Tales from the One Gallon Brew MY first original Brew: Cherry Hop Wheat Beer

Well with an early and disappointing exit from my daughters softball tournament and 300 dollars in the hole with a broken bat...

I had more time on Sunday evening to brew a batch of beer. This time I was on my own, but decided to try a sparge batch since I picked up an inexpensive second pot from Wal Mart

Also this would be my first original recipe made up from pieced together ingredients. I had wanted to try a sort of Cherry beer and figured a Wheat beer would match well with it. 

So I had 2 pounds of 2 Row I grabbed from my buddy rob on our last Brew knowing it is the base for pretty much anything.

 I bought a pound of White Wheat and 2 pounds of cherries. To round it all our I had some Citra Hops left over from my last brew (dry Hopping) and got an ounce of Centennial Hops for the batch.

 Rounded that out with some Munich Wheat beer yeast and I was ready to go.

I started with 2 and a half Quarts of water and got that up to 160 degrees. Poured in my grains (after crushing them with a peach can, I think I need a mill I will see how this batch comes out but I don't think I am crushing them enough)

 Anyway I added the grains and stirred for the hour (every ten minutes not the whole hour I also needed to add heat a few times to keep it in the 144-152 range)

Yeah I bit hard to take a picture pour and stir with steam coming up

Once I was close to the hour I heated another 4 and a half quarts to 170  (next time I am going with at least 5 to 6 quarts the boil brought me under the gallon mark) and I brought the temperature on the mash to 170. 

I strained the wort into the other pot and then sparged through the strainer for just over a gallon of wort.

I got the wort up to a boil added 1/3 of the centennial hops and a third of the cherries to the boil. 

I can say pitting the fresh cherries was time consuming but I am hoping that in the end the fresh cherries will give me a better taste than frozen could have

I also made a big mistake and dropped a third of a tab of Whirlfloc (was supposed to wait till last 10 minutes that is what happens brewing beer with a toddler running around and you have to have a split attention span) 

Nothing I could do at that point so I pressed on. I added another third of the Centennial hops at 30 minutes along with another third of the fresh cherries. And finally adding the last of the Centennial and cherries at 45 minutes. I also added a half a teaspoon of Irish Moss. Then with ten minutes to go a half an ounce of Citra hops to give it a hoppy kick. (for this batch I may leave it alone or I may add another half an ounce in secondary not sure yet. 

This time I also hydrated my yeast (something I have not done with my other small batches, we use smack packs on the 5 gallon versions, but that would be too much here, I can say the last Beer I did seemed to have a dead Yeast in it (My everyday Bitter Sweet IPA, we will see in a few weeks on that one)  Well in a couple of days I will move it over to secondary and we will see how it is going. As always I finished the brew night off with a beer....A Local beer at that My favorite from Kirkwood Station..Midnight Train