This is the first recipe made using my 14-gallon stainless steel Fermenator.

 

I doubled the following 6-gallon recipe to fill 12 gallons of the Fermenator's capacity.

 

7 1/2 lbs. Wheat DME

7 lbs. fresh blackberries, frozen

8 oz. lb. Belgian Carapils

8 oz. Crystal 20L

6 oz. Corn Sugar

2 oz. whole berry Hallertau hops

1 tsp. Irish Moss

 

Preparation

 

The only real prep for this recipe is in cleaning and freezing the blackberries so they're not covered in bugs, and don't stick together out of the freezer. It's simple. Rinse them in water, let drip mostly dry in a colander, and then carefully arranged onto backing sheets and pop into the freezer. Once frozen, they're ready for adding to the final moment of brewing.

 

Brewing 

Same as for most brews. I toasted the specialty grains just a bit, then removed from the oven and let them cool down. Added them to a disposable, cotton grain bag, placed into one of my three brew kettles, in 2 gallons of water, and began letting it all heat up to 150F.

 

Once there, I added the malt - some 15 pounds' worth (which necessitated three separate kettles and 8 gallons water among them to properly boil) and began adding in 1/2 hops for bittering. 30 minutes from completion, I added remaining hops and Irish Moss.

 

Once the boil had finished, I shut off the heat and added 15 pounds of frozen berries in two separate cotton grain bags, and let them steep in the wort for 20 minutes. They helped cool down the wort, and by soaking them while still being frozen, I was able to extract a lot of flavor and color, without all of the bittering phenols (though next time I might choose to get out ALL of the berry flavors, just for added kick).

 

From there, it was a matter of cooling it all down, and then funneling into the Fermenator, and pitching the yeast. The trick with this is that we weren't exactly sure how much water we'd really added to the wort, so I took several gravity readings. Yikes. 1.075. Pretty strong! So I poured in two more gallons of water, which brought it down to about 1.065. Fine. As it turns out, I could have added an additional two gallons, and probably ended up with about 1.050 or so -- but again, what the heck. Homebrew is about experimentation, after all.

 

Here are some fermentation notes:

 

- Originally brewed on August 20, 2006 with OG 1065 

 

- Trub/yeast were removed August 26 with SG 1012

 

- Bottled September 3 with SG about 1010

 

Six weeks of bottle ageing still didn't result in much carbonation, but now -- three months later -- the ale is simply fantastic. Crisp, lucious berry, nice finish. Oh, and 7.5%!

 

The original recipe I saw this written up on included the line - "the best damn beer ever". I tend to agree. Next year, I'm going to add fresh Marionberries.

 

David 

July 2006 - Okay, show's over. While the beer started off nice, and does in fact have a really smooth floral/citrusy hoppy aroma, my fears are confirmed - the bittering hops fell flat. Last year's, frozen, homegrown Cascade hops just didn't pull through. Chock it up to premature harvest I suppose.

 

This beer is still very nice, but definitely a far cry from the potential now being seen in the latest brew - Blackberry Wheat. Read on.

David