Bavarian Hefeweizen Brew Night

Last Thursday night my brother and I did our first brew at his new house. Neither of us particularly like wheat beer, but we have friends and family that do, it seems to be a crowd pleaser and it's something we haven't done before, so we decided to give it a go.

Turned out to be the brew night from hell. We decided it would be a good idea to start the evening out by grilling brats which turned into a big production due to the lack of a charcoal grill. There was however a gas grill that didn't work anymore, so we just used charcoal in it. Getting the charcoal to light was a pain due to the lack of starter fluid or chimney starter, but with dilligence eventually we had a nice bed of coals.

Brewing started around 9:00 pm and we got off to a slow start as we had to locate, clean and rig a setup since it was our first brew since the move. To the left is a pic of our improvised brew setup. The orange cooler is a 10 gallon mashtun, on top of it is an aluminum turkey fryer pot, on top of that is a piece of oak we use as a mash paddle, kettle stirrer and it's also notched at 1 gallon incriments for the boil kettle. To the left is the propane burner and 15 gallon stainless boil kettle. Jesse is in the background playing with his new toy (iPhone).

9:00 pm is a late start for weeknight brewing as a typical all grain-batch takes 3 to 4 hours start to finish. Wheat beers are notorious for having stuck sparges. The wheat is very gummy and forms a doughy oatmeal type consistency during the mash and there is a tendency for this to completely plug the mashtun outlet. To prevent this we added more than a pound of rice hulls which add no flavor but just provide some media to encourage free drainage. It didn't work out so well, and while we never had a stuck sparge, it was sooooooo slow. A mash and sparge process that should have lasted around 2.5 hours ended up lasting around 4.

After finally collecting around 11.5 gallons of wort, which was over 1.5 gallons short, we started the boil. Interesting thing about this brew was that there was no tendancy to foam and I never saw what I would typically call Hot Break - when all the foam subsides and the top is clear wort. To make cleanup easier we used hop bags for the hop additions. The Hallertauer Hops smelled great! The pic to the left is of me, happy about the beginning of the sparge which was soon to slow to a trickle. Eventually we are going to add some equipment and build a tiered system that allows for gravity drainage and eliminates the need to pick things up during the process (10 gallons of scalding hot sugary wort is heavy and picking it up could prove dangerous). But until then using empty kegs as a mashtun stand, picking up, draining and pouring into the boil kettle will be the process.

Spectators are shown in the pic to the right (from left to right - Ryan, Jesse's roommate & future brewer - Jesse - Kristen, Jesse's better half) all drinking "The Champaign of Beers," one of the worst beers in the world. This pic was taken around 1:30 am and everyone was still going strong. This is about the time the boil started. The boil smelled really good once the hops were added and the wheat portion of the grain bill was definately prevalent.

At the end of the boil an immersion chiller is submerged to sanitize it. The immersion chiller, shown in the pic to the left is our homemade copper monstrocity. Cool tap water flows in through the garden hose and exits out the braided hose to the left in the pic. Jesse's new house has some water pressure issues that we're going to try to work out, but overall the chiller performed really well bringing the boiling wort down to around 70 degrees in about 15 minutes. It is crucial to chill the wort as quickly as possible in order to prevent DMS from building up. DMS will give the beer a "cooked corn" flavor profile and is not desirable in most ales, but is more acceptable in lagers, think Rolling Rock or Corona. I really want to be able to cool the wort faster, so I'm going to look into adding a pre-chiller to the setup that will chill the tap water to a lower temperature befor entering the immersion chiller.

After a long night of brewing I think we were successful with this batch. Only time will tell, and I'll update in a couple weeks to let you know how fermentation went. We missed our targets a little both in mash temperature and in final volume, but oh well, it will still be beer. I didn't even bother to take an initial gravity reading because after cleanup it was 3:30 am, but my assumption is that it was a little on the high side. It will be a long time before we attempt another hefeweizen, but when we do it will not be on a week night. After a 2 hour nap, Friday proved to be a painful 11 hour work day filled with meetings.

I have provided the basic recipe below. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Cheers! - Josh

Recipe (thanks to EdWort, http://www.homebrewtalk.com/)
Mash 90 minutes at 153 degrees
14 lbs. German Wheat Malt
8 lbs. German Pilsener Malt

1 lb. Rice Hulls

1 tbs. Fivestar 5.2 mash pH stabilizer

7.1 gallons strike water at 163 degrees (based on grain temp of 87 degrees)

9.2 gallons of sparge water at 185 degrees

Vorlauf & sparge to collect 13 gallons of runnings in boil kettle

Begin boil. Time = 60 minutes at hot break

1.5 oz. Hallertauer hop pellets (3.0% AA) at 45 minutes

0.5 oz. Hallertauer hop pellets (3.0% AA) at 15 minutes

Cool to 70 degrees, transfer to fermenter(s) and aerate

Pitch 2L of yeast starter (made with wheat DME & Wyeast 3068)

Ferment 10-14 days at 68-70 degrees

Expected OG: 1.052

Expected FG: 1.009

Expected ABV: 5.9%