Gowanus Brewery

Many thanks to the members of the New York City Homebrewers Guild and to Friar Smith for helping to refine this recipe.

Based on their advice, I’m reducing the total amount of Liberty malt and hops, as well as adjusting the hop schedule. It was suggested that these ingredients might be overpowering and I want to ensure that this brew is still recognizable as a wheat ale when all is said and done. Also, Friar Smith made me aware that, at least in his experience, a little honey goes a long way, even at half the volume I intended to use. So, I’m cutting that down as well.

8 lb. Wheat malt
8 lb. American 2-row
2 lb. Flaked wheat
1 lb. American victory
1.5 oz. Newport (13% AA, 60 min.)
1.5 oz. Argentina Cascade (3% AA, 15 min.)
1.5 oz. Argentina Cascade (3% AA, 0 min.)
1 lb. Basswood Honey (boil flameout)

Mash 145-155 degrees Fahrenheit, 120 minutes; boil 90-120 minutes; age six months.

For this beer, I have to use a modified mash schedule. That’s because mash efficiency tends to be lower for higher gravity beers, which requires collecting more wort than usual. High gravity beers also require substantially larger yeast starters that have volumes in the .5 to 1 gallon range and must be figured into your final volume. With those two factors in mind, this is the plan:

1. Collect Water: In the primary kettle, add 6 gallons water and bring to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In second kettle, add 4 gallons of water and bring to 170 degrees.
2. Add Grain and Heat: Add grain to primary kettle, heat to mash temperature of 150 degrees. Hold for 120 minutes.
3. Mashout and First Sparge: Raise temperature to 170 degrees and collect 4 gallons wort.
4. Second Sparge: Add the 4 gallons of water from the second kettle. Collect 4 gallons wort.
5. Boil: Boil 8 gallons wort down to 5 gallons, adding hops and adjuncts at appropriate times.
6. Pitch Yeast: Pitch .5 gallon yeast starter for final target volume 5.5 gallons.

This brew will represent many homebrewing firsts for me. I’m anxiously looking forward to getting started on it.

Six months from now–when it’s once again dark and dreary–it will be time to indulge in this new brew, the Gowanus Strong Wheat.

You need at least six months aging time for a strong ale, which according to the BJCP guidelines, is “usually the strongest ale offered by a brewery… Normally aged significantly prior to release. Often associated with the winter or holiday season.”

Although I haven’t fully committed to the proportions, the final grain bill will closely resemble the following:

8 lb. American 2-row
8 lb. Wheat malt
2 lb. American victory
2 lb. Flaked wheat
2 lb. Basswood Honey
1 oz. Newport (13% AA, 60 min.)
1 oz. Newport (13% AA, 45 min.)
1 oz. Newport (13% AA, 30 min.)
1 oz. Argentina Cascade (3% AA, 30 min.)
1 oz. Argentina Cascade (3% AA, 15 min.)
1 oz. Argentina Cascade (aroma)

This will (theoretically) produce a wort with a starting gravity near 1.115 and a final alcohol content in the neighborhood of 12%. Because the alcohol content on this style of beer tends to be so high, it’s common to see them referred to as barleywines or barleywine-style ales. Of course, this particular beer would be best described as a wheat wine, owning fully 50% of its total weight to malted and flaked wheat.

This isn’t strictly about big beer and big alcohol. I’m interested in pushing the limits on my technique and equipment and continuing to experiment with wheat beers. It’s also an opportunity to experiment with a new adjunct: honey. I’m adding honey to provide some complexity and to unify the overall beer aroma and flavor, but it will also provide additional fermentables and color. This particular type of honey is supposed create a lingering flavor similar to green ripening fruit.

The verdict is finally in on the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale: damn good.

Sunday was our first warm sunny weekend day this season, so I celebrated with a couple hours of yard work and a nice long bike ride down to Brooklyn’s famous Prospect Park. By the time I got back from the bike ride, I was tired, hot, sweaty, and looking for just one thing: an ice-cold, refreshing beer. I found it in the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale.

Just as planned, it’s light, tart, and dry. The wheat and raspberries are present in the aroma and flavor. The mouthfeel is thin but, at least for those bottles that are carbonated well (not all of them are), champagne-like.

A drawback I’m realizing to a beer that is so thin is that, once it warms up and loses that carbonation, it becomes really unappetizing. That’s no big deal, though. This type of beer is at it’s best nearly frozen anyway.

Whipped up this label a few minutes ago and finished bottling the Raspberry Wheat Ale before that.

I haven’t had the free time lately to put more creative energy into my labels, which is why the last few have been so similar: background picture + cool font. It’s boring, but it’s the beer that’s important right!

Anyway, I tasted the raspberry wheat again while bottling and it still tastes very good. Any concern I had over using too few raspberries went out the window tonight. Overall, the beer is dry, light-bodied, and the raspberry flavors stand out pretty well. I think the primary reason halving the amount of raspberries you would typically add worked out so well is that I used an American wheat yeast, which ferments dry and clean. German wheat yeast produces rich flavors like bananas and cloves and would compete with the berries. Of course, I’m still curious how this beer would have tasted with five, or even ten, pounds of raspberries…

The Raspberry Wheat Beer has been busy.

The raspberry sugars triggered a nice second round of fermentation that hasn’t quit after three days. This picture is was taken about 12 hours after adding the raspberries, even if it’s not clear, the beer was already looking bright red. Also, the new fermentation is producing a clean, full, white foam at the top of the carboy, just what I’m going for in the end product.

So, everything is on track and looking good. The only thing left to do to close the book on this recipe, besides entering it in a comp somewhere, is to get my hands on some yellow raspberries. They’ll add a great twist with a slightly different raspberry flavor and intense bright yellow color. I can’t find these for sale retail, so I’m ordering plants to grow them myself. They are early fruiting, but still I don’t think I’ll get a harvest until mid to late summer.

Fermentation for the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale was healthy and more complete than the last batch.

The final gravity was 1.014, an improvement over the previous batch, which stopped at 1.016. I don’t have any concerns or complaints about it. It just worked.

Since I added raspberries to this beer in secondary and they are a potential source of contamination, I decided to sample and save yeast from primary, instead of secondary, like I did last time. The drawback is that the yeast sample contains wheat, barley, and hop sediment, in addition to the yeast. In all likelihood, contamination won’t be a problem, so I may take another sample at the end from secondary and use that for future batches.

I served up the Gowanus Wheat beer at my buddy’s studio opening party last night and, aside from a little confusion over the name, it went over well.

Q: Cow anus?

A: No. Gowanus.

The only real difference between this brew and the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale is the mash temperature and duration. For the raspberry wheat, I lowered the temp and lengthened the mash to make a lighter, drier beer. But I don’t think those are necessarily positive characteristics for a standard wheat beer. There’s certainly a place for that sort of thing, but I think lagers are always going to be my preferred thirst-quenching summer beer. Next time around, my wheat beer will be full-bodied, as it should.

I took a quick sample while transferring the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale to secondary and, incomprehensibly, it’s perfect. Light and dry with a perfect gold color.

At this point, I’m just sampling what will be a backdrop to the raspberries that hopefully won’t turn out to be a syrupy-sweet mess. My aim is to produce a final product that’s crisp and refreshing, which is why I added only 2.5 pounds of raspberries instead of the usual five pounds home brewers add to a batch of fruit beer this size.

Anyway, it’s supposed to be something you reach for pool side on a sweltering summer day and, based on this in-between tester, I think it’s well on its way.

Just sent the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale to secondary, added the raspberries, and it looks outstanding.

I’m using Cascadian Farm organic red raspberries, which don’t have any additives whatsoever. I added four 10-ounce bags, or approximately 2.5 pounds. Most fruit beer recipes recommend five pounds of fruit, but I’m going for something a little more subtle. The beer itself is already really light and I don’t want the raspberries to be too overpowering.

Unfortunately, these aren’t the berries I ultimately want to use in this recipe. There are yellow berries out there that taste slightly different and are intensely yellow. Those are two unique twists that I think will make a great hook for this beer at competition. That only catch is that these berries aren’t really available at supermarkets yet, so I have to grow my own. I already put an order in for a four or five plants and I should get the first harvest in July.

Happy to say that the Gowanus Raspberry Wheat Ale is all brewed up and represents my first truly problem-free all-grain batch of beer.

I hoped to achieve a lighter, drier beer with this recipe, so I utilized a cooler and longer sugar rest. In the end, although I was thinking I could hold it right at 145 degrees for the 90 minutes, the temperature of the wort fluctuated between 140 and 150 degrees as it cooled and was reheated. That range is optimal for the enzyme I was trying to promote, so still all went well. Unfortunately for me, I forgot to measure the starting gravity before I pitched the yeast, but I will estimate approximately 38 based on the last batch.

Next weekend, after I move the beer to secondary, I’ll add whole frozen raspberries to add flavoring and some color. They’ll sit for two weeks and the beer should turn out delicious. Later in the summer I’m going to have some homegrown berries to work with, so for the time being I’m just using some organic red raspberries from the Brooklyn Co-op.