With Summer coming to an end, I thought it would be fun to try out a few beers that I felt would fit the season nicely. We recently received the latest edition of "Clone Brews" by Tess and Mark Szamatulski from a friend. It being a quiet Saturday afternoon I started poking through it a bit. After scanning several of the recipes, I came across one that sounded delicious and what called out to me as an interesting fit for the fall. The beer is a Maple Wheat Ale, originally crafted by Niagara Falls Brewing Company, Ontario, Canada.
I'm assuming this beer it typically brewed in the Spring, but for some reason the smell of the leaves falling to the ground this time of year reminds me of Maple. It could also be due to the plentiful amounts of Maple Trees in New England and the colorful display they give us during the Fall Season.
I also decided I wanted to try a Pumpkin Ale. For obvious reasons, this style has become a popular Fall brew. Sadly enough, I found that many recipes for this style do not even contain Pumpkin! I knew that my one requirement for the style would be that it be brewed with Pumpkin. After looking at some different online sources, I found a recipe that sounded excellent from homebrewtalk.com.
So today I went down to the local brewing supply shop and picked up all the ingredients required:
Maple Wheat Ale
7lb. Wheat DME
1.75lb. Wheat Malt
1.5lb. US 2-Row Pale Malt (recipe called for Canadian 2-Row, it being a Canadian Recipe)
12oz . Maple Syrup (4oz. for bottling)
2oz. Willamette Hop Pellets (1.5oz for bittering)
1tsp. Irish Moss
1pkg. Wyeast's 3056 Bavarian Wheat Blend Yeast
1/2cup Corn Sugar for bottling
Pumpkin Ale
6.25lbs. Light DME
1lbs. Crystal Malt - 60L
8oz. Belgian Biscuit Malt
4oz. Flaked Wheat
.75oz. Goldings Hop Pellets (
1/4tsp. Irish Moss
1pkg. English Ale Yeast(White Labs #WLP002)
1 Pumpkin (Cut and skin to obtain 60oz. for recipe)
The original recipe calls for canned Pumpkin, but I'm planning on baking the Pumpkin for at least an hour prior to using it in the brew (maybe even doing it the night before would be the way to go here.)
I also got around to setting up some yeast starters for these beers later in the evening. I plan to brew one beer Wednesday and one Thursday this week, and haven't decided which I'll do first. Most likely it will be the Maple Wheat Ale, just so I can begin baking the Pumpkin and save some time Thursday.
For the yeast starters, I sanitized my 1000ml. viles with 1tbsp. bleach and 1tbsp. distilled white vinegar (not adding the chemicals until the vile was filled with water.) I brought 2 mid-sized pans to a boil with 1000ml. of water each. I added in 3.5oz. of Wheat DME for the Maple Wheat Ale batch, and 3.5oz. of the Light DME for the Pumpkin Ale batch.
I let these boil for approximately 10 minutes before killing the heat. I then used a sanitized funnel and poured each batch into their respective vile, making sure to rinse the funnel and sanitize in between. I also put a sanitized sponge stopper in the neck of both viles. These chilled down for roughly 30 minutes in some cool water. Once they were cool enough I added the Wyeast 3056 Bavarian Blend Yeast to the Wheat Malt mixture, and added the WLP002 Yeast to the Light Malt mixture. Then I put the sponges back into the necks of the viles, and will be waiting for them to start activating for the brews later this week.
Tomorrow I will be bottling up a Pale Ale that I created a few weeks back and probably drinking a Heffeweizen that I also brewed while completing all of that hard work.
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