It's kind of strange really. I've been brewing for a few years now, but I've never bothered making a weissbier. It's strange because at one stage I loved all things weissbier. It was my gateway beer you see. I got tired of it, though, and went flirting elsewhere. Sure, I've made some Belgian style wit beers; exciting, exotic, spicy wits that leave my first love looking frumpy. But I've been going through a range of weissbiers recently, and I started remembering why I liked weissbier in the first place. There's lots of bland crapness out there, but sometimes a weissbier just hits the spot. So I made one today (hoping that the weather will impove again!).Oh, and while my son and I love chewing on malted barley, malted wheat is so much nicer as it has no sharp husk that can get stuck in your gums, Even my wife went through a bowl of the stuff last night! Prefect beer nibbles.
And for the homebrew geeks, here's my recipe:
- 2.4 kg Wheat Malt
- 1.2 kg Pilsener Malt
- 1.2 kg Munich Malt
- 36 g Hallertau Hersbruck (2.7%) - boiled 60 mins
- Danstar Munich Wheat Beer
Efficiency: 80.48% (actual)
Attenuation: 75.0% (expected)
Original Gravity: 1.051
Terminal Gravity: 1.013 (expected)
Color: 15.03
Alcohol: 5.01%
Bitterness: 13.0 IBU
Gave the malted wheat a protein rest at 50C for 30 mins. Single infusion mash at 64C for an hour. Mashout at 75C. I doubt I'll be doing a protein rest again, as I'm not sure if it actually made the mash thinner, but it did keep me up later than I intended.
9 comments:
Sounds great. Hopefully this will be your summer drinking beer!
Thanks Laura, I'm hoping it will be one of many! What happened to this long dry summer they were predicting? :D
I bought 60kg of malt last week, and enough malted wheat to do three wheat-based beers. If this works I'll do a variation of it. Either way, I have lots of incentive to brew the crap out of it over the next few months. Cellar space! :D
I'm due a weisse brew shortly. Yours should be a rich one with the Munich malt. I used 10 percent in my last one and it was quite evident, I thought.
I'm certainly hoping for a little more richness. It's one of the "problems" I have with many weissbiers, that they can sometimes be a bit thin. Maybe that's the point, but this is my beer :D
Then again, it could ruin it :) We'll see. It's fermenting like a bat out of a very hot place at the moment.
How did the mash go? Did you get any stuck-mash issues?
It didn't get stuck, but it seemed slower to drain than normal. If I opened it up too much it ran very cloudy (as opposed to hazy). It was grand. As I said though, I wouldn't bother with the protein rest next time, just to see. Actually, my Pale Rye Ale (20% Rye) was much gummier. Maybe that would have benefited from a protein rest? Maybe it did do something!
Nice work I do like some Munich in my Hefe's
Is that a dried wheat beer yeast? Interested to hear how banana-ey it turns out.
It is indeed. When I was last planning a weissbier I was going to go with a Wyeast pack (that's what I used to use when I started brewing) as I've heard you'll get better results. Since moving to dried yeast I can't face going back to all that starter effort though :) I've no idea if this will work, but there's only one way to find out. I shall report on my findings!
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