Hefe weizen

[awalker]

I love edringer,anyone know how to clone that one.

I think that clone recipe is in the CAMRA - Brew Classic European Beers At Home.

I will check when I go home and post if it is!

[DRB]

[Barley Water]

Mysterio, I completely agree with you, I would not try this with any other yeast (except maybe some Belgian strains) and especially not with a lager yeast. I always pitch a big starter and use copious amounts of O2 for the other ales and lagers I make. The thing about weizen yeast that is different though is that of course it is not floculent so the risk of stalling out is much lower (since it stays in suspension hopefully forever). Also, I see this as a low risk technique since if it does stall out, just pitch some more yeast which over here maybe costs about $5 (a relatively cheap brewing lession).

After reading some of the posts on this forum, I am starting to get the impression that ya'll are a pretty conservative bunch with regards to technique and formulation. Maybe our goals are a little different (which I don't think is a bad thing) but I am always looking for ways to make my beers different and unique. I am involved in competitions over here and to win anything, you need to push the style guidelines because the competition is brutal. Of course, it may just be the Texan/American thing coming out which another poster has already slammed me about. By the way, the trappist monks employ some of the same techniques to encourage ester formation in their beers and we all know that God is on their side so it must be ok.

[mysterio]

By the way, the trappist monks employ some of the same techniques to encourage ester formation in their beers and we all know that God is on their side so it must be ok.

Amen

[awalker]

I love edringer,anyone know how to clone that one.

I know, at last

Edringer
Hefe Weissbier
Camra - Brew Classic European Beers at Home

OG 1051

25litres
Wheat Malt 3210gm
Pale Malt 2630gm

Start Boil 90 min
Tettnang Hops 20gm
Perle Hops 15gm

45 mins
Tettnang Hops 10gm

15min
Tettnang Hops 10gm

Mash 66oC 90 min
FG 1011

Top Working Yeast

Hops that helps

[DRB]

Nice one .

[delboy]

had a bottle of Weihenstephaner hefe weissbier tonight, its actually very similar to my hefe its got that same 'smokey roastyness' to it as mine, so maybe mine isn't a million miles from what it shoud be .
Unfortunately though i was looking for something more like franzikanier which has a lot more banana and bubblegum going on.

[mysterio]

You're not going far wrong if it's close to Weihenstephan, that's my favourite hefe.

[delboy]

You're not going far wrong if it's close to Weihenstephan, that's my favourite hefe.

I take that back it isn't close to Weihenstephan (i wish ) had a taste test tonight with both of them the Wei is great nice sweet tones from the yeast. The smokiness in mine has nearly gone but what im left with is a pretty bland hefe compared to the real thing .

[steve_flack]

After reading some of the posts on this forum, I am starting to get the impression that ya'll are a pretty conservative bunch with regards to technique and formulation. Maybe our goals are a little different (which I don't think is a bad thing) but I am always looking for ways to make my beers different and unique. I am involved in competitions over here and to win anything, you need to push the style guidelines because the competition is brutal. Of course, it may just be the Texan/American thing coming out which another poster has already slammed me about.

In general British brewing (commercial and homebrewing) is rather conservative. Outside the big brewers the recipe formulation is fairly basic using a few fairly common malts and hops and yet a vast variety of different ales are produced. It's probably that the thing in competitions is to stand out, to make the judges go 'Sh*t, this is different'. It's not about subtlety. Many beers that 'push the guidelines' are sometimes not something you'd want to spend the whole night drinking - they're too distinctive.

I do think that it would be nice if British homebrewers did break out and try new stuff other than was in the Wheeler/Line books though. There's a whole world of beers out there and some are really nice

British homebrewing's horizons don't need to stop at our shoreline

...I'll fetch my coat.

[Barley Water]

I can now report in on the batch of weizen I made a couple of weekends ago. On Sunday, I primed the batch with 1 3/8 cups of wheat DME and ran it into one of my kegs. I will let it carbonate for a couple of weeks at room temperature. I also used my counterpressure filler to fill three 12 oz bottles for an upcoming competition. It's a lot easier to bottle weizen before the carbonation develops plus I am hoping the the yeast in the bottles helps with the taste.

I can report with confidence that under pitching and no aeration has no effect on attenuation, the beer tastes fine (Oh yee of little faith). This was my first time using Wyeast 3638 and frankly the jury is still out on this yeast. My initial tasting picked up bannana, clove as well as some plumb and maybe a little apple like taste. Once this stuff gets carbonated, I will force myself to sit down and do a through tasting and report back since many times things change once a beer is carbonated. I usually use White Labs WLP300 so I may do another batch with it and see how it compares. I am not so much worried that this batch wont taste like a weizen, I am really just fine tuning for my taste.

Here are a couple of little gems I picked up lurking on an American forum concerning weizen which make really good sense to me. First of all, do NOT do a protein rest. If you do, you run the risk of having lousy head retention which I have had happen to me. I was doing a rest for about 1/2 an hour at 120F and I believe it was causing problems. Second, consider doing an acid rest at about 110F. This will cause an increase in compounds that are precursors to compounds which produce the clove aroma and flavor (a very good thing in a weizen). These guys are also of the opinion that step infusion mashes will get the job done as long as you use some Munich malt in the formulation. Although I agree that you can probably get the taste where you want it doing this, I firmly believe that decoction mashing makes for the creamy mouthfeel that the best examples of the style display.

Anyway, for a weizen it all about the yeast and how you handle it. I would love to hear your experiences with different strains and how you coax different flavors out of them by messing with the fermentation parameters. By the way there Daab, I think we are still inside the box with all this so your comfort level should still be good (just messing with you there guy).

[oblivious]

Defiantly worth adding some Munich malt, especially if your not doing a decoction mash

[Barley Water]

Well, I think I can report success with this effort. I did a quick tasting last night and although there was quite a bit of yeast in the sample I tried, I am pleased. The beer has a pretty good balance of bananna and clove (noticable but not really in your face) but there is also a pretty strong plumb like flavor (which I think is pretty cool). As noted above I naturally carbonated this beer over about 3 weeks at room temperature so there is alot of yeast sediment at the bottom of the keg which will clear out to some extent after pulling off a couple more pints. I am going to let this sit for another week then do a very serious taste test to make sure I like it and also to see what kind of flavor drift happens with a little cold conditioning. For some reason when tasting it, I found myself thinking "do not ferment even 1 degree hotter" or you will get some unwanted fementation by-products but sometimes I get a little wierd when doing these taste tests.

By way of comparison, this beer is very different than what I would anticipate getting if I had used WLP300. I did not get nearly as much bannanna and no bubblegum flavor like you should get with WLP300 which should be helpful to those fans of Paulener out there.

[flytact]

I've just completed a hefe on Saturday, coincidentally, some of us had an informal tasting on Friday night. I believe there were 10 beers total, 2 US and 8 German. They all tasted different and what I had perceived as the classic "hefe taste" were in the plain old weizens.
Talk amongst yourselves....