A Wheat Oops

One of my favorite beers in the world is Three Floyds Gumballhead. Now, beers from the guys at 3F are not cheap, but they're guaranteed to be top notch and a fine expression of the given style. I surely don't have the hubris to assume that I'm able recreate such a fine brew, but I wanted to give it my best shot. As described by the Three Floyds Website:

An American Wheat Ale, Gumballhead is named in honor of the underground comic book cat created by Rob Syers. Initially a seasonal summer beer, now brewed year round due to demand. This beer helped redefine American Wheat Beers. Brewed with Amarillo Hops and a generous portion of American red wheat, Gumballhead has a complex hop aroma with notes of grapefruit, lemon zest, marmalade and peach. These flavors combined with low bitterness make Gumballhead a refreshing American Wheat Beer that doesn’t suck.

Gumballhead is a very problematic beer. First and foremost, it's quite addictive. It's definitely full flavored for a wheat beer, has a very palatable body and crisp taste. Because this beer is so awesome, it has broad appeal. Thus, 3F has some trouble keeping up with demand. It's a shame to see the empty Gumballhead shelf in local purveyors of fine beverages. The only sure thing is to go to the brewpub in Munster, IN, a short 40-minute drive from Downtown Chicago.

Since I'm not a brewery, I'm limited by whatever ingredients are available at the store at the time of purchase, and freshness of grains and hops is certainly not guaranteed (though I'm in no way blaming the beer supply store for my failure).

Grain bill:

• 1.5# American Six-Row Pale Malt
• 1# German Wheat
• 1# Canadian White Wheat
• 0.5# CaraVienne
  

Naturally, wheat is a major component of the beer, account for half of the total grist. It was probably a bad idea to use that much six-row malt. Six-row, like two-row, is a base malt used to provide the bulk of the fermentable sugar in the beer. Six-row malt, however, contains a greater amount of enzymes, important for use with other grains that have weak enzymatic powers (especially highly toasted/roasted grains and non-barley grains). I'm sure I could have gotten away with, say one pound of two-row and half a pound of six-row. I'm not sure if this actually affected the flavor. The CaraVienne provides a bit of extra color and body to the beer.



I used my standard process to brew the beer, so I won't comment on that (as usual). For hopping, I used two ounces total, one each of Amarillo and Cascade. I put in each 1/3 of the Amarillo pellets for 60, 30, and 5 minutes of the boil. The Cascade plugs went in for 1 minute of boil and the for three days of cold hopping. (Note, cold hopping is typically done during primary fermentation, however given my equipment, I simply steep it, refrigerated, and strain it out prior to fermentation.) The bitterness is about 35-40 IBU.



So far so good. The wort is somewhat hazy, as is to be expected from a wheat beer. Gumballhead is clear but I'm not as sophisticated a brewer as the guys at 3F. The OG of the wort was 1.049, a predicted final ABV of 5.2%. Perfect for a summer ale. After two weeks of primary fermentation, I bottled the beer. The final gravity was 1.015, meaning the alcohol topped out at 4.6%. Not awful, not great. It increases slightly over the course of secondary fermentation, so let's call it 5%. At the time of bottling, it smelled EXACTLY like Gumballhead. I didn't taste it. The majority of the aroma comes from the hops, not the malt.

Two weeks later, I opened the first bottle of "Gumby". It smelled decent, though not as good as before. There was a decidedly funky aftertaste that marred the overall enjoyment of the beer. It is a citrusy/chemical flavor that surely doesn't belong in beer. I tried from this bottle every few days, then from another bottle every few days with similar results. I FINALLY opened a bottle in which the off flavor didn't dominate the beer experience. There's obviously something wrong with this beer.



Appearance: Pours a very creamy white foam, leaves a delicate lace around the edge of the glass. Color is Golden/Amber with a slight brown tinge. This is also the cloudiest of the beers I've made.

Smell: The citrus/floral aroma of the hops is dominant but it also has an old beer smell, like when somebody leaves a cup of Bud out overnight.

Taste: As I stated earlier, this beer has a particular off flavor. The front-palate is totally flat. The mid-palate is almost exclusively this bad taste. The back-palate actually tastes like Gumballhead. There's a good beer in here somewhere. I really do want to enjoy it. The hop bitterness is actually pretty pleasant.

Mouthfeel: This beer feels a bit lighter than past batches. It's hard to think much about the texture of the beer when the flavor is so off. I really can't think about anything else. It doesn't seem as bubbly as other beers either.

Drinkability: Low marks for the off flavor, otherwise, this would be a winner.

What I'd do differently:
Use two-row pale malt and subtract some of the six-row.
Add a light colored caramel malt to round out the flavor a bit.
Hop for a bit longer.
Hope for a better result.

So I didn't exactly succeed at replicating Gumballhead. Oh well. This is batch number six and the first five turned out well (and I think that the next three that are coming up will be successful as well).

Prost?