Our friend Sarah Flora of Flora Brewing joined us to make an American Wheat Lager. This is a recipe for a light, refreshing, citrus & fruit-flavored beer. Unlike a German Wheat Beer, an American Wheat Beer uses a clean ale or lager yeast that doesn’t give any banana or clove flavors in the final product. This is a clean fermenting, low abv beer that we absolutely love. Is it the perfect summer sipper? Read on to find out.This recipe is for a 5-gallon batch and is tailored for our 10 gallon 120 volt brewing system. Watch us use it in the video below.
Full Brew Day Video
Benchmarks
- OG: 1.043
- FG: 1.007
- ABV: 4.73%
Ingredients Needed
Grains
- 3 lbs 9.6 oz - Pilsner Malt
- 3 lbs 9.6 oz - Red Wheat Malt
- 1 lbs - Rye Malt
- 12 oz Vienna Malt
Hops
- 1 oz - Saaz
- 2 oz- Citra
Yeast
- WLP830 - German Lager Yeast
Brew Day Instructions
Water
Fill your kettle with 7.13 gallons (27 Liters) of water. Add a Campden tablet to remove chlorine. You will want a yellow balanced water profile for this beer. The profile is below.
- CA - 50
- MG - 7
- NA - 5
- S04 - 75
- Alkalinity - 154
Mash
Crush your grain. We recommend double crushing for maximum efficiency. Heat your water to 152 F (66.7 C) and mash for 60 minutes. Check the pH of your mash 5-10 minutes in and adjust to around 5.4.
Hops
Once your mash is done, pull your grains, hook them above your kettle, and let them drain for about 10 minutes. While you’re waiting, set your controller to 100% of power in order to start a boil. This recipe calls for a 30-minute boil. The hop schedule is as follows.
- 5 minutes - 1 oz of Saaz / 2 oz of Citra
Yeast & Fermentation
After a 30 minute boil, chill your wort down to room temperature in order to pitch your yeast. We decided to split this batch in two - We pressure fermented 4 gallons and traditionally fermented about 1.5 gallons. Since we only had one pack of yeast, we transferred all the wort into a bucket, pitched the yeast, and aerated. Then, we siphoned 4 gallons into a keg and left the other 1.5 gallons in the bucket.
We pressurized our keg to 14 PSI and let it sit at room temperature for about a week before putting it into a lager fridge (48-55 F or 8 - 12C). Our keg has a floating dip tube, so as long as our beer stays cold, we don’t need to transfer it into another keg off of the yeast.
We traditionally fermented our bucket by putting it into a lager fridge for 3 weeks. After 3 weeks we increased the temperature to around 65F (18C) for a diacetyl rest. After a 3 day diacetyl rest we lowered the temperature to 35F (1.6C). We kept our beer at 35F (1.6C) for around 3 weeks.
Tasting
Right when we poured this beer the color really stood out to us. Finishing with a strong golden hue, this beer is a treat for the eyes. The aroma was super fruity, we picked up passionfruit and guava. When we tasted it, we were delighted to find out that the fruit carried through into the flavor with citrus being the most prominent flavor. The body was super light and with an ABV of 4.73% this is definitely a perfect summer sipper! If you brewed this comment below and let us know how it turned out.
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