All's Fair in Grain and War: Rosemary Me Wheat Beer

For my birthday, back in December, Liz got me a $75 gift certificate to Flying Barrel, a homebrew store up in Frederick.  We finally got up that way when we weren't preoccupied with breweries, and I got to spending.  I was like a kid in a candy shop, having extreme trouble picking out what I wanted to buy and what I wanted to brew.

Rosemary and Paradise Seeds

I ended up getting a lot of goodies, like paradise seeds, star anise, irish moss, oak chips, and a bottle cleaner faucet attachment.  We've wanted to get more experimental with some of our ingredients, and a shopping spree's gotten us some fun tools, and to start it rolling, I grabbed some grain.

I had planned out some light wheat recipes, but that all went out the window in the heat of the moment.  I sort of picked and chose adventurously (or haphazardly might be a better word).  I'm still coming into my own with all-grain brewing, and haven't tried designing my own recipes, so it was a fun experience to go on my own.  This is what I ended up with in terms of materials for a 2.5 gallon brew.

2 lbs of wheat
1.25 lb of Carapils
.25 lb of British Crystal 55
.25 lb of Caramel British Crystal 120
.25 lb of flaked maze
Fermentis Dry Wheat Beer Yeast (Safbrew WB-06) (1/2 bag)
4 branches of rosemary
1 ounce of crushed paradise seeds
6 thin slices of ginger
1 teaspoon of Irish Moss
.25 ounce of Amarillo hops

Our Grain

Steeping grains in a bag

We put 2 gallons of water on high heat, and began putting the grain in at 153 degrees using a grain bag.  After steeping the grain, we sparged it using a metal colander.  We maintained the heat within 5 degrees of the 153.  After we felt we got the sugars sufficiently out through sparging, we went ahead and brought the water to a rolling boil for 60 minutes.  We threw the hops in at about the 30 minute mark.  At the 50 minute mark, we added both the rosemary, the paradise seeds, and the Irish Moss.  After we pulled it at 60 minutes, we ran the wart chiller, and brought the temperature down to 72 degrees.



Have to watch the splash back.
You can see to the right of my mouth, my "flavor saver"
caught a good chunk of spent grain.  The dog helped clean me off.



The Ginger and Crushed Paradise Seeds

Irish Moss

After the boil, we cooled it down to 75 degrees using our wort chiller.



It is nice having folks who can run the wort chiller,
so I can prep some other things while its cooling


We pitched the yeast, put it all in the carboy, and topped off the wort to about 2.5 gallons.  Then we played the waiting game.  Some friends of our's, outside of the normal brewing crew of a mix of Liz, Lexi, and Sam, showed up.  You can see Ev and Rach below, and Hillary showed up too.  We had a beer tasting, as is the norm.

Fermenting started with 24 hours.  We let it sit 9 days in total, then bottled using honey and maple syrup.  The one thing I couldn't get over while bottling was how aromatic it was after transferring it to the bottling bucket.  It smelled like roast chicken.

After 2 weeks, Liz and I had a bottle of it with a chicken dinner, and after 3 weeks, Ed and I shared a big bottle.  We both agreed that it was bold, and very aromatic, but the rosemary taste isn't as overpowering as the smell would lead you to believe.  The paradise grains provided a spiciness to it that paired well with the rosemary flavor.  The body could have stood to have been a bit stronger, which would likely be solved by using more grains in the brew.  This was our first time using Irish Moss as well, so we're not sure how much of the clarity is related to it or just a blip in the brewing.  The beer is definitely clearer compared to our previous all-grains, so we'll be sure to use it again.  I'm really happy with how this brew turned out considering it was sort of by the seat of our pants.

Special Thanks to our friend Sam, who essentially has a rosemary plant at this house that's tree sized, who generously provided the rosemary for the brew.