Hefe/Wheat Recipe Input

I was thinking of doing a simple hefe. Here is the recipe I came up with.

.5 lbs Vienna Malt
6 lbs Wheat DME

1 oz Spalt

(Whatever hefe yeast my HBS has).

Suggestions and input would be greatly appreciated.

check this one out...

3lbs Light Malt Extract
3lbs Wheat Extract
1.75lbs Carafa - Dehusked
2oz Hall Hersbrucker Hops
1oz Tettnang Hops
1 tube White Labs Hefewiezen Yeast
1oz Irish Moss
3/4 cup Corn Sugar

• Add Tettnang Hops and 1oz Hall hops at 60 minutes
• Add Irish Moss at 15 minutes.
• Add 1oz Hall Hops at 10 minutes

chask31 said:

I was thinking of doing a simple hefe. Here is the recipe I came up with.

.5 lbs Vienna Malt
6 lbs Wheat DME

1 oz Spalt

(Whatever hefe yeast my HBS has).

Suggestions and input would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Looks like a great recipe to me. Note that Vienna is an enzymatic malt so just make sure you steep it ~150-155F for at least half an hour to ensure conversion. Use enough Spalt to get ~12 IBU's in the finished product. I love the simplicity of Hefeweizens in terms of ingredients, but the complexity in terms of flavors.

Simple enough is 6 lbs Wheat DME alone. If you like your HWs sweet just drop the AA% down to 8 or 9.

There's no need to use Irish Moss for a beer you want to stay cloudy.

I was thinking of just doing the wheat dme alone but I have 1/2 lb of vienna left from my last batch of saison dupont, so I figured it might be good in the hefe. Im not totally sure about calculating AA yet. The spalt is 5% aa. I wasnt planning on using irish moss, I want this one to be cloudy.

Baron, what do you mean by enzymatic malt?

Spalt at 5% then use 2 oz for 1 hour of the boil and you'll be fine.

2 oz of spalt will keep it sweet?

The Baron mentioned using Spalt at 12%. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want a sweet weizen and your Spalt is 5% then using 2 oz (=10%) will be sweeter than his recommendation of 12%. Right?

I prefer my weizens at 7-8-9 range. This leaves the beer sweet, somewhat underbalanced. Some people like balanced to bitter weizens, I do not.

I agree with Bill that 12 IBU's (not necessarily the same as HBU's, btw...Spalt @5% AAU would mean 18-19g or ~3/4 oz for 12 IBU's in your recipe...) will yield a balanced Hefeweizen, neither sweet nor bitter. I have overhopped before into bitter range and did not like the result...the hop bitterness overpowered the yeast and kind of ruined the point.

chask31 said:

Baron, what do you mean by enzymatic malt?

Click to expand...

Vienna is a malt that is still 'starchy' and those starches must be converted into sugars such as maltose or else you will have a permanent chill haze in your beer as well as slightly decreased biological stability. Any malt with starch (2-row, Pilsner, Vienna, Munich, etc) needs to first be converted before you commence to boiling. The so-called crystal and caramel malts and roasted malts (chocolate, roasted barley, etc) have been converted in the malting process and are safe to just steep without regard to conversion.

Baron von BeeGee said:

...I agree with Bill that 12 IBU's (not necessarily the same as HBU's, btw...Spalt @5% AAU would mean 18-19g or ~3/4 oz for 12 IBU's in your recipe...) will yield a balanced Hefeweizen, neither sweet nor bitter. I have overhopped before into bitter range and did not like the result...the hop bitterness overpowered the yeast and kind of ruined the point...

Click to expand...

Right. Thanks for the correction. Sometimes the brain doesn't engage all the way...

For 6 lbs of malt I usually use about 1.1 - 1.5 oz of Hallertau at 3.5%, or 1 oz at 4.5% for 60 mins and the HW is still on the sweet side. Just where I like them.

For your 5% Spalt I would cut it down to 0.8 - 0.9 of an oz.