Need some help w/ this hefeweizen recipe...
 

I'm a newb and have never designed a recipe before, but I would really like to try and clone this Rogue Mom Hefeweizen. It's a favorite of mine but hard to find at times on the east coast. Luckily they list most of the ingredients on the bottle, I just need help from those that are better at this than I :)

Style: Belgian Food Pairing: Hot & Spicy, Poultry

Tasting Notes:
This Belgian-style blonde ale is an unfiltered fusion of wheat and barley malts, spiced with coriander and ginger.

8 Ingredients:
Malts: Great Western Harrington, Klages and Wheat.
Hops: Saaz.
Specialty: Coriander and Ginger.
Yeast & Water: Rogue's Pacman Yeast & Free Range Coastal Water.

Specs:
13º PLATO
34 IBU
77 AA
3º Lovibond

taken from rogue.com: Rogue Ales


From what I read, getting ahold of some of rogues pacman yeast is the hard part?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Are you looking for an extract, partial mash, or all grain recipe?

im still pretty new so probobly an extract. thats all I've done so far actually. do you think this would be a good one to try and start doing partial mash's on?

It looks like a very light colored beer. You'll have a hard time getting that light of a color using extract. For what it's worth, you could probably come close by using a wheat extract, Saaz hops at 60 minutes, and put your ginger and coriander in at flameout or maybe five minutes before. Go to tastybrew.com and play with the calculators to get the right amounts. How To Brew by Palmer has charts to convert Plato to specific gravity or I'm sure you can find a conversion on line.

If you haven't done a mash before, I'm not sure this would be the perfect first beer to try one on. You can make good wheat beers with extract: they will taste great, the main problem is they tend to come out too dark, but close your eyes and you won't even notice that :-)

Here's something I knocked up in Beer Smith that would probably get you close as an all extract brew:

• 60 min 2 lb Wheat Dry Extract
• 60 min 2.5 oz Saaz [4.00 % AA] Hops
• 10 min 4 lb Wheat Dry Extract
• 5 min 0.75 oz Coriander Seed (crushed)
• 5 min 1 oz Ginger Root (grated)
• 1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast

Assuming a 2.5 gallon boil, this predicts an OG of 12.9 Plato, color of 7 SRM, 32.7 IBU, and 5.29% ABV.

The main thing you won't be able to get close with all extract is the color (note that this is coming in significantly darker than the original). I tried to minimize that by using a late extract addition (note how I put in just 2 lb of extract at the start of the boil, and then the remaining 5 lb with just 10 minutes remaining) which will give you a somewhat lighter end result as it will minimize caramelization of the malt.

You could get even lighter if you are able to do a full 5 gallon boil rather than the 2.5 gallons I used in formulating this, but if you change the boil size, that will also change the IBU. The easiest way to handle that is to enter the recipe in Beer Smith, specify your boil volume, then adjust the amount of hops until you get the IBU you are looking for.

I'm just guessing at the ginger and coriander amounts. 0.75 oz coriander is typical for wit recipes, so probably a good place to start. Get whole coriander seeds (from your homebrew supply store, or any spice market or Indian grocery store) and crush it (so each seed is broken, but it isn't fully ground) in a pestle or using a rolling pin.

For the ginger, buy whole root and grate it (or chop finely) right before you brew. 1 oz should give you a noticeable but not overpowering flavor, but I've heard of people brewing with 2 or even as high as 4 oz, it all depends how dominant you want this flavor to be. You can also get quite different flavors depending on when you add this in the boil: later will be more aromatic, earlier will give you more bitterness and earthy/rooty flavors. I did a ginger brew where I added 1 oz at 20 minutes and a second oz right at flameout, and got a nice balanced complexity from that.

Pacman yeast is sometimes available, but I don't think it is crucial for a beer like this. It's a highly attenuative but otherwise pretty neutral yeast - by all means use it if you can get it, but any neutral American style ale yeast will get you close.

Another thing to consider - wheat beers generally don't have much hop flavor or aroma (they mostly just use hops for bitterness) but that is not always the case.

Do you get any hop aroma from the original? If so you might consider adding another oz of Saaz at flameout.

awesome, good info! my only fermenter is tied up for about 2 more weeks, but ill definitely let you guys know how this one goes when i can do it.

the original had a small bit of bitterness to it, but went away very quickly. i dont recall having a hop aroma though. I think i might skip adding more saaz at flameout this time. if it feels like it will help ill try doing it on the second batch.


thank you!

Quick question, would WLP300 Hefeweizen ale yeast be better? or stick with the cali ale yeast...

stick with the cali ale yeast (unless you can get pacman)

WLP300 is a german hefeweizen ale yeast. much different than pacman...very fruity with banana and clove.

ferment at cool temps (60°F) if possible.

Sounds like a good reason to get another fermenter....