Greetings from Ocala, FL

[stevemark]

I joined the forum awhile back, but I'm now going public.

I've been home brewing with some friends for just under a year. I'm excited about moving to all grain soon. We put together a beer club called Philosopher's Beer Club as a way to encourage beer culture and home brewing in Ocala.

I participated in several brewings before designing my own take on a Dunkel-Weiss. I began with a standard DW recipe and added chocolate and Belgian biscuit malts to the boil and bananas to the fermentation. Next time: more banana and more chocolate, but I'm pretty excited with how it came out. I'm working on a few recipes and will post my results.

[Padronis]

What yeast did you use? I recently did a German Hefe and fermented with the white labs WLP300 at 70 degrees and got all of the bananas that I wanted. Either way it sounds like you are having a blast!

[triple-oh-six]

Wecome to trhe forum brotha!

[stevemark]

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Wheat - from a starter
Breiss Organic Chocolate
Belgian Biscuit Malt from Northern Brewer

I think the biggest benefit from the bananas (only 6 to 5gal) was mouth feel. I'd be curious to see if I'd get the same banana esters without their addition. After trying Wells Banana Bread, I wanted to try for a chewier beer. The Wells had all the banana aroma with none of the "breadiness" that I would expect out of banana bread. That's why I added the biscuit malt.

Next time I'm going to use Weyermann chocolate wheat malt and give that a go.

We're calling it the $10 Bluth Banana for fans of Arrested Development.

[TheDarkSide]

Welcome. Another from Ocala? What happened...did you guys have a meeting or something?

Say hi to Travolta for me.

[hadabar]

hey stevemark! Fellow ocala homebrewer! Nice to see I'm not the only one in this town...hit me up...
i'd love to have some more info on the brew club...

take it easy!

[brettanomikey]

I brew with Stevemark in Ocala. Who are you? How long have you been brewing? Man we would love to hook up sometime and maybe brew together or just talk beer. We have started a Beer Club in Ocala to try and create more beer culture. So far we have about 45 members and have done about 5 beer tastings.

Awesome to hear there is another homebrewer in Ocala, especially one whos part of the BN Army.

Mike

[brettanomikey]

BTW, the beer club is on Facebook, if you do a search for "Philosophers Beer Club" you should be able to find it.