My Hefeweizen tastes bad

Memorial day weekend I brewed my Hanks Hefeweizen from MW. I let it go three weeks in the primary. It has been close to three weeks now in the bottle and it doesn't taste much different than my test bottle did after 5 days. Sort of a sour taste. I do get a little pop when I open it so there is some carbonation. I do get a head when I pour it. Orginal and final gravity were pretty much right on with what the recipe calls for. I am hoping it will mature more, but it was my understanding that a weizen was one you could drink earlier that some other beers. It has been in the basement (temp aprrox 66-68 degrees) entire time since bottling. I let the last one I tried sit in the fridge for the last three days. Anyone else had this issue before?

Probably a dumb question, but have you ever had a real hefeweizen before? They have a very distinct taste that is different from most beers.

That was the second beer i made. It came out fantastic. Although it took about 6 weeks from botteling for some of the bubblegum/bannana flavors to dissipate to a level that I like. I never deteced sourness in mine though. Perhaps an infection?

Its definitely an "off" taste at this point. I have had many different ones before. One of my favorite beers is a Weizen at my local brew pub. Bananas and cloves taste is waht I enjoy about that beer. Hopefully it is something that just needs to mellow out in the bottle more. This being my first homebrew, I was just hoping it wasn't going to be a bad batch. Time will tell I guess.

I just brewed Hank's and it's 3 weeks in the bottle tomorrow. The ones I've opened so far are really good, so it shouldn't be the recipe.

sounds like you got an infection from somewhere. You want to outline your recipe and your exact procedures so maybe we can help you spot any problems?

What you're probably tasting is yeast twang. I made my first hefe a year ago and even at 2 months it was awful. There was way too much hefe yeast taste, while people say they should be drunk young, mine didn't taste good until I tasted a bottle a year later!. At this point it was one of the best wheat beers that I have ever tasted, homebrew or storebought.

Well maybe I can hope for the yeast twang thing as described by redalert. I did do a yeast starter with the Whitelabs yeast I used. Maybe it might still be good at some point.

I know… six months later…

But out of curiosity, do you remember how much water you used to steep the 8 oz. Carapils specialty grains?

I’m still mulling over Palmer’s recommendation of “less than one gallon per pound” of specialty grains for steeping to avoid tannin extraction (“highly alkaline water” is also a problem as well as temps above 170* F)

I believe I steeped the grains with 2 1/5 gallons of water.

Gopher40 said:

I believe I steeped the grains with 2 1/5 gallons of water.

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So what did you end up doing with it? Do you still have it or did you dump it? If you still have it I wonder what it tastes like now?

Oops that should have read 2 1/2 gallons. Wound up dumping it. Never really did figure it out. Actually second batch wasn't much better. It was a strong ale, had similiar sour taste. I dumped some of it but have kept some around to give it more time just to see what happens. Only common denominator is that I used easy clean for cleaning AND sanitizing. I have since switched to Starsan and have brewed 3 batches without the same problem.

I know its been forever since the orignal post, but this is my second beer to brew - the first was an imperial pale ale and was a hit with all my friends. Hank's was my second homebrew and I also have a sour taste. I followed the exact same procedure as before. I sanitized everything with a bleach solution except for my keg, which I used the same betadine dilution that I used for my first batch (I force carbonate and put in a fridge immediately after secondary so I don't think an infection from the keg is a problem). I boiled all the water that went into my beer and ran bleach through all my siphon lines and rinsed everything with pre-boiled water... no idea why I'm getting this sour taste. I'm almost sure there's no infection. I was pretty psycho about sanitation, spending way more time cleaning and sanitizing than actually brewing. I may pull out the microscope and take a look for bacteria because I just don't believe that there can be bacteria in there...unless, of course, the yeast packet that came with the kit was contaminated.

I didn't see anything that looked like lactobacillus. Just yeasties, scratches in the glass, paper fibers from cleaning my slides and other debris that didn't really look like bacteria to me... Wonder why its so sour...

SteveWin1 said:

I was pretty psycho about sanitation, spending way more time cleaning and sanitizing than actually brewing.

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I admit that about 60-80% of my time is cleaning and sanitizing. Brewing the beer is the easy part.

I do not use a secondary with a wheat (hefeweizen / dunkelweizen). My first beer attempt was a hank’s and I didn’t like it. Now I do AG and IMO get way better results… again, IMO (reads 4-me).

The taste is probably coming from the yeast. There is a huge variety in taste, color, clarity, and mouth feel between one hefe and another…but, they usually come out with similar tastes of lemon (sour, sometimes strong, but in a good way), orange, bread, bubblegum (I haven’t tasted this yet), etc.

My suggestion is upgrade to liquid yeast whenever brewing a wheat beer; check your water analysis and compare that with the suggested water used for this style; and monitor your brewing / fermentation temps.

Finally, I’m not saying the bleach has anything to do with it (??? I’m not saying) but I would recommend moving to starsan and learn how to use it as it can be reused several times… you might want to check-out the basic brewing podcast on starsan to find out more.