Yesterday (March 24), I bottled up the orange wheat beer, skipping a secondary fermentation stage. The beer had fermented for 11 days and reached a final gravity of 1.013. With a starting gravity of 1.042, the ABV is 3.9%. Because my sources suggest a higher amount of carbonation for the American Wheat style, I used 1 cup + 2 tbs. of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water for the primer. I ended up with 35 12-oz. bottles, 7 16-oz. bottles, and 2 22-oz. bottles.

The beer has much of what I’d expect for a wheat ale and the strain of yeast that I used. The appearance is pretty cloudy, and when tasted at room temperature there is a distinct banana finish, with no clove or citrus flavor apparent. When I cool the beer down, however, the banana is much diminished and a distinct citrus note pokes through. The color is perhaps a little darker than I anticipated, but this may be due to the fact that I used liquid rather than dry malt extract. In any case, I think this is going to be a nice warm-weather beer!