Free beer and food to boot — Guinness has semi-regular promotional events like this one at King Plow.

Slainte!

‘Nuff said.

That’s where Mark and I will be for the next couple of hours. See you there.

The East Atlanta Beer Festival is today!

While it’s great that there is a beer festival less than a mile from the house, this will also be my first chance to volunteer at a festival. I’ll be pouring from 3pm until closing, at a booth to be named later.

Stop by if you’re in the area!

I brewed this beer in honor of my German Aunt who was due to visit us from Munich. Since she would be here around memorial Day, a light weiss sounded like the perfect thing to brew.

For 10 gallons (75% efficiency):

Grain
6.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
6.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
4.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat

Hops
1.25 oz. Tettnanger (4.60%) 60 min.

Yeast
White Labs WLP400 German Hefeweizen

Mash grains at 152F for 60 minutes. Add all hops when wort begins to boil. After 75 minutes, add Irish moss. After 15 more minutes, knockout to chiller, and pitch yeast. Will be in primary fermentation for up to 5 days, and then go for a 1 or 2 week secondary fermentation.

OG: 1.044 (11.0P)
Anticipated SRM: 9.2
Anticipated IBU: 12.6

Packaging
Kegged and force-carbonated

Tasting Notes
Once in a while, you have something go wrong with a beer. With this one, it was the yeast. We typically capture, rinse and reuse yeast at least three times before genetic mutation makes the yeast throw off flavors into the beer. Apparently, the WLP400 strain doesn’t like to be reused that often.

As a result, the beer had an acidic (lactic?) infection that grew over time. For the first three or four weeks it was not noticable. The beer was a pleasant tipple, and great for late spring in Atlanta. After that, though, the acidity became much more apparent. After eight weeks, the beer so so sour that it became undrinkable.

Since then, we have become more careful about our yeast harvesting practices, especially with the WLP400 strain.