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Saturday, January 31, 2009

West Town Gumball Toe, A Tribute to Three Floyd's Gumball Head

Three Floyd's Brewing Company brews beers that make any beer drinker smile. The intensity of flavors in beers like Gumballhead, Robert the Bruce, Alpha Klaus Xmas Porter, and Black Sun Stout, as well as others, inspire me as a brewer. If I were to claim influences, Three Floyd's would be high on my list. After acquiring a really nice variety of hops before the summer of 08 began, I decided it would be an opportune time to pay tribute to Three Floyds by making my own version of their Gumballhead, a hoppy American wheat beer, brewed in many ways like an American IPA but with a large part of the grain bill consisting of wheat.

My general idea was to balance the intensity of Amarillo and Warrior hops - Amarillo is mentioned on the Gumballhead label - against the flavors of Caramel 120°L malt (1/4lb), Red Wheat (2lbs), American Two-Row (2lbs), Alexander's Wheat Liquid extract (4lbs) and Munton's Dry Wheat Extract (1lb). The caramel 120L contributes a raisin bread like flavor to the beer, while the hops are a pungent mix that hints of grapefruit and lemongrass. Both the caramel 120°L and the Red Wheat contribute color to the beer, though a soon to be posted picture reveals that Three Floyd's Gumball Head is still quite a bit darker and more red than the rather orange West Town Gumball Toe.

I think a nice way to alter this recipe might be to add another caramel malt to make the malt profile a little more rounded out and fuller, and to use a fresher liquid wheat malt extract from Austin Homebrew Supply or Northern Brewer, i.e. find some fresh Briess Liquid Wheat malt extract from wherever is convenient to you. The fresher extract would probably make for a fuller wheat flavor. Gumball Toe is lighter in flavor than its expertly brewed Three Floyd's counterpart, with unfortunately less bready toasted malt flavor.

The Gumball Toe tribute recipe is below:

American Summer Wheat
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General
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Category: Light Hybrid Beer
Subcategory: American Wheat or Rye Beer
Recipe Type: Partial Mash
Batch Size: 5.5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 3.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 65 %
Total Grain/Extract: 9.25 lbs.
Total Hops: 3.5 oz.
Calories (12 fl. oz.): 199.4

Ingredients
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2 lbs. Pacific Northwest Wheat
2 lbs. American 2-row
.25 lbs. American Caramel 120°L
4 lbs. Alexanders Wheat Liquid
1 lbs. Muntons Dry Wheat
1 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
.5 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 5 minutes.
.5 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Pellets, 8.50 %AA) added to Secondary.
.5 oz. Warrior (Pellets, 16.00 %AA) added to Secondary.

Vital Statistics
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Original Gravity: 1.050
Terminal Gravity: 1.011
Color: 11.47 SRM
Bitterness: 44.9 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2 %

1 comment:

  1. I'll go on record as saying this was the best home brew I sampled in 2008. In other words it was the best home brew Seth made in 2008, but that's still a compliment as I believe I had at least five of Seth's releases in '08. -Joe

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