Early Morning Brew

As I mentioned in the last post, today I brewed a Gumballhead clone. For those not familiar, Gumballhead is an American wheat brewed by Three Floyds Brewery in Munster, Indiana. Since the majority of American wheats are very easy drinking, light, refreshing.....and rather bland, Three Floyds brews theirs with a ton of hops. What the recipe utilizes is several additions of hops but without imparting too much bitterness, only in the range of 35-40 IBUs. I got my recipe from here but made a couple changes. First, I added more hops since this recipe only calculated 27 IBUs. I also scaled down the malt a touch since I didn't want a 5.5-6% abv brew.
Brewing early in the morning is great, to be able to pitch your yeast and clean up before lunch time is nice. Getting all the water measured out and grain milled the night before has become almost routine for me to save even more time. I noticed chilling has been taking even more time now since our groundwater temperature is rising. Time to get more on top of building the whirlpool chiller!

	Stats OG 1.057 FG 1.013 IBU 45 ABV 5.7 % SRM 6	Specifics Boil Volume 7 gallons Batch Size 5.5 gallons Yeast 78% AA US05

Fermentables

% Weight	Weight (lbs)	Grain	Gravity Points	Color
45.5 %	5.00	American Two-row Pale	25.2	1.6
45.5 %	5.00	American Soft White Wheat	27.3	2.5
9.1 %	1.00	Belgian Caravienne	4.1	4.0
	11.00		56.6

Hops

% Wt	Weight (oz)	Hop	Form	AA%	AAU	Boil Time		IBU
10.5 %	0.50	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	4.7	MH		5.5
10.5 %	0.50	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	4.7	FWH		9.3
15.8 %	0.75	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	7.0	60		23.0
10.5 %	0.50	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	4.7	15		7.6
21.1 %	1.00	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	9.3	0		0.0
31.6 %	1.50	Amarillo	Whole/Plug	9.3	14.0	DH		0.0
	4.75							45.4

4/29/09: Brewed this morning with light rain. Ended up with over 6 gallons of wort, so gravity was a bit low, only 1.050.
5/06/09: Fermentation looks down. US05, in true fashion, tore a new one; down to 1.009. Flavor is very clean, very hoppy and not too bitter. I'll rack in a day or two.
5/09/09: Racked to secondary on 1.5oz of Amarillo hops.
5/20/09: Kegged up the whole batch.