Weizen-wit wonderwort

Anyone who knows even the slightest bit about me could have guessed how this was going to end up. In the tail end of my post on a brewing technique by which we sometimes strive to create two completely different beers out of a single brewing session, I wrote:

Or! I'll give in to my slothful nature because it's in the 80's out and I've had a hard week, and I'll just toss all the grains together, boil the whole stinkin' lot in one batch and let the fates sort it out in the carboys (and try to make amends later with dry hop and spice tincture additions) while I work on my tan and soak my feet in the kiddie pool.

The ultra-observant amongst you will note there are what appear to be oats and flaked barley mashed in with the rest of the grains in the above image. It was 89 degrees yesterday. There was only one brewpot. All the ingredients went into it. And my tan looks fantastic.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's the lowdown:

The following grain bill was tossed together and mashed in some good old-fashioned Marin County tap water:

9.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
5.00 lbs. Belgian Pale Malt(2-row)
5.00 lbs. German Pilsener
1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils
1.00 lbs. Flaked Oats
1.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat

After dough-in, we mashed at 148 for about 50 minutes before starting a continuous sparge (I still can't comfortable with the waste of batch sparging), running the lot into a single (lazy!) kettle. The kettle was hopped with (organic!) Hallertauer Mittelfruh. After boil, the remaining 10 gallons were split into two fermenters. One had a an ounce of East Kent Goldings in it, and the other some more Mittelfruh, the former receiving a dose of Belgian witbier yeast and the latter some Bavarian hefeweizen yeast (to be followed by a hit of German lager yeast before it goes in the fridge). The carboy with the witbier yeast will be getting a nice dose of coriander, lemon peel and grains of paradise when we rack it over to the secondary. It's already exploded nicely all over the basement in what can only be construed as a good omen.

But will either of them taste any good? Most likely, they'll be okay. More interesting to see will be how different from each other they'll really taste, considering the only true difference between them is the yeast. We shall see...