Screwy's Recipe #44 - Weizen/Weissbier

 As promised I brewed two more 2.13 gallon Mr. Beer sized batches of my Weizen/Weissbier recipe today. I used the same exact ingredients that I had used back in September when I brewed this recipe for the first time. At that time the recipe was published as Recipe #36 - Weizen/Weissbier and the pellicle it caused to form as it fermented cleared up a lot of the mysteries surrounding infections and great tasting beer.

 Screwy's Weizen/Weissbier Unbelievable Lemon Flavor

 I chose to brew these two new batches using the exact same ingredients and brewing processes that I had used for the very first batch I made. In 21 days I'll know if the beer from today's 2 batches tastes the same as that first batch or not. Duplicating this recipe at will is really my goal for today's brewing session. If all goes according to plan I'll soon be drinking my fill of the most awesome wheat beer I've ever had, proving to myself that I can duplicate that amazing wheat beer whenever I want.

Hallertauer Hops, Muntons Wheat DME, Golden Blossom Honey And Safbrew WB-06 Yeast

 I set aside some time before pitching my yeast to rehydrate the 11.5 grams of Safbrew WB-06 yeast that I selected for this recipe. It was pretty easy to do I just sanitized two bowls, poured 4 ounces of 80F wort into each of them and then sprinkled on the WB-06 yeast. After 15 minutes I stirred the yeast and wort mixture and then stirred them occasionally over the next 30 minutes before pitching them. The yeast cream that developed from this mixture had a nice layer of foam floating on top and at this point I knew it was ready to pitch.

Optical Illusion: The Wort Is Really Level With The 8.5 Quart Mark

I boiled the Hallertauer hops for bitterness and flavor without adding any DME to the boil first, I actually followed Muntons directions on this. They say their DME and LME never need boiling since it's already pasteurized during their spray drying process and it would ruin some of the delicate malt flavor.I boiled the hops alone then added in the honey and with 5 minutes remaining on the boil I poured in the DME and boiled it for another 5 minutes.

Hallertauer Hops Before Sinking Into Wort

 Once I had aerated the wort enough I pitched the yeast and aerated the wort again. When I felt the wort and yeast were aerated enough I tossed in the finishing hops, they were put inside a sanitized hops sack earlier. Once the pellets absorbed enough wort they became heavy enough to sink the hop sack down to the bottom of the fermenter.

Screwy's Cooler Lowers Wort Temperature To 65F

 I was able to use my new 12 quart brew pot today for the first time and it looks like it turned out to be a worthwhile investment. Screwy's Cooler fit this larger pot perfectly and I used to cool my wort down from 212F to 65F in less than 20 minutes. I can't even begin to tell you how much more convenient using a wort cooler is over using an ice bath. I brewed 2 batches of beer one weekend and I used an ice bath to cool the wort down to pitching temperature for them both, I went out and built Screwy's Cooler the very next day.

Boiling Hallertauer Pellet Hops In Hop Sacks

 The larger brew pot allowed me to use 5 quarts of filtered water instead of the 3 quarts I had to use with the old 6 quart pot. So instead of adding 4 quarts of filtered water to the Mr. Beer keg I only added 2 quarts, since the new pot was going to hold more wort I had to subtract 2 quarts  from the keg so it all would fit. When I poured in the DME the wort stopped boiling for a minute or so as I stirred it into the wort, when it began boiling again I timed it for 5 minutes and then turned of the heat.

Hallertauer Hops And Wheat DME At Hotbreak

 Both batches are fermenting nicely at 60F in the basement now, I'll check them at least once a day to make sure the temperature stays pretty constant. The kegs are sitting inside coolers alongside 2 frozen water bottles which keep the temperatures low enough for fermentation.

This Weissbier Will Ferment For 21 Days Before Bottling

I used qBrew's default 'Weizen/Weissbier' style guidelines to crunch this recipe's numbers.

 Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew

Size 2.13 gallons: Estimated IBU=17, SRM=4, OG=1.050, FG=1.013, ABV=4.9%

2 pounds Muntons Wheat DME

1/2 pound Golden Blossom Honey

1/2 ounce Hallertauer pellet hops boiled for 30 minutes

1/4 ounce Hallertauer pellet hops boiled for 12 minutes

1/4 ounce Hallertauer pellet hops finishing

11.5 gram Fermentis Safbrew WB-06 yeast

Pitched at 65F and fermented at 60F

Directions:

Boil 6 quarts of filtered water

Boil 1/2 oz. hops for 30 minutes

Boil 1/4 oz. hops for12 minutes

1/2 pound Honey boiled for 10 minutes

2 pounds DME at 5 minutes boil until hotbreak

Boil DME for 5 minutes

1/4 ounce Hallertauer pellet hops finishing

Use Screwy's Cooler to lower wort temperature to 70F

Add 2 quarts cold filtered water to Mr. Beer fermenter

Pour cooled wort into fermenter keg, including 1/4 oz. finishing hops and pitch yeast

Ferment at constant 60F temperature for 21 days

Fermentation Day 6 With Floating Hop Sack

Six full days of fermentation and there is still quite a lot of activity going on, which is a good thing. There's nothing like the sweet smell of fermenting wheat beer every time I open the coolers to check the internal temperature and to peek in and see first hand how the fermentation is progressing.

Recipe #36 - Weizen/Weissbier - Review

The results are in, the recipe and pellicle for my Weizen/Weissbier produced the best tasting most flavorful wheat beer I have ever tasted. We all sat around a nice warm fire last night and sampled a few of my latest beers. I anxiously poured the first glasses of the Weizen/Weissbier and waited to see how it tasted to me and the others.

Try to imagine the look on our faces when we tried to describe what we had just tasted. I didn't mention anything to the others beforehand about the pellicle and my concerns that this beer may actually be terrible. I did ask them before they tasted the beer to be brutally honest with their feedback and they were.

The Best Wheat Beer I've Ever Had

That interesting lemon like taste at bottling, that not sweet but not sour flavor was still there and it somehow rounded out the taste of a really great beer. Trust me on this one there were no lemons anywhere near this recipe let alone in it. The color, body, authentic Hallertauer hopping and carbonation level all worked together nicely making this recipe hands down the best beer I've ever brewed, so far.

The four of us drank 2 litres of beer that I put in the refrigerator 2 or 3 days earlier. I fermented the beer at 60F for 18 days and raised the temperature up to 70F over the next 3 days for bottling. The beer then carbonated at 65F for 12 days and I put them in the fridge 3 days before drinking them. My advice to anyone reading this thread is if you're only going to brew 1 wheat beer this year, make it this one.

October Bottling Day: Weizen/Weissbier

  When I unscrewed the lid of the fermenter to pull out the hop sack before bottling I was surprised to see how much krausen was still floating on top of the beer. I couldn't even see the hop sack let alone remove it. So the next thing I thought of was this stuff going to end up in my bottled beer? It didn't and neither did the trub that was compacted tightly at the bottom of the fermenter in the trub tray. I had fermented this wheat beer for 21 days at 60F except for the last 3 days of fermentation when I allowed the beer temperature to rise to 70F, the temperature I would be bottling at.

Weizen/Weissbier With Thick Floating Krausen

 I poured a sample into a small glass for tasting and the beer came out free of trub or krausen with a light amber color that was cloudy, as expected for a German wheat beer. There was already a very slight hint of what I could best describe as lemon present in the samples I tasted. I imagined myself pouring this beer into a tall glass and adding a slice of lemon before drinking it.

Weizen/Weissbier Sample With Residual Co2

I used my Bottle Priming Calculator to help figure out how much priming sugar would be needed to hit the correct Co2 volumes for an Weizen/Weissbier beer style.  The bottle priming calculator takes into account the temperature of the beer at bottling, the type of priming sugar used and the small amount of Co2 that is already in your fermented beer. You look up the level of carbonation for your style of beer  according to BJCP Style Guidelines.

Weizen/Weissbier  Calls For 3.6 to 4.48 Co2 Volumes Of Carbonation

  This bottling day turned out to be a good day, I bottled up my wheat beer without incident and I now have eight more 1 litre bottles carbonating down in the basement where its nice and cool. Right out of the fermenter the beer went into the bottles with no need to rack to a secondary, cold crash or mix any gelatin or use any other methods to clarify my beer, so again I'm really happy about that.

Weizen/Weissbier Ready For Carbonation