Hefeweizen

I want to make sure I have a couple options on tap at the house this summer so I am trying to keep the rotation going.  The other day I decided on a Heffy for a number of reasons.  One being that they are inexpensive.  Being a pretty low gravity brew to begin with, only about 12# of grain was needed.  I had some yeast saved from a prevous batch last fall so that saves me another $8 that a fresh vial of WLP320 would have cost.   Secondly, they are quick to make.  The same all day Saturday is required for brewing, but a week in primary and it will be ready to keg.  We are talking about 10 days from brew to glass.  So, I got that going for me…which is nice.  Oh and another thing.  It is one of the few styles that my wife will drink.

Hefeweizen literally is Hefe (yeast) meaning the beer is cloudy with the still suspended yeast swimming around, and weizen (wheat) so basically a cloudy wheat beer.

So there.

The details on the beer are this:

Grain Bill:

  • 6#  Wheat
  • 5#  Pilsner malt
  • .5# Melanoidin
  • .5# Honey Malt

The latter 2 were just to add a little something to make it less boring, even if I did break out of the norm a bit.

Mashed at a relatively cool 151F so as to maximize ferment-ability.  It is more complicated than that, but suffice it to say this is to prepare the resulting sugars to be more readily consumed by the yeast resulting in a more attenuated or dryer finished product.  1oz of Domestic Hallertauer leaf in a nylon stocking supplied the slight hop bitterness that this style needs.  Fermenting with a resurrected 1.5qt starter from a half pint of yeast slurry from the same kind of beer form last October.  The yeast strain I am using, as I mentioned before is White Labs WLP320.  It is a Hefeweizen strain but produces much less of the classic banana and clove flavors that are characteristic of the classic German Hef’s.   I like the milder flavor and it is easier to share with other non-beer-geeks.  It is sometimes called an American Wheat or and Oregon Hefeweizen.  I wasn’t sure if being in the fridge for 9 months would hurt it, but after nearly 24hrs the starter got going and pitching that in to this batch got things going in a hurry.  I managed to keep the fermentation temp down to 68-70F to keep the production of fruity tasting “esters” in control.  A T-Shirt covering the fermenter, wetted down with a fan on it, does the trick nicely.  Probably not the first time the words “Wet T-Shirt” and “Beer” were in the same sentence.

Anyway, the fermentation activity has peaked I think and in a couple more days it will be pretty much done.  This one also will likely be entered in the home brew contest next month at the Western Idaho Fair

——-

After 1 week in Primary, the airlock is letting out 1 bubble every 30-35 seconds.  I am hoping for a good final gravity of about 1.012 or so.  The last Hef I made was a bit too heavy and sweet.
By tomorrow afternoon it should be down to about 1per min.  Which is about my threshold for moving a beer into secondary, or in this case, straight to the keg.   Hefeweizens are OK, even preferred to be young and cloudy so secondary, which is usually meant for settling and clarifying is not needed here.  This will also work out well because the next beer I am making will use the same yeast.  Literally the same yeast.  As in,  after cooling the freshly made Weizenbock, I will put it in the same fermenter that the Hefeweizen was just removed from.  With the leftover yeast “cake” still in there.

1.  Less cleaning of carboys.  (a good thing)

2. A rather large colony of live and hungry yeast right there and ready.  (another good thing)

——

Well, airlock activity held steady at 20-30 bubbles per minute so I didn’t want to keg it just yet, but I wanted to use all that nice yeast sludge on the bottom for the batch I brewed today so I transferred it to a 5G carboy.  Nearly an additional  gallon was transfered to a growler and a 2l soda bottle with a pressure cap that I can attach my CO2 system to.  I will chill and force carbonate that one for some early taste tests in a day or two.

The gravity on this Hefeweizen stands currently at 1.014 which is where it will finish I’m sure.  I’m happy with that I guess.

A few days or a week in secondary and then the keg.

Author: brewster

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