)

Use the bag. Will be easier to stir the mash and clean up afterwards.

Put grain in at 152F. When the temp drops a bit, it'll come back up to temp. Seems safer.

Recirculate way slower. Pretty sure this is my main problem. There was a cone shaped pile at the bottom of the grain vessel.

Set Inkbird to 60F, will probably be closer to 62F fermentation temp. Could possibly ramp up every few days.





Finished at 1.007, 4.18%abv.

After 1 week in primary tastes kinda like a saltine cracker. Not sweet but not overly dry. Hoping this drinks like an American light beer with a bit more character.




After 10 days of fermentation, batch was split into 5.

Secondary fermenters:

1 gallon - blackberry. squeezed as much juice as I could out of 20oz of blackberries.

1 gallon - 1/2oz mosaic dry hop. 3 days.

1 gallon - 1/2oz lemondrop dry hop. 3 days.

1 gallon - 1/4oz hallertau dry hop. 3 days



Bottle:

1.5 gallons of original base beer with no additions.



Bottle day after 4 days dry hop/fruit:

Fucking disaster. Autosiphon doesn't fit in the 1 gallon bottles. Tried to swig some gin and siphon with my mouth.

Probably oxigenated the beer a bit too much but we'll see.




Drinking day:

Real nice.

Base beer is clean & light, nice flavour with the wheat.

Mosaic is the best one by far.

Lemondrop is good but way weaker aroma compared to the mosaic.

Hallertau is barely noticable.

Blackberry looks amazing, but the blackberry flavour tastes a bit watered down and it smells slightly like farts.