Hefe base malt comparison

Lately I really dove into trying to perfect my hefeweizen. I've run a few side by side trials for the yeast and it is chronicled here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/d...-fermentation-profiles-flavor-results-317195/

Now I plan to compare the base malts. I am constantly tweaking my recipe, but really haven't tasted the difference between the different suppliers or varieties throughout the process. So tonight I will start a mini-mash experiment. I will mash 1/2 lb of the following malts in a glass jar at 154 deg for 1 hour. Taste and compare. Record my findings. Then boil just to kill off any nasties, and chill and pitch my yeast (WLP 380). I know that I should use a neutral yeast, but since this is to determine the flavors that each gives in a hefe, I will use a hefe yeast. Fermentation will take place in my 69 deg basement. I will compare again after fermentation and then after bottling a single bottle of each with a coopers carb drop. At that point I will decide which to go forward with. Photos will be included.

Malts being compared :

German pilsner from NB (schill malz?)
Weyermann bohemian pilsner
Best maltz pilsner

Weyermann German pale wheat malt
Weyermann floor malted bohemian wheat malt
Rahr red wheat malt

German Pilsner: light, slightly sweet, starchy, plain, relatively flavorless, smells grainy
Best Maltz Pilsner: drier than german, powdery, starchy, basically the same as the german if a little less flavorful, but better aroma
Bohemian pilsner: nutty flavor and smell, sweeter than the other two, most complexity

Bohemian floor malted wheat: crunchy hard kernel, grape nuts like flavor, complex, full flavor
German pale wheat: softer kernel, doughy, like dry pizza crust
Rahr Red Wheat: much harder kernel, starchy, a little nutty, more complex than pale, but not as complex as bohemian

Based solely on my dry malt taste test at this point I am ranking the bohemian wheat and pilsner as the best, then the rahr red wheat and the best maltz pilsner, and lastly the german pale wheat and pilsner.

Time got away from me tonight, so I will be doing the mini mash on Friday or saturday. Tomorrow I head to the inaugural meeting of the Milwaukee chapter of Barley's Angels!!! So excited!

Today I was able to make the wort for my malt comparison. I started by heating up strike water to 160. I mashed in 1 qt glass jars for about 50 min around 154 degrees.

After the mash I strained and sparged the grains and collected around a quart of each wort.

I "boiled" the wort... Not really. I heated the wort up to 165 and held for about a min to effectively "pasteurize" the wort and kill any bacteria. After that point I chilled the wort with ice and put the pot in the fridge to help any proteins and trub settle out. Despite the lack of roiling boil I did get a protein break...and I am fully prepared to have DMS in my pilsner samples...It was just too small a sample size to boil for any length of time and loose any more wort.

More notes to follow in the next post.

After chilling I strained the wort through a coffee filter and back into a sanitized jar.

After collecting all my samples I mixed up 1/8 tsp of yeast nutrient in some hot water and used a syringe to dispense. Shook up the jars to aerate, and dosed with 6 ml of yeast per jar.

Here are the finished jars and my samples. I put the jars down in the basement at about 70 deg ambient, which is around what they were pitched at.

Tasting note to follow....

Tasting notes:

German Pilsner: Very sweet, pleasant, grainy/husky/almost dirt like flavor
Best Maltz Pilsner: Super sweet, corny (is it possible to taste DMS before fermentation?)
Bohemian Pilsner: Sweet (least sweet of the pilsners), lightest color of the 3, pleasant, slight hint nuttiness, nicest of the 3.

Floor Malted Bohemian Wheat: sweet, nutty, best smell of the wheats, definitely more complex in flavor
Rahr Red Wheat: lighter sweet (OG is likely lower...I may have oversparged this one), creamy, pleasant aroma, darkest color
German Wheat: sweetish, husky, grainy, minerally

Rank at this point: 1st: Bohemian Pilsner and Floor-Malted Bohemian Wheat, 2nd: Rahr Red Wheat and German Pilsner, 3rd: German Wheat and Best Maltz Pilsner... But the Best Maltz and German Pilsners could easily be switched

Nice work. Can't wait to see the final result, I'm a Hefe fan, too.

Fermentation notes:
German pilsner: fermentation smells pleasant, fruity, apricot, no hint of phenols
Bohemian pilsner: fairly clean, pleasant, a little clovey, fruity
Best Maltz pilsner: similar to bohemian pils, clovey, phenolic, good smell

Rahr red wheat: thick krausen, very phenolic/ clovey, best smell of the wheats
German wheat: thick krausen, sulfury, phenolic, funky perm solution smell
Floor malted bohemian wheat: all sulfur, egg farts

Based on fermentation smell alone at this point the clear winner for wheat is the rahr red wheat, and bohemian pilsner. Best maltz pilsner is right behind. The German wheat has that funkiness that I have had in all my previous batches. Maybe that is the "off" flavor I'm trying to reduce.

It's almost hard to believe that all of these malts start out so similar and at each step become more different. By the end I'm guessing that the differences will be super pronounced. The differences with the dry malt tasting was minute, compared to the fermentation smell differences.

Interesting work. Thanks for being so diligent about detailing your findings.

I have been using Best Pilz malt exclusively in all my german beers along with Weyermann Pale Wheat in my Hefes and Dunkelweisse.

Are you going to bring a taste sampling of this experiment to the next BB meeting? I will have the Hefe and DW bottled we can try as well. Can you bring your DW and Hefe from GFest?

I'm making a 3Floyds GumballHead clone next called Cade's Campout Ale and the base is American Red Wheat, now to choose either Rahr or Briess.

BBBob

Bob,
I'm going to bring a small sample tomorrow night. I didn't realize the meeting was this week and didn't bottle them in time.

I bottled them tonight and tasted a small amount. I have to say, alone, without hops that they are all pretty funky. It was hard to take more than a sip of each, but tomorrow night I will do that and write down our impressions. From the very little I tasted I can say the the german wheat and pilsner were downright funky!!! The german pilsner did taste like dirt... weird. The German wheat funkiness was pretty sour and intangibly like the flavor that I have been noticing and want to get rid of in my hefe. Right now I can't remember if I had any distinct thoughts on the best malz pilsner, But I can say that I preferred the Bohemian pilsner the best. I spent more time trying the 3 wheats. The Rahr red wheat was by far the darkest and clearest. It had a pretty fruity aroma, definitely fruity esters in the sample, a bit of clove, and was creamy in texture and mouthfeel if that makes sense. The floor malted Bohemian wheat was good, I got a hint of the "nuttiness" and a balance of esters and sourness.

More detailed notes to come.

I personally make most of my Hefes with red wheat and german pilsner, which is my favorite combo. I then make variations from there.

Notes from fermented, uncarbonated single malt non-hopped "beers":
I took these to our club meeting and had 5 or 6 people taste them, some were much more objective than I am. But even without tasting the carbonated samples I already know where my choices are going to go. A few of my fellow club members have called for me to expand this experiment and talk about it at a club meeting.... I might, but I will probably switch to a more neutral yeast for it and since it would be a bigger batch add a small amount of bittering hops and actually do an hour boil.

Pilsners:
German: bread/cracker, dirt (to me)
Best malz: stale bread, nothing exceptional
Bohemian: rich, sweet, bread crust, nutty, ranked #1 by the majority of tasters

Wheats:
German pale wheat: husky, bland, mild. Very little hefe expression.
Floor malted bohemian wheat: pleasant, bready, tart, "wheat character that you look for in a wheat beer", most balanced hefe expression, ranked #1 for the wheats
Rahr red wheat: creamy, thick, strong, caramely, almost like rye without the spice, hefe expression towards the esters.

Bob, you seemed very surprised by the tasting. If you want to elaborate, please do so. I am fairly certain that the character in my hefe that I'm trying to minimize... That dirty swampy grainy flavor is almost entirely from the german pilsner, with help from the german wheat. My immediate thoughts are to switch from the German/German combo over to bohemian/bohemian, but one of the new guys who tasted it swears that the German pils should be paired with the red wheat to let the wheat character shine through. He felt that for a hefe the wheat is the main player... On the other hand our BJCP head judge felt that the majority of the hefe body and character comes from the pilsner malt and the wheat's role is secondary, mainly as a filler. Discuss your thoughts on those two statements...

The surprising thing to me was how much different each one was. I expected more similarities for Pilsner and wheat malts. I may have to change my malts up. Hard to argue though I have been using the Best Pils in all the dunkels so its hard to say that just a single malt taste is not going to give you the same as in combination with other malts.

I would defer to the expert judges you had taste at the club meeting. I'm still learning. I'm looking forward to the next step of testing a few combinations and like you said add a small amount of bittering 60 min Hallertau hops and do a full boil.

Bob

So I used the two weyermann bohemian malts in my hefe yesterday. Got a great rich color, and aroma. I aimed for 15 min @ 111, then 10 min @ 131, and then 60 min at 156.... But my brew pal app is all screwed up and it was hot out, so I got close to 10 min at 118 before I could add enough ice to get it down to 112 for 15 min. Then 10 min at 132, and added the next infusion and only hit 147-150. Very quickly decocted 4 qts and brought it to a boil and got my mash to 156-157. During the boil I had the best protein break I've ever seen. The chunks coagulated into large enough break that it was easily filtered out through a strainer! I did a 90 min boil and ended up with an OG of 1.063, so I topped up to bring my OG to 1.053. I'm very excited and will keep this updated with my findings on how the beer is different based on the malt. (I bumped up my sacc rest temp and mash thickness to try to get a maltier beer.... My hefe was lacking a malty sweetness. And a few experts I was talking with recently suggested that the maltier hefe's have better clove expression, where the thinner hefe's are skewed towards sour and ester expression.)

I just brewed a hefeweizen that was 60% rahr white wheat, 40% Vienna, with 3068 fermented higher than I wanted (68++F). Very little clove. Perhaps not surprising at the higher temps as banana dominates. So, higher kilned base malts like Vienna probably don't supply the enzymes necessary to liberate much ferulic acid. The amount of wheat may help some but not in this fermentation. See this thread for more information: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/how-much-effect-does-ferulic-acid-rest-have-122375/

I also did a Hochkurz infusion mash with rests of 35 minutes at 145F and 45 minutes at 158F. My fermentation reached the limit of attenuation determined by a fast ferment test...+/- 85% ! Looks like another variable I need to adjust!

By the way, I think it's crazy that Bohemian malts make a better German Hefe. In your case it looks like it's safe to say it wasn't a bad batch of german malt.

Well I've gone and done it and switched to Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner Malt for my Dunkel in place of the Best. We will see come Midwinter if this is a good choice. I'm blaming you Paula if I don't place!
Bob

Bob, I don't think you will be disappointed. I just checked on my labor day hefe and it smells amazing! The WLP380 did throw out a bit of sulfur after the first few days, but it has now subsided and I smell the most heavenly scent of hefeweizen coming from my bucket. Looks like it will be time to bottle a few for the competition and keg the rest. If I bottle tonight I could possibly have a sample ready for next weeks meeting. I am so so SO glad that I did this comparison. I think I would have been beating my head on the wall trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and it turns out it wasn't me at all. It was the grain selection.

At the BJCP class Brian and Bruce are running this last Friday, we sampled non carbonated "beers" made with one of several base malts made in the same way you have been testing: German Pilsner, 2 Row, Marris Otter and German Light Munich. We then tried 6 samples using one specialty malt including Carapils, Light Crystal, Special B, Medium Crystal, Chocolate and Roasted Barley made the same way, no hops, fermented using a neutral yeast.

Made for a very interesting taste comparison!
Bob

For those who are following, I just kegged my second Hefe done with the bohemian malts and although I got sulfur in both, it aged out with a little warm rest time after fermentation and then a lager period (crash cooling) before kegging. I did NOT get the shrimpy dirty flavor in either batch. So I firmly believe that the malting process or the variety of wheat or barley from the pervious brand was throwing off flavors that I am super sensitive to. Now my work continues to dial in my mash schedule and fermentation temps to get the right balance. I can say that I have been mashing hotter and thicker and am pleased with a greater intensity of clove flavor at this point. Now to carb up that last batch and send it off to the midwinter competition.

mcbethenstein said:

For those who are following, I just kegged my second Hefe done with the bohemian malts and although I got sulfur in both, it aged out with a little warm rest time after fermentation and then a lager period (crash cooling) before kegging. I did NOT get the shrimpy dirty flavor in either batch. So I firmly believe that the malting process or the variety of wheat or barley from the pervious brand was throwing off flavors that I am super sensitive to. Now my work continues to dial in my mash schedule and fermentation temps to get the right balance. I can say that I have been mashing hotter and thicker and am pleased with a greater intensity of clove flavor at this point. Now to carb up that last batch and send it off to the midwinter competition.

Click to expand...

I too have run into the shrimpy / sulfur / dirty flavors. I noticed it in some commercial examples of hefe beer, but not all of them. It was quite subtle in the commercial beers and faded as the beer sat for a few minutes.

In my own homebrew, the stank lingers. For ever. I had been doing extract batches of hefeweizens using Briess Bavarian Wheat DME which was supposed to be a good DME. Many off flavors.

I've since switched to all grain and while I've not had a chance to bottle the dunkel I made, I have noticed zero shrimpy smells from the fermenter. By this point in all the other attempts at a -weizen, I got intense shrimps after about a week to 10 days in the fermenter. It might not be the DME. I could be a process control as well because now I've made about 30-40 batches so I'm a bit more particular about how I brew.

awesome summer thread bump #2

After 2 years of brewing with the Bohemian/Bohemian combo (always with some munich) and in reviewing my notes in preparation to speak on this experiment at NHC this year I decided that I need to play out the combination with the Rahr Red Wheat. I thought I had figured out what would make my hefe best, but a few stray comments in the early stages of this experiment that I re-read reminded me that I had not tried a full scale batch with Red Wheat. So, My combo for the last 2 batches has been Bohemian Pilsner (3 lbs.) Munich (2 lbs. ) and Rahr Red Wheat (5 lbs.). The first batch I overcorrected my pH into the fermenter with Lactic Acid, and it dropped to 3.75... Way too low and the Lactic Acid was mildly detectable. The second batch was right on target with all my parameters. I have to say, I think I am finally in the final tuning stages for this beer. The Red wheat did very well. I think I got more Clove expression than I ever have with both beers, and I even fermented the two batches with different yeasts. Both the WLP300 and WLP380 had a ton of clove and the 380 had a more balanced ester expression than it has in my most recent versions of this beer. Lots of Banana, mildly tart, mildly apricot, huge clove. Both batches I performed a ferulic acid rest (as I always do...) but I dropped the rest temp to 104-105. I waited to pH adjust until after the 30 minute rest to keep the pH at about 5.7-5.8 (the peak at releasing ferulic acid needed for 4 vinyl-guiacol {clove} production) as I have for the last 7-8 batches as well. I'm super happy to say the beer won gold a our local german beer only competition! This is by far the best hefe I've made and closest to what I'm aiming for. I know I have notes about this across 3 threads now... but I thought I would update that I changed the grist combo and the early guesses that said the red Wheat would pair better were right. The bohemian wheat is great, but the creamy, thicker nature of the wort from the red wheat balanced better with the bohemian pilsner. I've done at least 10-15 batches (probably more) with the Bohemian/Bohemian Combo and submitted it to 5 competitions and failed to place with it. By themselves they make for a good balance with the hefe strain, but together it still needed a little push. It was always balanced, but restrained (Judge comments always suggested increased fermentation {but just leaving it there... temperature? time? what? Elaborate please, because I've already increased EVERYTHING!}). I fully believe that the Red Wheat's body contributed to the cloviness that I was seeking and achieved with my last 2 batches. As you can tell I am super excited that this is finally working out. It's just a great reminder that every little decision matters when you are chasing your own version of perfection. In a beer this simple every ingredient, step, and process has to be deliberate, and can change the final product.

Congratulations on the NHC talk and gold at the Stein Challenge, your hard work certainly has paid off, particularly in finding your perfect hefe.

Do you think the ferulic acid rest is necessary for the combos you've selected and that it actually contributes the phenols you want? Many have stated they feel the rest doesn't do much for them, but then again, have they gone to as great lengths as you in testing out all the variables? In the same light, is the protein rest essential?

One variable I'm debating is whether a hefe is better bottle conditioned or drawn from a keg. I'm stuck between the two in keeping it fresh and portable/convenient. Thanks!

There is a great journal article that was gifted to me a few years ago... It went into the FA release at different temps, over time and at different pHs. The control was malt that had been kilned to kill enzyme activity to see how much was released by simply dissolving into the water, and not through enzyme activity. The results clearly showed a much greater concentration of Ferulic Acid at the rest then if the rest was skipped and we relied on the dissolvable amount of FA to be released into the wort. The rest is time consuming and the factors are fairly precise, so those skipping it may justify a taste test as sufficient data that the results are "close enough" to skip the rest. But lab data doesn't lie, and the process described in that journal was pretty much the gold standard for this type of testing. I just wonder if most people's palates are not as attuned to clove, especially in the presence of high levels of esters.

I have read that each malt and it's kilning level will affect the potential amount of FA, but since I am going for clove overkill I will continue to do the rest. The combo did well and the body supported the clove levels, although I'm not sure if it was FA levels in that malt, or the body they contributed that let the clove shine through more clearly.

As far as protein rest is concerned... Most maltsters will say their modern malts are modified enough that a protein rest is not necessary anymore.... But if you've made your Hefe with under modified malts and had a gummy stuck mash, you may still want to use one. If you are using a FA rest, it is on the low end for a protein rest and some proteins will be broken down. I used to do both, and while I would never have problems with head retention the hefes would drop too clear, and seemed a bit thin. Now that I skip it, I get even better head and even at the end of the keg, still a little haze is there.

Hefes are 1000% better from a bottle. There is no way to bottle them with the CO2 required for 3+ volumes from a keg. If going to competition you will get knocked for being too light on CO2 and the head will not be strong enough. I struggle with this as well. I love the convenience of the keg, but never get the character that it gets in bottle.

Yes, Nice job on the NHC talk and taking another Hefe gold at the Stein Challenge.

I was just at the homebrew shop yesterday and the owner was talking to me about keg/bottle differences. I have always kegged and bottle right before I submit and entries. He was saying his barleywine tastes better when it is aged in the bottle rather than the keg.

I feel another experiment coming on...

Thanks a ton for sharing this info! I was just getting ready for a second attempt at a Hef. The one I have has several problems (operator error), but it's good enough to see the potential.

I have been brewing for 12 years and Hefeweizen has been the most difficult style to reproduce for me. After 4 trips to Germany I still am working on getting that certain something. My hefes have always been nice but am still experimenting. I have mainly used Weyermann but after reading your posts I will try the domestic Red Wheat.

I have also been looking at a fermentation temperature ramp - Cool to 59, then 48 hours at 62f then turning the fridge off and letting it go. Great German hefes are like the old Formula 1 V10 engines. They have multiple notes going on at once. I want the solid malt flavor along with the funkiness on top.