North Texas Homebrewers Association

I brewed a German Wheat (Hefeweizen) yesterday. My first brew in a year. I used Omega OLY-021 yeast, a first for me.

I get score sheet comments about my Hefe needing more body so I have tried things in the past like using 2-row instead of Pilsner malt. I usually do a multi-step mash. This time I used Pilsner and Wheat but I did a single step at 156F. The test is to see if I get more body from a high mash temp.

I did have self-inflicted issues like missing a pound of Pilsner malt that affected my efficiency. With low efficiency, I sparged an extra gallon and boiled an extra 30 minutes for a 120 total boil. Wort looked darker than normal.

It is fermenting away now. It has blown off yet but is close to.

This beer will be at the Fall party for sampling.

Never have gotten what I want from a Weisse. Latest is a Dunkel Weisse that isn’t expressing the banana like I want. Did a protein rest at around 118 and mashed at 152. Liking the body though. Will be at the fall party as well.

From my experience, banana comes from pitching rate. Temperature has not made much difference for me.

I grow yeast to a 75% of the normal ale yeast pitch rate of .75 million cells per ml of wort per degree plato. So it would be 0.5625 million cells per ml of wort per degree plato.

I do oxygenate the wort before pitching.

I have done the ferulic acid rest a long time ago but do not remember its impact.

Blawrence can chime in on this, but he said in his article on wheat biers that banana comes from higher fermentation temperatures. I am fermenting a dunklesweiss at 65 and it has a bit of banana with more of a balance to the clove. I hope to send a bit of it to the club party that I'll miss due to having tickets to the Stars opening night.

I fermented at 67. Slight underpitch on the yeast(WLP300) at about 83%. Funny, I usually get heavy blowoff from WLP300, but this time it really didn't do much at all. The starter did a little and the krausen was massive. Yet, it went from 1.047 to 1.014 in about 3 days and down to 1.013 within a week.

I'm redoing my Munich Dunkel from last fall today. Judges commented that it lacked malt aroma but the flavor was good. I'm adding 2 lbs. (9.8% of grist) of aromatic malt to this batch. My garage smells great right now and I'm only in the mash.

I need to experiment with aromatic. Maybe you’re not adding enough immersion chiller though.

I have the immersion chiller as an ingredient, so I don't forget to run the pump and sanitize the system. Forgot before, maybe homebrew was involved. :

Woke up at 4AM this morning to brew this brown ale in order to use up some ingredients. This is the first time I used a brew bag with my anvil foundry. Will definitely be using the brew bag in the future, since BIAB is my preferred method.

David,

That recipe sounds good. Please report back when you are drinking it.

Jimmy

Interesting use of German Ale yeast on a British beer. Let us know how it comes out.