Introduction and First Brew Session!

I moved to Florida about six months ago with this bad-ass truck and trailer.  Needless to say, it's been a long, hot summer (not complaining, check out the pic below).    There's also been lots of rain, which has kept me from brewing as much as I'd like.  After a few months, the weather cleared, and I was able to have a brew session.

In addition to brewing beer, I enjoy trading beer.  I recently acquired a Three Floyd's Gumballhead from Indiana in a trade, and it hit the spot.  So much so that I decided to "clone" the brew.  It's an American Wheat Ale with a big grapefruit hop profile.  Light and refreshing with a lingering bitterness.

I usually build my own recipes and don't often clone beers.  This brew will be a close approximation to the target beer with some tweaks to suit my own tastes.  Hence, the use of quotations above.

I brew all-grain batches or "scratch" beer.  There's nothing wrong with using malt extract, but I prefer the process and gadgets that go into making a beer with actual grain.  I'm a gadget guy.  I think you get a bit more control over the recipe as well. 

Recipe:

Nico's Hoppy Wheat Treat 10/06/2011
5 gallon batch
5 lbs. Rahr pale malt
3.5 lbs. Soft White Wheat from Whole Foods
.5 lbs. Crystal 40L
Irish Moss @ last 15 minutes of boil

.5 oz. Magnum whole leaf hops @ 75 minutes
2 oz. Amarillo whole leaf hops @ 10 minutes
2 oz. Amarillo whole leaf hops @ 5 minutes

Nottingham dry yeast pitched into wort at ~60F.

I decided to include a pic of the 50 lb. malt bag I bought.  My wife, Andi, calls it dinosaur grain.  You can see why. Lol.