Pale Weizenbock - Doesnt suck so far

Hey guys, heres the recipe I used for this one:

6lb NB Wheat Malt syrup
3lb2oz NB Gold Malt syrup - late addition
1lb Briess Wheat DME - late addition
8oz Carahell - steep
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1/2 oz US Hallertau - 50 min
1/2 oz Czech Saaz - 35 min
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White Labs WLP380 (Hefeweizen IV)
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O.G - 1.074
SRM - 6
IBU - 17.6 (BU:GU - 0.24)
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Notes :
- This was my first recipe after readign Designing Great Beers, lots of good knowledge in that. Helped me to nail my OG, keep it as light as possible with late malt additions, and understand the importance of BU:GU
- I know this style would typically only have a single 60 min addition but I'm not a huge fan of Hallertau and wanted to be able to utilize another noble hop to achieve the IBU that I needed (to offset the gravity , BU:GU!!!). The 50Hal/35Saaz was the best way I could do it
- I brew in an 8 gallon kettle on an outdoor propane burner and I have, in the past, done 3 gallon VIGOROUS boils and topped off with water. The partial volume and high temp had previously darkened my attempts at paler beers. Less vigorous boil, full 5 gallon boil, and late addition of just under half of my malt all helped me keep it at the 6degL that I wanted.
- Things I did that may/may not make sense:
+ I wanted it to be both "strong" (minimum 7.2%) and "pale" (max 7degL). So that controlled pretty much everything about this beer with the exception of the yeast selection
+ I went wil the CaraHell, despite its contribution of darker color, because I felt that it would not only add a bit of head retention but aslo (unlike Carapils) would give me just a touch of caramel/toffee flavor that could be beneficial if : 1. it was too boozy and needed to hide it a bit AND/OR 2.The yeast was too much of a banana bomb and the toffee flavor could keep it from tasting like Banana Runt Juice
+ The weird malt bill (syrup, syrup, DME) was built to allow me to truly hit the 55% wheat (remember Wheat malt extract isnt 100%) wheat) and also split things up throught the boil

As it stands, I just transferred to secondary after 2 weeks in primary. A vigorous fermentation with 3-4 inches of krausen within 24 hours of pitching lead to total lack of apparent fermentation within 5-7 days. Things kicked back up once transferring to secondary but it was minimal. I am planning on bottling in approx 10 days bringing it to a total of 36ish days in fermentation. (assuming gravity has stopped dropping)

My last batch (Tripel IPA ,O.G.-1.088) did not bottle carbonate correctly (temp in my house was 65...we are cheap) and as such, I'm pretty nervous about this batch. Ive done 7 batches prior to the slow-to-carb Tripel IPA and carb'd all of them with dextrose with no problems at all. I am falling onto the knowledge of HBT for some help with this

1. Is dextrose my best bet? Or can someone out there make a strong case for using some other option..honey?...molasses? ..hit me.

2. Dextrose : how much are you using? After my freak out over my flat Tripel IPA I realized I have been less than consistent with the amount I've used , just because when I use kits they give me an amount and when I'm goin freestyle I just kinda wing it. How much is used for a 5 gallon batch and does the gravity of the beer affect the amount needed

3. Still related to my flat IPA fiasco, I was very very careful to rack to secondary with minimal yeast and then to the bottling bucket with even less. The resulting yeast cakes in the bottles were the smallest I have ever achieved. I was always under the impression theat there would be enoguh yeast in suspension to get things carbonated no matter what. Is it likely/possible that I was simply not bringing enough yeast over to secondary/bottling? If that was my issue, how do I best avoid it again without totally obliterating my clarity?


Thanks!

Just use table sugar to carb instead of dextrose. Cheaper. Use the carbonation calculator on hbd.org. I use that all the time without issues. Maybe try 3 volumes for this.

In the future, if you want to be truly Zee German, you can save a bit of the boiled wort in the freezer and use that to prime with. Advantage, and this is really important with a lighter beer with high carbonation, you don't increase the alcohol content. Using unfermented wort keeps everything in proportion. But for this beer it will be fine. Here's an example, I made a little saison. Maybe 4.5% abv. 1.038 starting. Well I carbed it to 3.5 volumes which took 170g of table sugar. When you do the math, that ended up being about 5% of fermentables right there. So my beer dried out quite a bit. Had I reserved about 2 quarts of wort, I'd have a little fuller beer. Lesson learned for me./

Your tripel probably didn't carb correctly because the yeast were dead or gimped up. If you reserve a bit of starter to reprime with on big beers that age for a while you'll be okay.

For a beer like this, you can top crop some of the yeast during fermentation to save in a sanitary jar and reintroduce during bottling. It takes about 1/20th the amount of yeast to bottle condition as it takes to ferment initially.

thanks for the advice!

- when you say "reprime" with regard to the tripel, are you saying just introducing some live yeast from the starter prior to bottling, or re-pitching a portion of live yeast during secondary ?

bigteachey said:

thanks for the advice!

- when you say "reprime" with regard to the tripel, are you saying just introducing some live yeast from the starter prior to bottling, or re-pitching a portion of live yeast during secondary ?

Click to expand...

I used a poor choice of words. When bottling a high alcohol beer, I think the best results are obtained by removing as much of the original yeast as possible via cold storage and or gelatin. Then at bottling, introduce fresh yeast. Perhaps as little as 20 ml of slurry of healthy yeast from your choice of sources. E.g. smack pack, top cropped, or starter.