BeerSmith™ Recipe Cloud

Notes

Make yeast starter 2–3 days ahead of time. Heat 7.5 gallons of water to 120 °F and combine with the crushed grains in your kettle (not your mash tun). This is a mash thickness of 1.25 qts./lb. Your mash should settle in to around 109 °F. It’s OK if it’s lower. Very slowly, over about 10 minutes, heat the mash to 113 °F. Heat more quickly — at about 2 degrees per minute — to 122 °F. Let this rest for 30 minutes. After letting the mash settle for a couple minutes, pull a thick decoction from the main mash, roughly one-quarter the volume of the main mash. Put the decoction in a separate pot and heat to 162 °F. Hold this for 5 minutes, then boil the decoction until the 20-minute rest in the main mash is done. (Stir the decoction constantly.) Stir the decoction back into the main mash, which should yield a temperature of 153 °F. Rest at 153 °F for 45 minutes, then heat full mash — at about 2 degrees per minute — to 162 °F. Hold for 5 minutes, then transfer the mash to your lauter tun, adding boiling water to raise temperature to 168 °F. You will need about a gallon of boiling water for this. Let mash settle for about 5 minutes, then recirculate the wort for 20 minutes. Runoff wort, sparging with hot water to collect about 6.5 gallons of wort. Boil wort for 90 minutes, adding hops with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. Chill wort, transfer to bucket fermenter and aerate thoroughly. Pitch yeast sediment from starter. Ferment at 68 °F. Once fermentation starts, remove airlock and then the bucket lid (so you don’t suck airlock liquid into the beer). Replace airlock and leave bucket lid on loosely for next 2–3 days (while fermentation is vigorous and the fermenting beer is topped with kräusen). Seal bucket again after this time. Bottle in heavy bottles, such as 500 mL hefe-weizen bottles. (You’ll need about 40.) Siphon the beer into the dissolved sugar in your bottling bucket and stir well enough to even out the distribution of sugar. However, don’t stir so hard as to splash or otherwise aerate the beer. Keep the bottles somewhere warm (optimally between 70 °F and 75 °F) for a couple weeks while carbonation develops. Move to cold storage when a test bottle indicates the beer is fermented. As an option, you can add a teaspoon of dried lager yeast to your bottling bucket to help with bottle conditioning. =========================================================================================== Most traditional German wheat beer breweries used a large shallow open fermentation vessel which promotes the production of both the banana and clove (phenol) character. On a homebrew scale a plastic bucket, either a 6.5 gallon or the 7.9 gallon, used without the lid can emulate the traditional vessel. When using a 6 gallon carboy with standard bung and airlock will produce moderate amounts of banana and high amounts of spice. Conical fermenters will produce low banana and low spice character. The taller and narrower the fermentor gets the lower the ester and phenol production. The amount of yeast you pitch along with the amount of aeration you use work together to regulate Weizen characteristics. When using a high yeast pitch count and high level of oxygen you will experience low levels of banana, fruit and spice. If you maintain the high yeast pitch rare but reduce the oxygen level you will see moderate fruit and banana production along with low spice character. If you intentionally stress the yeast and under pitch but add higher levels of oxygen the fruit level will increase but the banana will remain low and the spice will be moderate. Finally if you use low levels of yeast and oxygen you will get high fruit and banana and moderate spice. As with most any beer yeast the fermentation temperature is also critical in controlling the final outcome of the beer. Generally lower fermentation temperatures will produce a cleaner beer with lower ester and phenol production. As you increase the temperature you will see an increase in both banana and spice production but will see a decrease the other fruity esters as the temperature reaches and exceeds 72F. Fermentation temps can range for 60-75F and will vary based on the strain you choose. There are a number of strains to choose from in liquid form and even a few dry options. The most used strain is the original from Weienstephan which is Wyeast 3068 or White Labs WLP300. This strain is the most responsive and is relatively easy to handle. Others that I would recommend would be the White Labs WLP380 Hefeweizen IV which has lower banana production and Wyeast 3638 that produces more fruit esters and a unique banana character. Fermentis Safebrew WB-06 Dry Wheat Beer Yeast and Danstar Munich German Wheat Beer Yeast are the dry options available. 1. Dough-in at 111 and hold for 15 minutes. 2. Ramp up to 131, and rest 10 minutes. 3. Ramp up to 149 F and hold. 4. Pull thick decoction; slowly heat to 158. (Hold main mash@149) 5. Rest decoction at 158 for 20 minutes. 6. Boil decoction for 10 minutes stirring constantly. 7. Recombine and equalize at 158. 8. Rest 10 minutes at 158. 9. Mash out at 170. 10. Sparge, collecting 3.5 gallons. 11. Chill to 58 before oxygenation and pitching. 12. Primary fermentation at 65.