Normally I can always think of a great name for the beer that I’ve just brewed, but, with wheat beers I get a mental block and all I can think of is rubbish puns on Hugh Hefner’s name.

So, still without a decent name, this wheat is a re-spin on the first attempt: https://yeastismybitch.com/2015/01/08/im-waiting-on-a-wheat-hefeweizen-mk1-the-first-outing/ and uses exactly the same recipe, but with a couple of differences:

This time around, I added 200g of flaked oats (and to hell with the Reinheitsgebot – I want more creaminess in my wheat!) and 1.5L of oat husks to avoid a sticky mash (and the inevitable regency fountain effect.)

I got my oat husks from Rob The Malt Miller – who advised that, despite what you read on the Internet, these particular husks don’t need washing prior to use.

The mash in the Braumeister did start off a bit “floaty”, so I did have to stir it after about twenty minutes, but then it did behave itself and all went well.

The refractometer showed a post-boil reading of 1056 so I overshot my target gravity by 3 points, but I’m still getting my eye in on wheats; normally for all-barley-malt beers I overshoot by miles!

For the fermentation I’m using a new yeast: it’s a dried Bavarian Wheat yeast from Mangrove Jacks.  I pitched a re-hydrated packet of Mangrove Jacks into the 22C wort and stuck it away in a room that was 19/20C  – aiming to satisfy the old German wheat beer maxim that pitch temperature and environment temperature should add up to 30C, (I was 1C over – so shoot me)

The environmental temperature has now risen to 22C and the carboy is warm to the touch…  This ones going to be fruity, I think.

After 6 hours the airlock was bubbling away nicely, after 24 hours the initial foamy krausen has fallen away and the surface of the wort is fizzing like lemonade…  God, I hope the head retention will be OK…

Update: 48 hours later, it smells strongly of very ripe bananas.  Perfect.  Just what I wanted.  You just have to get fruity sometimes with these things.