Dear Replicator,

I have been searching for a clone recipe of Easy Street Wheat, brewed by Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado. Can you help me to recreate this easy drinking brew?
Patrick Potter • Cheyenne, Wyoming

Doug Odell, head brewer and owner of Odell, began homebrewing in 1975 (during what’s considered to be the dark ages of homebrewing) with extracts and dry yeast. Over time, he eventually moved up to all-grain brewing and, after some brewing classes at the University of California at Davis, he began commercial brewing in 1989. Here’s what Doug has to say about brewing Easy Street Wheat.

Easy Street Wheat started out as a seasonal beer for Odell Brewing in 1991. They had originally thought that an unfiltered beer was too sophisticated for the market but they were wrong. Easy Street proved so popular that they had to make it a regular part of the lineup. It ended up knocking out Heartland Wheat, their filtered wheat beer. Doug says that Easy Street Wheat is best described as an “American-style wheat beer,” which they do not filter.

This beer does not have the signature banana, clove or phenolic flavors associated with the German-style weizen beers. What this beer does have is light body, with some nice floral and citrus (grapefruit) flavors. Since Easy Street is unfiltered, the yeast is encouraged to stay in suspension. They keg or bottle after mixing some of the yeast from the bottom of the fermenter,  helping to give it some of its flavor and mouthfeel.

Doug says that they mash at a low temperature (148° to 150° F) in order to produce more fermentable sugars and to leave a low final gravity in this beer. Easy Street Wheat uses Cascade hops for bittering and Tettnanger for finishing. It also uses a low to medium flocculating Kölsch yeast, which gives it some delicate flavors and helps to leave the signature cloudiness in this beer. Easy Street won the gold medal at the 1993 Great American Beer Festival (GABF). It was named Easy Street because the brewers had it easy by not having to filter out the yeast. For more information about Odell Brewery go to  the Website (www.odellbrewing.com) or call (888) 887-2797.  

Odell Easy Street Wheat
(5 gallons, extract with grains)
OG = 1.045  FG = 1.008  IBUs = 13 to 18

Ingredients
3.3 lbs. Briess wheat malt
  extract syrup
1 lb. Briess wheat dry malt extract
1 lb. wheat malt
0.5 lb. Munich malt
2 oz. crystal malt (20° Lovibond)
3.75 AAU Cascade hops (0.75 oz.   
  of 5% alpha acid) (bittering)
4.3 AAU Saaz hops (1 oz. of 4.3%  
  alpha acid) (aroma)
4.5 AAU Tettnanger hops (1 oz. of   
  4.5% alpha acid) (aroma)
3/4 cup corn sugar for priming
German Ale/Kölsch yeast (White   
  Labs WLP029) or Kölsch yeast   
  (Wyeast 2565)

Step by Step

Steep crushed wheat, crystal and Munich malts in 3 gallons of water at 150º F for 30 minutes. Remove grains from wort, add malt syrup and dry malt extract to wort, and return to a boil. Add the Cascade hops and boil for 60 minutes. Add the Saaz and Tettnanger hops for the last 2 minutes of the boil. When done boiling, strain out all the hops and add the wort to 2 gallons pre-boiled, cooled water in a sanitary fermenter. Top off with pre-boiled, cooled water to 5.5 gallons.

Cool the wort to 80º F with a wort chiller or in an ice bath. Aerate the wort well and pitch your yeast. Allow  to cool over the next few hours to 68º to 70º F, and ferment for 7 to 10 days or until specific gravity remains constant. Bottle your beer, age for about one week and enjoy!

All-grain option: Eliminate the malt syrup and malt powder. Your grain bill will be 3.75 lbs. of wheat malt, 3.75 lbs. of two-row malt, 0.5 lbs. of Munich malt and 2 oz. of 20° Lovibond crystal malt. Mash your grains at 148º to 150º F for 45 minutes. Collect enough wort (approximately 7 gallons) to boil for 90 minutes and get a 5.5-gallon yield.

Decrease bittering hops to 3 AAUs of Cascade hops (0.6 oz. of 5% alpha acid) to account for increased hop extraction efficiency in a full boil. The remainder of the recipe is the same as the extract.


If you have a favorite beer and would like to know how to replicate it, send your recipe request to the Replicator at edit@byo.com. Or write to us at Brew Your Own, 5053 Main Street, Suite A, Manchester Center, Vermont 05255.