First Weizen

[pickledparrot69]

Gday. Planning to do a wheat beer (hefeweizen) for the first time over the holidays, and have a few questions for the experts.

Question One. What is torrified wheat, compared to standard wheat malt?
Question Two. Are there any different rules regarding mashing, or OK to treat like barley malt? Blend will be approx 50/50
Question Three. Should the aroma hop additions be omitted in order for the yeast flavours to shine?
Question Four. Looking for a big banana presence, is WLP300 the best in the range for this ?

Thanks, PP69

 

[manticle]

Not an expert but I have brewed a successful weizen and I can answer some of your questions.

Hit Zwickel or Les the weizguyup for some good advice on brewing hefes etc. There's a few others on here that seem to have a good handle on it too.

1. Torrified wheat is an adjunct - it is not malted as wheat malt (obviously) is.
2. Some brewers successfully make weizens from single infusion, others step mash and others decoct. You can take your pick how many steps and/or decoctions.
3. Most traditional recipes I've seen have no late additions. Bittering additions are fairly low.
4. Haven't used wlp 300. My recent one used 3068 which I think is similar/equivalent. I got some banana, some clove but I deliberately fermented low to try and get more clove. I think the mash schedule may also have an influence but get better advice than mine on that.

 

[cdbrown]

I've just brewed a weizen with about 50/50 wheat/pale. 30g hallertau @ 30mins, 5g tett and 5g hallertau @ 15. IBU 11.8.

I've read that the mash, yeast and temp all contribute to the various flavours produced. I've been able to get more banana by having the ferment temps about 22 or so 24C. Unfortunately I don't know much about the WLP300 but according to Mr Malty that's the same strain as Wyeast 3068 which is Weihenstephan 68 strain and craftbrewer says "Classic German wheat beer yeast, used by more German brewers than any other strain. Dominated by banana esters, phenols & clove-like characteristics."

 

[Snow]

Gday. Planning to do a wheat beer (hefeweizen) for the first time over the holidays, and have a few questions for the experts.

Question One. What is torrified wheat, compared to standard wheat malt?
Question Two. Are there any different rules regarding mashing, or OK to treat like barley malt? Blend will be approx 50/50
Question Three. Should the aroma hop additions be omitted in order for the yeast flavours to shine?
Question Four. Looking for a big banana presence, is WLP300 the best in the range for this ?

Thanks, PP69

G'day parrot,

love this style and have brewed plenty.
1- Manticle answered this for you.
2- Like he said, there are plenty ways of mashing. I have found my best results have come from a 20 min acid rest at 42c followed by a 45 min sacch rest at 67c. I have done decoctions in the past and it did make the beer slightly more "malty", but not enough to warrant the effort. My blend is usually 60%wheat, 40% pils malt.
3- That's a personal choice. I like to add 5-8g of Tett or hallertau at about 15 mins, but most of the aroma comes from the yeast.
4- You can get nice banana with WLP300, but I found you need to ferment higher (say 20-21c) than Wyeast3068 to get good banana. I once fermented WLP300 at 18c and only got phenolics and a little bit of banana. My caveat is that I am lazy with my yeast starters, which may be a factor. Nowhere near the starters that Zwickel uses :blink:

Cheers - Snow.

 

[pickledparrot69]

Cheers to all for the replies. Any Sydney people on the Northside that may have recently tried the current hefeweizen at the 4-Pines Brewery, Manly - that's the intensity of banana that I'm going for.

Temperature will be around 24 degrees not by design but because we can't keep the fermenter cool, so the next few are going to be wheats & belgians I think, to brew 'to the season'. Let's hope this doesn't create an overload of the characteristic we're chasing with this one. I will be checking out a few recipes in the next two weeks but probably go with equal parts pilsener & wheat, with a touch of crystal no greater than 100 grams. Keeping the bittering at <15 units seems to be appropriate to what I want to achieve, the bittering addition will be from POR and the flavours and ever so slight aroma addition will be from hersbrucker.

Not familiar with 'rests' too much, but worth reading up on it. Brews are done with the bag method, so not sure if we can play around with the temps through the mash - could burn the material.



Thanks
PP69

 

[Zwickel]

Not familiar with 'rests' too much, but worth reading up on it. .....

okay, let me tell ya how Im doing my Hefeweizen, you may pick out some ideas:

Grain bill: 70% wheat malt, 30% Pilsener malt

dough in around 35C, leave it soaking for around 20min.
go to ferulic acid rest at 42C for 20min.
heat up to 63C for a beta amylase rest for 30min.
then go to 72 for another 30min. doing an alpha amylase rest,
heat up to 78C and mash out.

Bittering to around 15 IBU, boiling time 90min.

thats all.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[cdbrown]

Zwickel - for those that use eskys for the mash tun without an element, is it possible to drain off some of the mash, heat and add back to mash to increase the temps?

 

[hughyg]

I did one a few weeks ago. a bit of advice. Run off slow out of the mash tun. I did a run off for my first runnings which got stuck just at the end. It was my first ever stuck mash which i put down to high wheat percentage and running off too fast! It wasnt a big issue as I just added my batch sparge water mixed it up and then run off my sparge nice and slowly.
I used 3638 and fermented at 19C and got a great banana/clove balance.
hope this helps

 

[Zwickel]

Zwickel - for those that use eskys for the mash tun without an element, is it possible to drain off some of the mash, heat and add back to mash to increase the temps?

of course one can do so, that would be a classical decoction mash.

Another way would be, just to dough in at a water/grain ratio 2:1 and adding some boiling water to it to achieve the next step.
Also to get an medially temp, for example 66C, between Alpha and beta amylase as compromise would be fine.

I think, the mashing schedule for weizen beers is not as important as it is for Pilseners. The yeast makes the beer.

:icon_cheers:

 

[manticle]

I did a mixture for my recent hefe - ferulic acid rest with slightly less water, added hot water to bring up to protein rest then removed 1/3 of mash for decoction. Decoction was brought up to sacch temp for 20 mins, then brought to boil and boiled 20 mins. Returned to mash, temp adjusted with hot/cold water. I use a 26 litre esky tun.

 

[pickledparrot69]

It's a lot to take in, all this step mashing. Just reading John Palmer's detailed explanation in chapter 14 of the online book, and it's something to work towards. Previous mashing for non wheat beers have been to raise the temp to the low 70 degrees celcius then add the grain in a well draining bag, where the temp would then drop to the mid 60s. So with wheat beers is this method not going to work? Recently read somewhere that the starches don't convert with an all wheat grain mix which is why you need the barley addition. By the sounds of it there a whole lot more to consider.

The question now is do I forget about the dead simple bag mashing method for making a hefeweizen because it won't work, and focus more on learning the incremental temperature increases, what they do and how to achieve it with limited equipment?

 

[Nick JD]

It's a lot to take in, all this step mashing. Just reading John Palmer's detailed explanation in chapter 14 of the online book, and it's something to work towards. Previous mashing for non wheat beers have been to raise the temp to the low 70 degrees celcius then add the grain in a well draining bag, where the temp would then drop to the mid 60s. So with wheat beers is this method not going to work? Recently read somewhere that the starches don't convert with an all wheat grain mix which is why you need the barley addition. By the sounds of it there a whole lot more to consider.

The question now is do I forget about the dead simple bag mashing method for making a hefeweizen because it won't work, and focus more on learning the incremental temperature increases, what they do and how to achieve it with limited equipment?

Your method will work fine. A hefe is primarily about the yeast. Worry about this finer points if it doesn't taste like a good hefe - but it will. It's a good thing there's so much amazing knowledge on AHB - but sometimes it's hard to know which you can and can't ignore.

And you can easily do a 100% malted wheat, weizen - because you BIAB you don't need to add stuff to make sparging possible.

I've done a no-wheat, weizen (sounds silly, but it was just to see how much the yeast is responsibe for the flavour) and the wheat plays a surprisingly small part in the flavour profile.

EDIT: protein rests are mainly used for unmalted wheat. Get malted wheat.

 

[manticle]

It's a lot to take in, all this step mashing. Just reading John Palmer's detailed explanation in chapter 14 of the online book, and it's something to work towards. Previous mashing for non wheat beers have been to raise the temp to the low 70 degrees celcius then add the grain in a well draining bag, where the temp would then drop to the mid 60s. So with wheat beers is this method not going to work? Recently read somewhere that the starches don't convert with an all wheat grain mix which is why you need the barley addition. By the sounds of it there a whole lot more to consider.

The question now is do I forget about the dead simple bag mashing method for making a hefeweizen because it won't work, and focus more on learning the incremental temperature increases, what they do and how to achieve it with limited equipment?

You can make good beer without it. Pop it away for future reference when you are comfortable with what you are doing and want to experiment with the difference it may bring to your brews.

 

[pickledparrot69]

Thanks guys, and also to the member who messaged me reminding that it can be kept simple. The plan is to do something with WPL300, which sounds like it has the characteristics we are after, with 60/40 wheat to barley ratio, bittered gently with POR and flavour and aroma with hersbrucker. It's not perfect but it will be fermented at about 24 degrees which Im suspecting is going to drive the banana flavour over the top which in this case is the goal. Also ordered a kilo of unmalted wheat just for the hell of it. Can someone tell me what sort of quantities should be used. I had half a kilo per batch in mind, on top the 60/40 grain ratio above. Not brewing this until christmas break, there's another style already planned before then so there's a good couple of weeks to investigate more recipes and dig through this great website.

 

[Snow]

Thanks guys, and also to the member who messaged me reminding that it can be kept simple. The plan is to do something with WPL300, which sounds like it has the characteristics we are after, with 60/40 wheat to barley ratio, bittered gently with POR and flavour and aroma with hersbrucker. It's not perfect but it will be fermented at about 24 degrees which Im suspecting is going to drive the banana flavour over the top which in this case is the goal. Also ordered a kilo of unmalted wheat just for the hell of it. Can someone tell me what sort of quantities should be used. I had half a kilo per batch in mind, on top the 60/40 grain ratio above. Not brewing this until christmas break, there's another style already planned before then so there's a good couple of weeks to investigate more recipes and dig through this great website.

Parrot, I know you want "over the top" banana, but can I suggest you go with, say 1c over the recommended temp on the Whitelabs website and see what you reckon? That way, you have your own reference point and can ramp it up to your taste with subsequent brews. 24c is very high and I wouldn't recommend fermenting anything at that temp, other than maybe some Belgian strong ales.

Cheers - Snow.

 

[Nick JD]

100ml of....

And a couple of cloves will make Coopers Lager taste like a weizen. A bad one. Don't ask me how I know this - but what the hell else are you to do with a bottle of that stuff? Drink it? I think not.

 

[pickledparrot69]

Hello Snow, the upper temp on Whitelabs for the WLP300 = 22.2 degrees. So a degree above that is around about what I can hope to do during these sweltering Sydney summer months. Always try to keep it low during summer but it is very hard for us.

Hello NickJD, I think banana liquer is cheating. have you tried some beers out there with banana flavours, maybe from French Canada. Very artificial taste.

 

[Swinging Beef]

I've done a no-wheat, weizen (sounds silly, but it was just to see how much the yeast is responsibe for the flavour) and the wheat plays a surprisingly small part in the flavour profile.

Agreed.
Wheat for the light body and tart flavours.
Aroma is almost entirely yeast driven.

Doing extract brewing.. add/steep as much real wheat as you can and only use extract wheat malt, which is already 50/50 barley/wheat extract.