Hefeweizen Horrors.

[Lindsay Dive]

I recently made a Hefeweizen (all grain) using Whitelabs WLP300 which is my favourite wheat yeast.

Everything was quite normal until those really hot days hit Sydney a couple of weeks ago. I was fermenting the beer in my garage with wet towels around the fermenters (2 x 25 litres in 30 litre fermenters) as I like to keep the temperature at about 20 - 22 degrees. I have found in the past that this temperature tends to give you just the right amount of nice banana esters. Well, when the weather went troppo so did the yeast. It completely filled the head space in the fermenters and I was forced into removing the lids so I could clean and sterilize them, and whilst I had the lids off I skimmed the yeast off the beer with a sterilized spoon. I carried out this procedure about three times until the yeast had settled down.

I kegged this beer on Monday and force carbonated it overnight. I drank some of the beer last night and it has obsoletely NO banana esters at all. Extremely bland. The beer looks marvellous and has a long lasting creamy white head.
This has made me think that the banana esters must stay with the yeast and must be passed on after the yeast falls back through the finished beer. I'm certainly not a brewing chemist and I have really no idea of what's gone wrong other than the beer getting too warm and me skimming off the yeast. Any ideas?

I have made some great Hefeweizens in the past, but this one is not even near the ball park. Dont get me wrong, the beer has great mouth feel and body, its got no off odours or flavours, but its just lacking that nice aroma you get as you lift a nice Hefeweizen beer to your mouth

I thought I would pass this onto you folks as the hot weather is about to hit us and it could prevent you from buggering up your favourite Hefeweizen.

I was passing on this information to a friend of mine last night and he simply said, Why didnt you turn on the Air-conditioning and set it to 22 degrees and put the fermenters in the lounge room? I wont repeat what I said, but I bloody well know what Ill be doing when I make the next Hefeweizen.

Regards,
Lindsay.

 

[bindi]

Does not sound too horrible to me <_< looks, smells and tastes good except for no banana.
Next time try Wyeast 3333 or WLP 380 and don't skim the yeast, I just let it do 'it's thing' and don't touch it.
WLP 300 Wyeast 3068 is very good but IMO 3333, 380 is better for Hefe, others will disagree.

 

[Lindsay Dive]

Bindi,

Some time ago I made a Hefeweizen (50 litres) and split the batch into 2 x 25 litres and pitched one with WLP300 and the other with WLP380.
After all the punters had placed their bets we found out that the WLP300 was a clear winner.
I've stuck with it since. And, actually ordered more today.

Regards,
Lindsay

 

[homebrewworld.com]

Lindsay Dive
I have hear a few other brewers have had this prob recently,and if the Prime Minister can use it for an excuse so can we, ITS THE BANNANA SHORTAGE !!!!!!!!!

Na, serious now i recon it sounds like its fine,and yeah avoid skimming next time.
I think we can all appreciate the volcano ferment you experienced with the WLP300.
I even went and bought a 60L fermenter for my 30L batches of Wheat Beer !!!

cheers

 

[Lindsay Dive]

Isn't that amazing.
I have a 60 litre fermenter and when I was cleaning up the mess off the floor I said to my wife, "I'm gunna get another one of those big fermenters and put a stop to this crap".

 

[bindi]

OK, I will give it another go, didn't 'do it for me' the last time I used it.
Going by the Wyeast to White labs chart WLP 300 and Wyeast 3068 are the same :306 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast ,WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast , I am not so sure, the same with:3333 German Wheat Yeast WLP380 Hefeweizen IV Ale Yeast.
I have been getting much better results with Wyeast 3333, but will again try WLP 300 and 3333 slpit between a double batch, I will drink it banana or no banana.
Just love a good Hefe , there was a time when I would not touch a wheatie, but now have better taste. . Just baiting Batz, will he bite?

 

[homebrewworld.com]

Cmon Batz,
Ever tried Wheat Beer on ya Wheat Bix !
No need for chopped bannana....

 

[Tyred]

Recently did a hefewiezen with WPL 300. Doesn't appear to be any banana esters with it either at the moment, but then it's only about 4 weeks old in the bottle. Smelt bananary when brewing. From memory I managed to brew it at around 20-22 degrees. It might need to be consumed when the temperature increases to drag some more of the esters out. Still a nice easy drinking beer tho.

 

[user 384]

Hi Lindsay

How many generations old was the yeast you used? I remember from a Wyeast talk that hefe yeasts loose their hefe characteristics faster than other yeast loose theirs and it's not ideal to re-use the yeast as often as say a lager or english ale yeast.

Cheers
MAH

 

[Dr Gonzo]

There should be no problem with skimming the yeast off. German wheat beer breweries do it, and so do i. I still get a good level of esters in the finished beer.
As for No. generations old for wheat yeasts, it depends if you use the krausen or yeast cake. Top cropping the yeast results in much less mutation from the original. Some wheat beer breweries top crop as many as 100 times before returning to the original yeast source.

 

[Lindsay Dive]

MAH,

The yeast was a first timer out of a vial that was well passed is use by date, however, it fired up overnight in a two litre starter on the stir plate.

When I was skimming the yeast it smelled just fantastic. I think I threw out all the bananas :unsure:

I did not streak any onto a plate and I also did not keep any slurry from the fermenter.

I ordered some more along with another 60 litre fermenter today. I want to brew this critter before the hot weather really kicks in.

Regards,
Lindsay.

 

[Kai]

So what temperature did the ferment end up at?

 

[Lindsay Dive]

So what temperature did the ferment end up at?

Kai,

I know this sounds stupid but I did not even check it. I know that things work fine at around the 20 - 22 degrees but when those two days of really hot weather hit us it was all over in a real hurry.

Regards,
Lindsay.

 

[Sammus]

Not wanting to drag up the old thread, but I heard recently that the banana esters become prominent at lower temps - so could LD's problem be due to the higher fermentation temps? It's hard to imagine that harvesting yeast would also remove the esters?

S

 

[Stuster]

Not wanting to drag up the old thread, but I heard recently that the banana esters become prominent at lower temps - so could LD's problem be due to the higher fermentation temps? It's hard to imagine that harvesting yeast would also remove the esters?

S

That's interesting. Where did you hear that? I've always read that there were more clove phenolics at lower temperatures, with more banana at higher temps. :unsure:

 

[Muggus]

Sounds familiar. I skimmed the head off a hefeweizen I was fermenting with WLP 300 Hefeweizen yeast so I could use it in a weizenbock. My hefeweizen went from having fantastic bubblegum and candy banana esters to restrained fruit and clove-like spice, not bad by any means, but I think I buggered it up.
Although my weizenbock turned out very nice indeed.

 

[Sammus]

Well I had Trent explain:

you need to fork out for the liquid yeast to get the banana and clove that is typical of the style, pitch low, and mine was fermented cool (unintentionally) and the banana is dominant. If you like the cloves better, do a ferulic acid rest (somewhere around the 40C mark? Google it) and that creates the pre-cursor for 4 vinyl-guaicol, which is clove flavour.

in a PM - soon after which I read it somewhere else too.

 

[Stuster]

I've certainly read that about the ferulic rest for the cloves and plan to do that for the next hefeweizen I do (I'm planning on 43C). The best info I've seen on hefeweizen's is the huge, recent thread on Northern Brewer. Linky.

 

[Trent]

Gday
I recently read somewhere (maybe on TechTalk?) that some of the Americans are saying to ferment wheat beers cooler. I recently did mine, and pitched it at 18C, using approx 6 million cells per mL (approx 130 billion cells all up), and within the first 24 hours it had dropped to 16C, and stayed there for 2 days before I got hot water bottles and managed to bring it up to 19C. This was during that stupid cold snap we had a few weeks ago, so I couldnt really get it up above 19C.
Day 4 it was 1026 (down from 1052) and it had a fair bit of clove to it, but not heaps of banana
Day 8, it actually tasted not much of clove OR banana, but was 1012
Bottled, and opened my batch for a party 2 weeks later, and all you could get was banana, nobody could pick the clove (I could get it faintly), and it seemed really out of character for normal brewing advice. I cannot recall for sure where I read about the Seppo's saying to ferment it cooler, I am afraid, but it seemed to work.
It is also possible that pitching so low caused the esters, as we all know that yeast growth translates directly to ester formation. The cooler ferment did not carry clove over into my beer. It was single infusion mashed at 68C.
I would be very interested to see if others experience similar results, as I do like banana in my weizens. I will be brewing another one when I get back from o/s, and will again pitch low, and ferment cooler.
My estimate of 130 billion cells came from a smackpack (100b) into 1.2L of wort, and then pitched about 800-900mL of that 24 hours later. Jamil reckons a smackpack in a 1L starter will give 50% growth, give or take.
I PM'ed my views to Sammus to give him some insight into what I (in italics) think he should do to get banana into his dunkelweizen. I could be wrong, it is only one experience I have had, but it goes against everything I have read about cooler = cloves, warmer = banana, as I have fermented other weizens at 22-24C and not gotten banana as prominent as this batch.
I will drop a bottle off to Les the Weizguy at my earliest convenience for his appraisal, and maybe he can contribute his opinions of the beer to this thread?
Not trying to go against the grain too much, but it could be an interesting experiment for others to try.
All the best
Trent

 

[Stuster]

Great reply, Trent. Nothing's as good as direct experience like that. I'm hoping to get to a hefeweizen in the next month or so, and I'll be trying to keep it fairly cool, as I'd prefer to have more clove than banana. Anyway, hopefully, Seth will give us all the benefit of his weizdom now.