Cloying Wheat Beer

[clowder]

Hey peeps, I need help figuring out why my wheat is soooo freaking cloying AND if there's anything that I can do to salvage it.

Here's my recipe:
Partial Mash
4.5 qts H2O
1 lb Rahr 2 Row
1 lb Flaked Wheat
115 F for 8 min
145 F for 40 min
Rinsed with steeping H2O + 1.5 qt H2O @ 163 F
Added H2O to bring boil volume to about 3 gl
2 lb Briess Wheat DME
.2 oz 13.5 AAU Magnum 60 min
2 lb Briess Wheat DME @ 20 min
Wyeast German Wheat 1 L starter

Stats
OG 1.044
FG 1.010
Expected IBU 10ish
Force carbed to about 2.7 vol CO2 in frige, stored for a month at room temp, put back in the frige.

I took the first 'finished' tasting today and it is soooo freaking sweet. Not sweet in a good way, crazy cloying sweet, undrinkably(for me) sweet. I don't recall this sweetness in any of my pre-kegging tastings.

Two questions: What caused this? Can I do anything about it?
My thoughts: My IBU's are already somewhat low and somehow I may have failed to get full untilization. And no, there is nothing that I can do to correct it.
Any help would be awesome.
~Clowder

[Westco]

Lower IBU's won't hide the problem not does it sound like thats the problem. i don't see anything wrong with your recipe. So that pretty much leaves your yeast and healthy it was. Do you have temp control? Did it stay steady around 68º or so? How old was the yeast? Did you make a starter?

Westco

[clowder]

Fresh smackpack, well before expiration date. I did a 1 L starter, it seemed healty and had no off flavors or aroma. Pitched at 65 F, let temp raise to 69 F and held 5 days 'til I achieved my FG. Moved to secondary for four days and held at about 65 F.
When I was talking about the IBU's, I was making the assumption that lower IBU's would cause/compound the "sweetness", not hide it. I figured that if I was closer to 15-18 IBU, the additional bitterness would prevent it from being cloying. Sorry if it was unclear. Is 5-8 more IBU enough to make a noticable difference?

Again any help/feedback is much appreciated!
~Clowder

[MikeB]

Some guesses:

Certain malts have a natural sweetness to them, an example would be most pilsner malts. Not sure if Rahr 2-row would fit this description. Another might be that there is not enough alcohol in the beer to offset the malty sweetness. I'd bet if you had started at 1.050 and got to the same FG of 1.010 it would not seem as sweet. Either (or both) of these combined with the low IBUs in this beer might make the beer seem overly sweet.

[clowder]

Some guesses:

Certain malts have a natural sweetness to them, an example would be most pilsner malts. Not sure if Rahr 2-row would fit this description. Another might be that there is not enough alcohol in the beer to offset the malty sweetness. I'd bet if you had started at 1.050 and got to the same FG of 1.010 it would not seem as sweet. Either (or both) of these combined with the low IBUs in this beer might make the beer seem overly sweet.

Thanks MikeB!!!
I think that you are probably right-on with those assumptions. Next brew, I'm going to try to bring up the SG to around 1.048, IBU to 13-14, but also reduce the amount of Flaked Wheat. I think that the high % of flaked wheat might be the major sweetness culprit. It makes up about 17% of the grain bill. I think that I should probably shoot for closer to 10%, though I'm still open to suggestions.

Thanks again,
Clowder

[alan_marks]

Hello!

Two things come to mind:

First, you have a protein rest and a beta rest, but no alpha amalyse rest at about 151 to 154. That might break down some of the sugars in your partial mash to more fermentable sugars.

Second, what was your final volumn? Not knowing this concerns me since I do not know where you want to go with this brew. Are you trying to make a German hefe? An Amerincan wheat? I guess I don't unerstand what kind of beer you are looking to brew.

Thanks,
Alan