Step Mashing For Wheat Beers

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I'm going to start brewing a hefeweizen using the information here for mash schedule in the next 30 minutes but modified slightly for BIAB technique and I cultured some Schfferhofer yeast in some left over wort from my previous batch. It has come up beautifully as you can see.

Has anyone given this yeast a go? I have some WLP300 in the fridge but was curious about this yeast to try it unless anyone knows a good reason not to?

EDIT: Forgot to add I will be using the "Add up to 30C" fermentation temperature schedule for hefeweizen this time. I am not sure how much phenols this yeast will push so I will hope for balance with 12 pitch and an 18 ferment.

Hey Pete,

How did the Schfferhofer yeast culture go in your brew?
We have it on tap at one pub in Newcastle now and I have to say it gives Franziskaner a run (almost) as my favourite Hefe... :icon_drool2:

I am on the path to an AG setup and, having meticulously read this thread 3 times now, I think a Hefe will have to be my first AG brew.



Hi Tony,

Do you frequent Mark's Home Brew?

Mark has mentioned a home brewer known for great wheat beers in our area and I thought it might be you.

Either way, fantastic info mate. I look forward to putting the decoction vs infusion arguments to the test to see for myself.


Cheers to all you sharing, caring weizen lovers for your input on this one! :beer:

Joel

 

[pdilley]

Makes a great tasting wheat beer just like the original. My next chance of brewing with this yeast will be with an increase from the 12/18 temp to say 12/21 to see what eater profile it throws. At 18 its on the cleaner side just like from out of the bottle. I've been too busy to bottle the finished beer as I've been building hives so its almost 2 weeks sat on the kitchen counter top -- a dangerous place as I keep sneaking small glasses from it!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[NeilArge]

Hi Tony

I'm finally about to put this wheat beer down using your mash schedule. Just a quick question, though: I guess you'd recommend I get some rice hulls? If so, what weight for a c. 5kg grain bill, with c. 50% wheat?

Cheers

ToG

 

[TidalPete]

Hi Tony

I'm finally about to put this wheat beer down using your mash schedule. Just a quick question, though: I guess you'd recommend I get some rice hulls? If so, what weight for a c. 5kg grain bill, with c. 50% wheat?

Cheers

ToG

For anything over 400g wheat I use rice gulls at 10% of the grain bill.
Sorry for busting in Tony.

TP

 

[Fourstar]

Makes a great tasting wheat beer just like the original.

Interesting to know considering breweries filter their weizens and bottle with a stable lager yeast for storage purposes. Maybe they dont.

 

[NeilArge]

For anything over 400g wheat I use rice gulls at 10% of the grain bill.
Sorry for busting in Tony.

TP

Thanks TP. Much appreciated.

Cheers

ToG

 

[pdilley]

Interesting to know considering breweries filter their weizens and bottle with a stable lager yeast for storage purposes. Maybe they dont.

Hey Fourstar,

The smell of banana in the bottles when culturing the yeast from Schfferhofer was a bit of a give away that I was dealing with the goods so I put the WLP300 tube back into the fridge for future use and went with the Schfferhofer yeast which by now was expanding in volume rapidly in now an ALDI 2L juice container

My local club members seem to like heavy esters thrown into their beers from taste samples at club meets so I'll see next brew chance what this Schfferhofer yeast is capable of by kicking the fermentation temperature up above 18 to close to 20-21 C.

Filtering and bottling with another yeast both cost money and maybe Schfferhofer is from a small brewery without the budget to spend on protecting yeast IP?


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[tdh]

Schoefferhofer is a huge brewery in Frankfurt and last I read is that the yeast found in their bottle is a lager strain.

The only Weissbier that I've seen in AUS that uses their ferment strain in the bottle is Schneider.

tdh

 

[pdilley]

Now I'm curious. I'll cap a yeasty bottle of it at the end of bottling this batch and reserve and put down another one for the next brew and see what comes out.

I'll be taking a sample down to the LHBS tomorrow for some additional judging as well as I'd hate to end up with the wrong yeast.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Righto guys from our morning tasting session - Amarillo Ale, Wheat Beer with the cultured yeast, and Meads

Back to report that it is definitely not a lager yeast.

Its a yeast that threw a decent amount of Cloves at 18C and not much Banana.

I am making a new batch today and have another bottle from the bottle shop. I will be doing this one at 24C to see how much Banana if any is thrown.

Then I can say with 100% certainty that its a yeast that may not be a wheat beer yeast but that it sure throws Cloves at low temps and Banana at higher temps like a wheat beer yeast


Changing my step mash schedule as well. Moving 43C out of the picture due to the yeast flavour profile in the fermented beer and moving it up to the 50's for the first step.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Ok guys.

I'm all rocked and ready to try a second round.

Got another Schfferhofer from the bottle shop. I use the refrigerated ones, as it might have a tiny sliver of a chance of being a little tiny bit more preserved.

Cost $5.49, so almost the price of US-05 yeast but I get to drink the beer.

Beer is very similar to what I brewed except at my temperatures I didn't get the tiny amount of Banana showing through but I got all the Cloves. This fermentation will be at 24C to see the Ester potential and potency to help dial-in a balanced profile for this particular yeast if and only if it does throw banana and is worthy of continued brew experimentation.


My wort is pre-hop and pre-boil so very virgin for re-culturing yeast in the bottle. So I took advantage of the nice day to get a warm bottle now that my Brew Fridge is empty and powered off.


I took the original yeast and made a yeasty bottle. Using the old original bottle and its original bottle cap. I thought it was fitting.



They say, being a mixed yeast culture that doing this for wheat beers is not done. I'll be willing to bet the third wheat beer batch using this yeast to learn that first hand. As it stands the Cloves were spot on and the beer was tasty, so its not a waste to me if it doesn't become a go-er.

The mash schedule I used.
43, 62, 72 Resulted in many fermentable sugars and a drier finish beer than the original bottle.

With my LHBS we decided upon a two-step mash schedule to improve residual maltiness with the highly modified modern malts.
52, 65

Wort is already brewed and chilling.

If culturing turns out well I might pitch Monday and get the Brew Fridge fired up and ready.

I'll keep the three step mash schedule for my Ales, they are turning out crackers on it and dial the numbers around to fine tune them.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Zwickel]

Hello brewers,

sorry for the effort, but in Schfferhofer is not the original yeast. Schfferhofer exchanges the yeast after fermentation has finished, into a pasteurized yeast to avoid autolysis.

Beers with the original yeasts in the bottles are:

applicative wheat beers are:

Schneider-Weisse,
Maisel Hefeweizen,
Kuchlbauer Weisse,
Ritter St. Georgen-Brauerei,
Gutmann Hefeweizen,
Pinkus-Hefeweizen,
Prinzregent-Luitpold-Weizen,
Appenzeller Hefeweizen (Swizerland),
Tucher Hefeweizen.

inapplicable:

Erdinger,
Schfferhofer,
Oettinger,
Franziskaner,
Andechser,
Pyraser


Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[pdilley]

Cheers for the list Zwickel I will take it to the bottle shop next trip as we have a decent selection of imports. The hefe's were not a large group but I have my hopes up of finding a decent candidate for the fourth bottle culture brew experiment.

The yeast slurry at bottling (I am assuming tank conditioning is used for Schfferhofer and a slurry added at bottling) is still alive and well and culturing. I'm still curious enough to run a few more brews from it as I've been getting good results so far as to what the slurry yeast really is. If it is the yeast collected from the tank conditioning and pasteurised for bottling slurry then I might still get some results yet.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

EDIT: Spelling, list is now typed in my iPhone ready to go to the shop

 

[Zwickel]

Pete, the list is already many years old, written by some German homebrewers, so no guarantee the breweries are still applying the same procedures.

Actual very popular over here are the yeasties from Schneider and Maisels, with this you cant go wrong.

Cheers mate :icon_cheers:

 

[pdilley]

Stars next to Schneider and Maisels on my list now, thank you for the tip.

You still could be right about Schfferhofer, I just might have been lucky and had gotten a bottle from a batch with partially finished pasteurisation. The proof will be in the doing as to what turns out in the finished beer.

I have the yeast saved from the original Schfferhofer in its original bottle - It has settled into about 3 to 4 cm of liquid at the top and the rest of the bottle filled with yeast, low carbonation primed with sugar and then into the fridge for storage.

If the second bottle of Schfferhofer is not the go on re-culturing yeast then I'll be happy I saved the first bottle's yeast.

Fingers crossed

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Off the subject of yeast and back to the subject of Mash.

The two-step mash schedule has made a lighter wort pre-boil, and I will comment on the post-boil colour when I have poured it into the fermenter.

However I did change one grain. Originally I was going to make a Belgian Wheat Beer, but I faltered at the end, my heart went to Germany and I made a German style. However, I still had the original non malted wheat grain for the Belgian style in the recipe.

The second Mash has malted wheat grain and a two-step Mash schedule.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Quick note, second bottle of Schfferhofer is culturing away nicely. I was rushed for time this weekend building chicken house and getting the yard sorted so I didn't start with 10mL and step up from there. I put the whole 500mL of wort into the bottle and added the Oz Top. After about 1 1/2 to 2 days the action was evident. Today I did lots of burping when I got home from work and turning the bottle around slowly in circles gave off a lot of CO2 bubbles inside the bottle to burp after it settled down. Heavy wheat aroma masking anything in the CO2 right now to tell if it gives off Banana like the first yeast did when stepping up inside the 2L juice bottle. Will see what it puts out when I pour it off into the 2L bottle tomorrow. Plan on stepping up to about 700 mL or so.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Zwickel]

Quick note, second bottle of Schfferhofer is culturing away nicely. I was rushed for time this weekend building chicken house and getting the yard sorted so I didn't start with 10mL and step up from there. I put the whole 500mL of wort into the bottle and added the Oz Top. After about 1 1/2 to 2 days the action was evident. Today I did lots of burping when I got home from work and turning the bottle around slowly in circles gave off a lot of CO2 bubbles inside the bottle to burp after it settled down. Heavy wheat aroma masking anything in the CO2 right now to tell if it gives off Banana like the first yeast did when stepping up inside the 2L juice bottle. Will see what it puts out when I pour it off into the 2L bottle tomorrow. Plan on stepping up to about 700 mL or so.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Pete, thats great. So the list Ive posted should be corrected.

What about putting that yeasties on slants? so in future you dont need to buy a bottle of Schfferhofer again.

:icon_cheers:

 

[NeilArge]

I finally got the chance to put this weizen down yesterday. The cooler weather would seem to be ideal for keeping the fermentation at c.16C, so that's a bonus. However, I missed my temps quite a bit with the decoction mashes, and dropped back into the 60s for efficiency . I'm wondering if the decoctions I pulled were a bit too thick so that even though they had boiled for 15-20 mins. there wasn't enough boiling liquid to raise the temp of the mash in the tun. I was a fair way off the final alpha amylase step, and then had to lift the heat to c. 70 with boiling water additions.
Is my hunch right, or did something else go awry?

Cheers

ToG