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Geordie lager kit – wheat beer with Saaz hops
Here’s the idea….
Take one cheap ass Geordie Lager Kit, some Wheat Spray Malt, a jar of Golden Syrup, some Saaz hops and Safbrew WB06 wheat yeast… and it makes a Wheat beer of sorts.

I’m going to do the following:

• Boil up the Wheat Spray malt and 15g  Saaz hops for 40 mins
• Maybe add 5g Saaz hops for the last 10 mins of boil
• Add 5g Saaz hops at flame-out for a 5 minute steep
• Tip the warmed Kit into the FV with the golden syrup followed by the hot spray malt and hops strained through a stainless sieve
• Pitch re-hydrated Safbrew WB06 wheat yeast after aerating the wort lots
• Maybe even dry hop the FV after fermentation has finished

Fingers crossed it should turn out like a nice hoppy wheat beer!? 🙂

The Ingredients:

The Wheat Yeast rehydrating in a little boiled water and wheat spray malt:

The Hops just gone in the pan:

The 40 minute boil:

Spent hops in sieve:

FV filled with yeast Pitched at 22 Deg C after a good aeration:

OG reading of about 1038:

Hopefully this will get fermenting by tomorrow 🙂

**Update 7 days later**
Current Gravity reading of 1004 which should put the ABV at 4.46% I’ll bottle in the next weeks time. (Then maybe more Coopers Stout, or the Dark Ale) 😉

**Update 10 days later – Bottled**
01/April/2009 – I’ve just bottled my Geordie lager/Wheat beer, it went pretty well and made 39-off 500ml bottles and about 5-off 330ml’s too. Chipped a bottle slightly to just dumped the whole contents down the sink and threw the bottle, I’ve read about how bad fragments of glass are in your body!!!
Added just over 80g of household sugar to a 100ml sanitized jug of the brew and microwaved to dissolve the sugar for the priming in the bottling bucket. Bottled with my bottling stick, easy as! 🙂
I tasted a little and it was pretty nasty, nothing bad tasting and it certainly smells like an Erdinger… so its 7 days at 20 deg C now then at least 3 weeks (probably 4) at cellar temperature 11-13 Deg C approx.

**Update 19 days later – Sneaky Taste**

I’ve taken to filling a few 330ml Lefe’s when bottling, this way its easy to get a taste of whats conditioning / maturing without cracking open a full 500ml bottle.

Bearing in mind this has only had 9 days in the warm (20 Deg C) followed by a couple of hours in the fridge, its pretty good, the Safbrew WB06 wheat yeast has done its bit with the flavours with a yeasty estery taste, its lacking quite enough fizz but poured with a nice creamy head (3 or 4 more weeks in the cool should help), and I gave the last drop the customary swirl to raise the sediment so it looks like a wheat beer. The Saaz hops maybe aren’t coming through as much as I’d have liked, maybe the wheat and yeast are dampening it down a bit, but its still nice and dry and crisp 🙂

Fingers crossed, this will improve further, its one to do again 🙂