Wheat Wine: The Improbable Style

Another month, another wheat beer recipe? Hey, back off man, it’s summer! Actually, antipodean reader Darren suffers from a surfeit of desire and a deficit of beer to slake his thirst for the rapidly evolving style of Wheat Wine. Would you look at that? We take reader requests.

Odds are that you’ve never had the joy of a Wheat Wine. BA’s across America have only recorded 32 commercial examples of the style. Varying in color, strength, aroma and flavor, the style is a confusing flux of newness. Common denominators appear in the name, a wheat beer made to Barleywine standards of excess. Soft bready aromas and sweet wheat flavors provide a safe experimental base. Everything else is up in the air!

Ultimately what we’re looking for is a beer made with 40-percent to 70-percent malted wheat and brewed to an OG between 1.070–1.100 to give us a swift kick of 8-percent to 11-percent ABV. Great news for extract brewers—wheat extracts with a blend of 60 percent wheat, 40 percent pale malt set you up perfectly.

Go Toward the Light or the Dark?
With the basic grain bill out of the way, your first stylistic choice is pale or dark? The pale meets drinkers’ wheat beer expectations and needs little elaboration beyond a touch of light crystal malt for roundness. A light sugar addition helps drive the beer to a needed crispness.

The dark is the deep, chewy mean cousin, Dunkelweizen with the growth-hormone kick of a Doppelbock. But the big, scary monster is actually a sweetheart in disguise. The beating heart of the beast runs on a liberal dosing of heavier German crystal malts (55–80) and melanoidin. Sugar additions lean toward rich toffee-toned varieties. De-husked Carafa turns out the lights without a heavy roast character.

For either style, I prefer a middle temperature mash to preserve some, but not a lot of, residual sweetness.

Yeast—Which Homeland?
Our grain bill ranges from lightly golden to chunky dark, but the choice of yeast fundamentally alters the basic form of your beer. American Wheat Wines start with a neutral American Ale strain. The clean profile promotes the sweet characters, avoids the classic “big beer headache”-inducing fusel alcohols and allows for bold hopping statements.

The yeast road less commercially traveled, but potentially more intriguing, are Hefeweizen strains. Darker versions can morph into Aventinus’ bigger brother. Careful though! Weizen cultures push the ester and phenol envelope under normal conditions. Prepare a plethora of yeast and keep the fermentation temperature close to the bottom of its operating range (e.g., 62).

The Bitterness Factor
Last to consider are the hops. Your yeast choice largely determines where you can take the bittering. If you use Hefeweizen yeast, avoid the citrus and pine American bonanza. Those prized tones won’t work with the yeast’s potent banana and clove punch. Use a softer hand to deal out noble cultivars like Hallertauer, Tettnanger, Liberty or Mt. Hood. A neutral yeast profile leaves your weapons free to saturate the beer with beloved American “C” hops. (If you can find them!)

That’s just the basics of this weird, new kid. For instance, there are spiced winter versions. We’re seeing the formation of a new beer planetary system. The swirling dust is just beginning to coalesce, and the void becomes whole only by our exploration.

FALLING MAN PALE WHEAT WINE
For 5.5 gallons at 1.085, 62 IBU, 60 minute boil

Malt / Grain
8.00 lb. wheat malt
7.00 lb. domestic two-row pale malt
0.25 lb. CaraVienne malt
1.00 lb. Turbinado sugar (in the boil)

Extract Version: Replace 8 lb. of wheat malt and 6 lb. of pale malt with 10 lb. of wheat LME / 8 lb. of wheat DME.

Mash
Saccharification rest at 152°F for 60 minutes (strike with 4.5 gallons).

Hops
1.00 oz Santiam (pellets) | 6.8% AA | first wort hop
0.25 oz Warrior (pellets) | 17.1% AA | 60 minutes
0.75 oz Palisade (pellets) | 9.4% AA | 30 minutes
1.00 oz Glacier (pellets) | 5.8% AA | 15 minutes
1.00 oz Amarillo (pellets) | 9.4% AA | 5 minutes
0.50 oz Amarillo (pellets) | 9.4% AA | dry hop
0.50 oz  Glacier (pellets) | 5.8% AA | dry hop

Yeast
Wyeast 1056 / WLP001 / US-05
Wyeast 3056 / Wyeast 3068 / WLP300 / WLP 380 (for less hoppy versions) ■