Weissbier Bee Cave Brewery Bavarian Hefeweizen

I'll be using what I have in my ice box, which is a bottle of washed WL300 bavarian yeast. It has been in my fridge for right at a year. So, wish me luck

Also, any tips from brewing this would be welcome.

Cheers

The only advice I had is make sure you know your efficiency - I only added 8 extra ounces of Carapils and Caramunich to the original grain bill. With an 82% efficiency, I came out with an OG of 1.068 - dropping eventually to 1.014. Taste so far is very good, but slightly warmer than I want on the back end.

Just saying...adjust to your system. I'm gonna brew it again, but with an adjusted grain bill that'll leave me with a starting gravity closer to 1.050.

My Local store is not carrying any good Wheat malt right now for some reason. No German wheat, no red wheat. They are supposed to get an American white wheat malt this next week. And the only Pilsen option is from Canada.

Pretty sure I'll be heading to the store that is further away.

EdWort.....just kicked my first keg of this and it was awesome. Going to have to make again real soon as a refreshing summertime ale.

Thanks!

Jason

FINALLY got around to brewing this today, unfortunatly it wasn't for me! I donated a learn to homebrew package to a local charity silent auction. My boss actually bought it, so I was at his house today and we made this since he wanted a hefeweizen. I split the wheat with 3 1/2 pounds red german and 3 1/2 pounds dark wheat. It looks, smells, and tasted delicious! can't wait for this one to get done.

Now I am planning on doing my own this week.

duffman2 said:

I'll be using what I have in my ice box, which is a bottle of washed WL300 bavarian yeast. It has been in my fridge for right at a year. So, wish me luck

Also, any tips from brewing this would be welcome.

Cheers

Click to expand...

Best of luck and let us know how using year old washed yeast turned out!?

Will do, my yeast is waiting for the wort to cool down for a nice starter right now.

But I'm still wondering about those grains. It looks like I'll have to settle for the American white wheat and the canadian pilsen malt. I guess that will do but I wonder if I should adjust the grain bill at all

MRbutlertron said:

Best of luck and let us know how using year old washed yeast turned out!?

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Yeah I am very interested. Everyone keeps telling me I shouldn't reuse my WL 351 yeast - I really want to know if this is even close to true...

I hope it works too. My backup plan is to have my brothers cute German girlfriend come over and spit into the bucket. So yeah, I hope the yeast works

Cheers

duffman2 said:

I hope it works too. My backup plan is to have my brothers cute German girlfriend come over and spit into the bucket. So yeah, I hope the yeast works

Cheers

Click to expand...

That should be part of the recipe either way - ha!

Well I'm 10 days now, and going to check my gravity and crash it tonight, kegging tomorrow.
Something really funny happened on brewday. First time using rice hulls, and I soaked them in water prior to adding them to the mash. Stupid me used cold water, and when I went to dough in, my water dropped to 142! I furiously boiled some water and added it, but only got it up to 148, before I decided to give in and just close the lid on the cooler.

Interested to see what low mash temps do.

elproducto said:

Well I'm 10 days now, and going to check my gravity and crash it tonight, kegging tomorrow.
Something really funny happened on brewday. First time using rice hulls, and I soaked them in water prior to adding them to the mash. Stupid me used cold water, and when I went to dough in, my water dropped to 142! I furiously boiled some water and added it, but only got it up to 148, before I decided to give in and just close the lid on the cooler.

Interested to see what low mash temps do.

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doh!

Lesson learned I suppose. I'm sure it will be fine.. just a bit drier which is fine by me.

I am sure you won't be dumping anything out

I made a 1.5 liter starter two days ago with my washed yeast and so far no real big activity. But I've had other washed yeasts starters look dormant but still do the job so I'm still gonna try it out. Brew day is tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it

I screwed something up my OG is 1041 ugh

Brewed it today, No chill. Will pitch yeast tomorrow

Kegged this and am drinking it now. There is some sulphur aroma still, but it tastes quite good. I might pull the keg out and warm it up to see if the yeast can finish up that sulphur.

My imperial Bee Cave Hefe tastes great! The traditional hefe aromas and flavors mask the higher alcohol content. The only drawback is that it's a little tart - but only a little. I dig it.

Alright, experiment over. Do not be afraid to use the washed hefe yeast. Mine was over 14 months in the fridge in a mason jar and it's looking fine. It's not completely done yet but fermentation started showing visible signs around the 6-8 hour mark and it has been going pretty good since then.

Once again yeast has proven that it really doesn't need us

duffman2 said:

Alright, experiment over. Do not be afraid to use the washed hefe yeast. Mine was over 14 months in the fridge in a mason jar and it's looking fine. It's not completely done yet but fermentation started showing visible signs around the 6-8 hour mark and it has been going pretty good since then.

Once again yeast has proven that it really doesn't need us

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Let us know how it tastes. I'm not surprised that it will ferment, but what kind of flavor is it going to produce? I haven't gotten great flavor from washed hefe yeast.

Brewed this up last night. Minus the entertaining mash temp experience for 90 minutes (still learning my equipment), everything else went great. Cant wait to try it.

I guess I should have posted

This.. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/brew-day-ipa-vs-hefeweizen-uggg-243053/

in this thread instead of starting a new one..

Thoughts?

This will be my first kegging.

jakecpunut said:

I guess I should have posted

This.. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/brew-day-ipa-vs-hefeweizen-uggg-243053/

in this thread instead of starting a new one..

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

I'd post this in the Equipment seciton and title it Refractometer vs. Hydrometer readings.

You may have better luck there. This was only my 2nd AG batch so I wont be much help to you.

Good luck!

The recipe calls for 10 days fermentaion. Mine had a vigerous fermentaion, but slowed down. It is now at day 16 and still producing 1 bubble every 6 minutes (It smelled like sulpher at first, but smells great now). I know that the best way to tell if a fermentaion is done is to check the gravity, but common sense is telling me that it is not done. Perhaps is some of the sugar supposed to be retained for flavor by arresting the fermentaion by crash cooling early?
Should I let it go, or should I stop it?

fisher1 said:

The recipe calls for 10 days fermentaion. Mine had a vigerous fermentaion, but slowed down. It is now at day 16 and still producing 1 bubble every 6 minutes (It smelled like sulpher at first, but smells great now). I know that the best way to tell if a fermentaion is done is to check the gravity, but common sense is telling me that it is not done. Perhaps is some of the sugar supposed to be retained for flavor by arresting the fermentaion by crash cooling early?
Should I let it go, or should I stop it?

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Good question - I'm in the same boat. I'm on day 10 and still have yeast rafts floating on the surface. My FG was spot on yesterday. I'll check it again today and tomorrow to see if it moves nad bottle from there.

Fisher1: 1 bubble every 6 min is usually just trapped co2 being released and is most likely done.

VAShooter: Some yeast rafts will continue to float even after ferm is done. Shake the carboy and see if they drop out with a little agitation

Looks like a matter of personal preference at this point. I think that flavor should be more a function of your mash temperature and aging of the beer. I don't do the cold crash as I'm adding in gyle (unfermented wort) to the mix and then I condition at room temp to get natural carbonation.

VAShooter: Some yeast rafts will continue to float even after ferm is done. Shake the carboy and see if they drop out with a little agitation[/QUOTE]

Did that this morning and the rafts were gone by this evening. Now Im working on how much priming sugar to add. I'm bottling this brew and apparantly heffes require more CO2. However, I'm worried about bottle bombs with the suggest sugar amounts. With advice from some much more experienced brewers, I'm going with 6oz or so. My FG is dead on so I'm bottling tomorrow.

Ed -

Just curious - any preference to mittlefruh or Hersbuecker hallertau for this recipe? I have both.

Thanks!

Edit: Well I went with mittlefruh and my ferment for the first few hours was 71-73 but with some work I got it down to 68-70. Now it is bubbling at 67-68F

Looking forward to this one!

Just wanted to send thanks to you, Ed, for sharing this recipe. Simple. Perfect.

I ferment at 62F and sub Tettnanger for the hops are my only personal tweaks.

It was my first BCJP entry ever, and it won first place in the 2nd Annual Greg Noonan Homebrew Competition in Burlington, VT in the wheat/rye beer style category.

Danke Schon.

Ok, now that it took me 3 hours to read this thread... I still have a question. Lol.

I'm planning on making a very close version of this tonight using WLP300 and I'm still uncertain where to ferment it. This past winter and spring I fermented in our pantry, but it's getting warmer. The ambient air temp can vary from 67-72 degrees. My other option is in our basement with an ambient temp of 60-61, up now from 55 this winter. So my question... Which option is best? I want a good balance of clove/banana. But would prefer a bit more clove than banana. Other info that may be needed. Primary is a plastic bucket. And I usually chill to 65 before pitching.

One option would be the basement through high Krausen then bring it upstairs for the slower part of the fermentation. I'm not an expert but my understanding is that the initial fermentation creates heat more than the later part.

mcbethenstein said:

Ok, now that it took me 3 hours to read this thread... I still have a question. Lol.

I'm planning on making a very close version of this tonight using WLP300 and I'm still uncertain where to ferment it. This past winter and spring I fermented in our pantry, but it's getting warmer. The ambient air temp can vary from 67-72 degrees. My other option is in our basement with an ambient temp of 60-61, up now from 55 this winter. So my question... Which option is best? I want a good balance of clove/banana. But would prefer a bit more clove than banana. Other info that may be needed. Primary is a plastic bucket. And I usually chill to 65 before pitching.

Click to expand...

Basement. Your bucket temps will be 7-10 degrees higher than the air temps. I used WLP 300 with a starter and this thing went CRAZY for 4 straight days. My krausen finally started dropping after day 6 or 7. (Use a blow off tube). I used a swamp cooler and kept the wort temps around 66-68for the 10 days.

Kicked my keg over the weekend. It cleared up way to quickly in the keg.. was basically a Krystalweizen. I agitated the keg everytime I poured, but didn't seem to matter. Should I avoid cold crashing a hefe next time?

How big a starter for this do you think? I am brewing a double batch this weekend and have 2 packs of fairly fresh 3068.

I think I am at about 11 IBUs right now, wonder how that compares to something like Paulaner or Franziskaner

I would think you want to stress the yeast a bit more for this style than you would with others.

I am contemplating not using a starter and just going 1 pack per 5 gallons.

So I guess the options are
2 packs, no starter
2 packs, ~1L starter each (This is about what Mr Malty reccommends with intermittent shaking)

Ended up going without the starter and both batches still took off fairly quickly and were blowing yeast through the blowoff after about 15 hours (ferment in 6 gallon BB) Have them in a swamp cooler keeping temp around 65-67

My numbers were very close to what Ed had in the original recipe, I hit 1.051 OG, which is perfect for the style but a little lower than what I expected. This equals about 67% efficiency. Guess it is time to get my own mill. I think the wheat and the barley probably need to be milled at different settings do to the different grain size.

JMass said:

One option would be the basement through high Krausen then bring it upstairs for the slower part of the fermentation. I'm not an expert but my understanding is that the initial fermentation creates heat more than the later part.

Click to expand...

So I ended up keeping it upstairs until I saw airlock activity then it went down stairs.. It slowed down majorly! It got down to 60 or 62 (bucket temp), so it came back upstairs after 4 days downstairs. Took off again yesterday. So my basement is still a little too cold yet. I don't think it will get too much warmer for the summer. But upstairs we will not turn the ac on until 78 or 80 to save money. I guess I'm going to have to figure out what to do about fermentations over the summer.

There is a local homebrew club German beer contest coming up at the end of July. In your expert opinion will a hefe like this be good yet then? I brewed Tuesday so if I don't brew again for the contest it will be 10 1/2 weeks from brew day. Opinions much appreciated. Thanks.

Took this on the annual fishing trip to Kentucky Lake with my buddies. It was a big hit. Delicious.

Empty keg: