Change Your Brewing Schedule To Match The Season

It's getting on towards the end of the cooler weather up here in the great northeastern United States and time to take a break from drinking our traditional cold weather beers for awhile. The warmer weather we've been having has me and lots of other beer lovers thirsting for some really golden refreshingly awesome summertime beers again. For me there's no better beer to fill this need than a nice cold citrusy American Wheat beer because they are perfect for drinking on a warm sunny day.

Screwer In The Rye Ale

I've got about half a corny keg of my Screwer In The Rye Ale left to drink until only fond memories remain of this amazing beer for a awhile. In order to keep up with the changing seasons now is the time to ramp up my wheat beer brewing schedule again so there's plenty of cold refreshing wheat beer on tap to keep up with the warm weather demand. It's clear to me that most beer drinkers like to drink light colored lower alcohol beers during the summer months and drink the dark higher alcohol beers during the cooler months of the year.

I know that's how I'm feeling now since this past fall and winter's brewing schedule included plenty of dark beers like Cascadian Dark Ale, Irish Stout and Brown Ale. Screwer In The Rye is very citrusy with a hint of flaked rye spiciness and just enough chocolate malt to give it a darker warmer color and my Yakima Valley clone is a deep dark citrusy high alcohol warmer upper best served during the colder months.

Summer Is Perfect For Drinking Wheat Beer

In contrast my 420 Special Wheat is light in color, citrusy with a slight hint of spice almost unnoticeable amount of coriander with a clean refreshing finish. Pitched and fermented using a decanted 2 liter starter made from second generation East Coast Yeast ECY10 - Old Newark Ale™ yeast I washed from a batch of beer fermented last month.

But the truth be told I am fascinated with the thought of reaching into my yeast library, grabbing a few vials of previously washed yeast and making up a nice starter from it to pitch into my next batch of beer. I know for a fact from brewing previous batches of wheat beer that ECY-10, ECY-12 and WLP-001 will all ferment a really great tasting American Wheat beer. Just be sure to toss in some citrusy hops and some bitter orange peel and you and your beer will be good to go.

Screwy's 420 Special Wheat

Brewin' The 420 Special Wheat Beer

This weekend I brewed my very first batch of warm weather drinking beer, my all time refreshing favorite too, a summer wheat beer. The recipes starts out with a good amount of Munich malt, a bit of CaraVienne malt added for good measure, a fair amount of German Wheat malt with half as much Flaked Wheat. This current version is an all grain recipe that I've developed myself over the years, it was originally an extract recipe with steeping grains using Muntons Wheat DME and some dry wheat yeast I rehydrated.

420 Special Wheat

I pitched a nice healthy 2 liter starter, made from 2nd generation East Coast Yeast ECY10 - Old Newark Ale™ yeast, it's one of my favorites and I use it now for brewing most of my Ales. I should call it the Special International Wheat beer since the recipe's yeast is American, but more than likely an English strain brought to the US by Peter Ballantine himself way back in the early 1800's.

2 Liter Starter Of East Coast Yeast ECY10 - Old Newark Ale™

The addition of German malts, English yeast and American Citrus hops makes this a really special beer that has a style all it's own. Adding a tiny amount of freshly crushed Coriander, one small pinch Grains of Paradise seed and about an ounce of bitter orange peel to the grain bill creates a very interesting wheat beer that's refreshing and citrusy.

 The choice of yeast for this recipe makes all the difference in the world, especially if you've never been a fan of those styles fermented with heavy flavor German yeasts. I find using a clean well attenuating strain like White Labs WLP001 - California Ale Yeast™ or East Coast Yeast ECY10 - Old Newark Ale™ fermented at 65F gives this recipe an IPA like flavor and aroma with little influence from the yeast itself.