Help with hefeweizen please

Hi,
I tried a continuous sparge for Ed's hefe and I am getting a pre-boil gravity of 1.03 with 7 gallons. Is this situation salvageable? (My first all grain by the way).

Did you mill the wheat at the same setting as the normal malt? Usually you need to grind it a bit finer. As you sit, if you boil down to 5.5 gallons you are looking at a gravity of 1.038 ish. A couple options I can think of is add some extract if you have it, or if you want to boil it down a bit further say to 5 gallons you can get it up to 1.042

My LHBS did the grinding for me. The continuous sparging process was a disaster. Batch sparging from now on I think.

After you boil off 1.5 gallons, you should be fine.

Thanks for the help and the recipe Ed. I am boiling away.

noisy123 - I don't know if you can mill it yourself at your LHBS like I can, but when messing with wheat I double mill it. Then I have to worry about stuck sparges. Not a real problem since I batch sparge but still a royal PITA. If worst comes to worst throw in some sugar or honey, (I hate adding sugar), but honey will thin it out even more so you may just want to pick up some DME/LME in the next day, boil, cool and add it in.

I ended up ditching rather than wasting the money on the hops, yeast and ice (wort chiller is coming soon). I am gonna try again today. Wish me luck. Thanks for all the help, I'll update with my resounding first all-grain success today.

I keep 3lbs of DME on hand incase I have an issue with my brew. So far I havent needed it but I would wager if I didnt have it I would need it

You dumped the mash just because you were a few points low? Egad man!

you can still have a great beer even though you didn't have the OG you wanted.

issack said:

you can still have a great beer even though you didn't have the OG you wanted.

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Yes and no.

Yes if it is in the ballpark, No if it is way off like 10 or more points. Then it can get hairy depending on the recipe. I was teaching a guy AG once and I think I was so focused on explaining the process that I wasn't paying enough attention to my sparge rate. Well I came up way low (10 points) and the beer just didn't have the body that it normally does, and I have made that recipe many times.

Very true.. I was thinking like 4 points off.. Not ten.. Ten is bad.

A great brewer can change courses mid-brew and make a great beer no matter what happens along the way. That's what I strive for and I never throw anything out.

A good goal mew. I am not yet a great brewer but I share your goal.

I rebrewed Ed's Hefe recipe today (my first all grain). I used Flyguy's steam infusion mash system with excellent results. I used my 24 qt pressure cooker to do several temperature changes.

I did a two step mash (an acid rest at 104 -30 minutes) and the rest called for in the recipe of 156 for 90 minutes. Heating to 156 took right around 20 minutes (but I wasn't pushing it). I then mashed out at 168 and batch sparged with two equal sized infusions. I had a bunch of stuck sparges, but I was able to remedy them using the steam injection (and a wire hanger - heh).

Things worked really well. I got 81% efficiency and my O.G. and pre-boil gravity readings were spot on. I boiled on the stove using an insulating jacket. That also worked pretty well.

I don't yet have a chiller (its coming soon) so I took my kettle and put it out in the yard in a tub and just let the water from the hose overflow the tub. That worked pretty well, I was able to cool the whole wort down in less than an hour. I pitched the hefe onto an belgian wit cake (next time I'll use the suggested yeast - but I was bottling that guy up so I figured what the hay). I'll let you know how it tastes, but I gotta say, I'm pretty pumped. Between Ed's recipe and a million of Flyguy and Bobby_M's innovations I have a pretty good set up. Thanks!

How much water did you put in the pressure cooker and did the pressure go to zero during the 20 min step-up?

I used 3.5 gallons of water and was able to keep up above 5 PSI the whole time. (1.5 lbs/gallon mash in). I think 10 gallon batches however, may be a trouble with a stovetop heat source. I would test this in water first before relying on the steam injection for an actual mash.

I probably should have stuck the first mash out, but it was 1:00 am when I started the boil and I had to bottle another batch before I could even use the yeast cake. I thought about letting it sit and boiling the day after mashing but I heard about issues with off-flavors from bacterial colonies setting in before the boil. In short, I am a bit of a ******, but I am ultimately very happy with what I'll be calling my first successful all-grain. I really appreciate this forum and being able to come here with questions. You guys are great. This is starting to sound like an Oscar speech so I'll stop now.

By the way, I sorted out the problem the night before last. My thermometer was not impervious to water near where the wire entered the thermocouple. I got a new thermometer yesterday and all went really well.

Sweet! Way to keep at it!

noisy123 said:

I ended up ditching rather than wasting the money on the hops, yeast and ice (wort chiller is coming soon). I am gonna try again today. Wish me luck. Thanks for all the help, I'll update with my resounding first all-grain success today.

Click to expand...

I just sat here mouth agape for about 3 minutes after reading this...

noisy123 - I do not know if I should scream in horror of dumping wort.... You know you could of started the fermentation and stepped it up with LME/DME/Honey/Maple Syrup/Sugar, ANYTHING BUT BUD LIGHT. But OK, your a perfectionist and I think I can deal with that, it just bugs my Anal retentive personality.:cross:

OR - Should I beg you for details on you pressure cooker / steam infusion system, I mean sizes, parts list, picture PORN and all that stuff.
I don't know if I had a thread that has made me so conflicted before.

Ok, Ok. I promise not to dump wort again but you're all gettin a bottle if it tastes bad with a note that says:
Hier is mah beerz. Y it taste bad?

My steam-infusion system came from here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=25974

I used 1/2 " copper tubing because the parts were easier to find. I used sweat-on copper fittings (for FIP adapter) on the steam-wand and a ball-valve so I could use 3/8" barbs and silicon tubing. I can post some pictures if you would like to see the specifics of my system but Flyguys is the inspiration.