Brauerei Hermanski: Peachy Number Nine

Brauerei Hermanski has been silent for a long time. But I found a quiet Sunday afternoon this past week and finally got around to bottling a peach wheat beer that I have had on the fermenter for a while.

Backstory

This was batch number 43. Some in the homebrewing community recommend brewing the same batch until you get it right – I have never pulled this off. While I have occasionally re-brewed the same base recipe it is hard to fight the urge to experiment. In this case the base beer was the Original Pyramid Wheat recipe from Charlie Papazian’s Microbrewed Adventures (I have never brewed a recipe from this book that I did not like). The first time I used it as the base beer for a honey-wheat. This time a good friend of my wife gave us two one-quart bags of peaches and Aita and I agreed that they would do well in a beer.

Recipie

5.5 lbs.  (2.5 kg) wheat malt extract syrup (50/50 wheat/barley)

1 lb         (454 g) Crystal Malt ( 10-L)

1.25 oz. (35 g) Cascade hops 5% alpha (6.3 HBU/175 MBU 60 min.

¼ Oz.     (7 g) Perle hops 8% alpha (2 HBU/56 MBU)-15 min

½ oz.      ( 14 g) Perle hops- I minute boiling

1/4. tsp. (I g) Irish moss

Safebrew T-58 Dried Yeast

1/2 cup corn sugar (priming bottles)

I steeped the grains for 30 min at 155. The peaches I put into the secondary fermenter. I have used dried yeast for the last two beer and it always takes off fast but also seems to taper after about 24 hours. I left the peaches on the secondary for almost two months – this had nothing to do with how long I think the peach should have been left on the beer – I just did not have time to bottle. The OG was 1.045. This was the first time that I tried a hydrometer that my brother-in-law got me for Christmas. The hydrometer read 1.042. Not too bad.

Homebrewery

 I am still a stove-top extract brewer. We moved into a new house almost a year ago and gained a lot more kitchen space as well, but I have still found one of the best investments I made to be a collapsible table. This is where I stage most of my brewing equipment. The area by the stove is the queue for ingredients waiting to get into the wort. The area by the refrigerator is sanitizing buckets, tubes and used ingredients (hops & grains, etc.)

Bottling

I was expecting to see the yeast demolish the peaches and was a little surprised to see them mostly left in the beer. I had put them in sliced and if I did this again I might chop them up a little finer. The beer finished at 1.010 for around 4.5% ABV. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no harsh sourness in the beer – so I do not have to tell my friends that it is a lambic when I give it to them. Of course, the final word will come in two weeks.
  

Prost.