Weissbier recipe

[mysterio]

Gearing up to brew this tomorrow. My previous weissbiers have been very neutral, much like Erdinger, so I'm going to use some tips and tricks from Eric Warner's German Wheat Beer book plus BarleyWater's suggestion of stressing the yeast. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!

Plan is to pitch in a liter starter of WLP300 with no wort oxygenation. Yeast will be pitched at 12 C and fermented at 18 C.

Ferulic acid rest will be conducted at 44C to boost the levels of 4-vinyl-guaiacol to get the desirable clove-like aroma, and hopefully stressing the yeast a little will coax out some Isoamyl acetate responsible for the banana aroma. I'll pull off a decoction and raise it to saccharification temp for 15 minutes then boil it for 15 minutes before returning it to the main mash, rest for another 60 minutes before mashing out.

Weissbier
Weizen/Weissbier

Type: All Grain
Date: 11/06/2008
Batch Size: 11.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.16 gal
Boil Time: 90 min Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
5.55 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 60.00 %
3.00 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 32.43 %
0.70 kg Munich Malt (17.7 EBC) Grain 7.57 %
40.00 gm Hallertauer, New Zealand [7.20 %] (60 min) Hops 14.4 IBU
1 Pkgs Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP300) Yeast-Wheat

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.051 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.1 %
Bitterness: 14.4 IBU Calories: 43 cal/pint
Est Color: 8.2 EBC Color: Color

Step Time Name Description Step Temp
20 min Step Add 23.12 L of water at 47.3 C 44.0 C
60 min Step Decoct 11.97 L of mash and boil it 67.0 C

[Barley Water]

Sounds like a winner to me, good luck. You might also want to get some feedback from Delboy concerning the yeast. Apparently you guys don't get your yeast as fresh as I do (which makes sense since White Labs is located in the U.S.). He is trying to do the same thing and he is reporting that his yeast is slow to kick off. It maybe that since his yeast is less viable to start with, stressing it is causing problems. I have done it more times than I can count and never had issues but I buy my yeast from a store that does a pretty good business so the turnover is pretty quick. Anyway, I am going to feel really bad if his heffe doesn't turn out well due to something I suggested and I am hoping that everything turns out well for him and you as well.

[mysterio]

Cheers BW. In my experience the tubes are fine as long as you make a starter. I reckon they just have a very low viable cell count. I would normally do a 2L starter for a batch this size so i'm only underpitching by half with my 1L starter. I've used WLP300 many times with success, its just that I only get traces of the banana/clove flavours.

[Barley Water]

Good deal, let there be copious amounts of both bananna and cloves. As an aside, I was in a Gordon Bierch last night with our beer club (they are a brewpub chain that makes very good German beers). They make a very nice Heffe and the brewer was giving us a tour. In a shameless attempt to get some free yeast, I attempted to scrounge up some of his leftovers. He told me that I could get a better sample just going to the local homebrew store and purchasing the local offering. I told him I usually use WLP300 and he suggested that maybe that was exactly what they were using (wink, wink). Anyway, he also told me that they were fermenting at between 68F and 71F so it is nice to know that were are doing things just like the pros. If things work out correctly, I will be doing my next batch of heffe in about three weeks, this weekend however will be my first attempt at a mild, should be interesting.

[mysterio]

Interesting to hear that their fermentation temps are in the 20-21 C region. Listening to Jamil Zainasheff he makes it sound like its a sin to ferment the yeast above 17C.

[mysterio]

Just pitched the yeast this morning at 12C... i'll probably raise it up to 18 over the course of the day.

Surprisingly smooth brewday, decoction was barely any hassle. Beersmith calculated it perfectly, when I returned it to the main mash it hit 67C bang on

[macleanb]

I fermented my 3068 at 19/20c the whole way through:

Banana: Couldnt get more if you shoved a peeled banana up each nostril!

Clove: Some, but not as much as I would like