Schneider-Weisse Aventinus

I've been waiting for this one for a while. At the beginning of March I brewed an extract-based clone recipe of Aventinus, one of my favourite beers. I bottled it after returning from a trip to Germany at the beginning of April, and tried my first sample bottle last night, A/B'ing it with a bottle of the real thing.

It's got the right look, both in colour and head. It has the right smell. It has *mostly* the right taste. The banana and clove spiciness is there, but in my clone there's a sharp alcohol-ish bite.

I'm suspecting it needs a little more time to sit and mellow out a little bit. I let it carbonate for 2 weeks and then had it sit another 2 weeks in my cold room. I'm thinking I'll leave it another 2 weeks before I try another bottle.

The process of beer maturing is a chemical/biological activity. By putting the beer in the cold room you have stopped the biological component. Try letting it sit warm for another week or two and then chill and sample.

Ahh, okay. The recipe advised to leave it in a cold (5-6ish degrees Celcius) place after bottling for approximately a month which is why I put it in the cold room after carbonation had completed. I guess I'm really still 2 weeks shy of that time yet as well.

With the long, cold winter the cold room - well it's not like it's a fridge, but it's not more than 10 degrees above freezing.

Can you post the recipe you used? Thanks!

Will do once I get home - it was taken from BYO's 250 clone recipes magazine.

I drink Aventinus from time to time and I like it. This is a doppelbock and it's supposed to lager in the cold for like 3 months, so no wonder it isn't ready yet.

I'm assuming this was your recipe:

http://byo.com/bock/item/154-aventinus-weizenbock

Aventinus Weizenbock

5 gallons, extract with grains

Ingredients:

5 lbs. wheat malt syrup
5 lbs. light malt syrup
0.3 lb. chocolate malt
1.25 oz. Hallertauer hops (3.7% alpha acid): 1 oz. for 60 min., 0.25 oz. at end of boil
Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian lager) or 3333 (German wheat)
2/3 cup corn sugar for priming

Step by Step:

Start with 5 gal. of water. Crush grains and steep while heating water for 15 min. Rinse the grain with enough water to make 5.5 gal. Total boil is 60 min. At start of boil, add 1 oz. Hallertauer hops. At end of boil add 0.25 oz. Hallertauer hops. Chill to 45° F and pitch yeast in a starter.

Follow the fermenting schedule for the all-grain recipe.

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What was your final gravity? BTW, according to my uneducated eyeball, that recipe doesn't have quite enough stuff to hit 8.2% ABV. Seems to me like it would finish more like 7% ABV.


http://byo.com/stories/item/283-brewing-doppelbock-tips-from-the-pros

On the other hand, if your recipe has too much fermentable malt — like Munich and Pilsen exclusively — you’ll have too much attenuation, and your beer will ferment down below 1.020. Now you’re stuck with a beer that’s heavily alcoholic.

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Yeah, that part about the too much attenuation could also be that you've had it in too warm of a place, maybe?

My apologies for not looking up that beer and realizing it was a lager. I gave you what is probably the wrong information based on my assumption that you were brewing an ale. Sorry!

podz said:

I drink Aventinus from time to time and I like it. This is a doppelbock and it's supposed to lager in the cold for like 3 months, so no wonder it isn't ready yet.

I'm assuming this was your recipe:

http://byo.com/bock/item/154-aventinus-weizenbock

What was your final gravity? BTW, according to my uneducated eyeball, that recipe doesn't have quite enough stuff to hit 8.2% ABV. Seems to me like it would finish more like 7% ABV.

Yeah, that part about the too much attenuation could also be that you've had it in too warm of a place, maybe?

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Not quite the same recipe - it was this one:

2.0 oz wheat malt
1.0 oz Pilsner malt
1.5 lbs Caramunich
.33 lbs Carafa Type I
3 lbs Wheat DME
5.5 lbs Wheat LME
.75oz Hallertau Hersbrucker hops
Wyeast 3068

It wasn't beefy enough to get to 8.2 (and I had mis-remembered Aventinus as 8.6% ABV) so I changed the 5.5 lbs of Wheat LME to 6.6 lbs (2 cans extract) and added 1 lb of light DME. That got me an OG of 1.080. Finished at 1.014, or 8.7%

Fermented at 60F, which I did for 3 weeks (while I was, ironically, away in Bavaria) and then condition beer for 3 to 4 weeks at 42F. My cold room's a little warmer than that so I'm hoping if I let it sit another week or two it'll mellow out a bit more and improve with age.

I'm not a fan of Wyeast so I substituted for 1 vial of WLP 351 - Bavarian Weizen, and did a 3L starter.

Edit: 1.020, eh? Yeah, 1.014 is a little lower than that. I'll let it sit a while longer but at this point will the extra time make a difference?

Update: After a couple of more weeks in the bottle, the sharpness I was referring to has almost completely mellowed out. It's not 100% Aventinus but it's a damn fine beer in the opinion of myself and my Wife.

This weekend - bottle the Bad Kitty Vanilla Porter I brewed up, then get brewing a Weissbier for Summer.

Subbed. I'm gonna deffinitely try this one out!

kingboomer said:

Subbed. I'm gonna deffinitely try this one out!

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Let me know how yours turns out! FWIW, in retrospect I'd keep the LME increase to 6.6lbs but remove the 1lb of Light DME addition that I did. Not that the ABV is really in your face, but it'd be closer to the proper ABV of Aventinus.

I'm actually leaning toward all DME. For some reason, no matter how it's packaged, LME has a metalic taste to me. I was also curious if a dry wheat beer yeast or even a belgian strain would be in order for this one?

Not sure. All I can say is WLP351 worked great for me.

I am trying my first all-DME batch as a summer Weissbier - just brewed it up last night. My FLBS was out of WLP300 so I figured I'd try the WLP351 in a less complex brew and see how it turns out.

Sounds great man. I'll let ya know when I get this brewed up!

dhutchings said:

Not quite the same recipe - it was this one:

2.0 oz wheat malt
1.0 oz Pilsner malt
1.5 lbs Caramunich
.33 lbs Carafa Type I
3 lbs Wheat DME
5.5 lbs Wheat LME
.75oz Hallertau Hersbrucker hops
Wyeast 3068

It wasn't beefy enough to get to 8.2 (and I had mis-remembered Aventinus as 8.6% ABV) so I changed the 5.5 lbs of Wheat LME to 6.6 lbs (2 cans extract) and added 1 lb of light DME. That got me an OG of 1.080. Finished at 1.014, or 8.7%

Fermented at 60F, which I did for 3 weeks (while I was, ironically, away in Bavaria) and then condition beer for 3 to 4 weeks at 42F. My cold room's a little warmer than that so I'm hoping if I let it sit another week or two it'll mellow out a bit more and improve with age.

I'm not a fan of Wyeast so I substituted for 1 vial of WLP 351 - Bavarian Weizen, and did a 3L starter.

Edit: 1.020, eh? Yeah, 1.014 is a little lower than that. I'll let it sit a while longer but at this point will the extra time make a difference?

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I know this is a somewhat older post but I've been looking for a Schneider-Weisse Aventinus recipe and this one along with your review of it looked good to me.

Quick question though and hopefully you will see this before I brew it! - At what time was your .75oz hop addition? 60min?

And with the corrected version at 6.6lbs LME and 1lb DME you obtained around an 8.7% ABV? That just seems like a small addition for such a high ABV.

Thanks!

It measured out at 8.7%. Hop addition was indeed at 60 minutes. Enjoy the brew!

There's also 3lbs of wheat dme in there too

Awesome, thank you! She is fermenting now, we'll see how it ends up in a couple weeks!

I'm trying this one again, just ordered the ingredients. I played around with brewersfriend recipe calculator and realized my IBUs were way low given that I only do partial boils. I also adjusted the LME/DME amounts a bit to more closely hit OG.

So a revised recipe:

Extract:
5 lb Wheat DME
6 lb Wheat LME

Grains:
1 oz Pilsner
2 oz Wheat Malt
1.5 lb CaraMunich I
.33 lb Carafa I

Hops:
2 oz Hallertau Hersbrucker 60m

Yeast:
Harvested WLP351 from a Weissbier batch I did this past summer.

That *should* get me:

OG 1.081, FG 1.020, ABV 7.95% (close enough to 8.2% for me)
IBU 17.19 (schneider-weisse website lists Aventinus as 16 IBUs, again, close enough for me)

Alright, I'm trying my hand at an Aventinus clone. This will be my 3rd BIAB batch and the first one with new equipment (a 15.5G half-barrel stainless steel keg, 60,000BTU burner, and a custm fitted bag).

I plan to culture yeast directly from a bottle of Tap 6 Aventinus, and will create a 1 quart starter out of it.

As you'll see, the 15.5G kettle will not hold enough water when factoring in boil off, loss to trub, etc. so Beersmith 2 is telling me I'll need to add about 4G of water to the fermenter in order to ensure I have about 1G of headspace for the boil.


Modified Recipe
--------------------------
Recipe Type: All Grain (BIAB)
Yeast: Aventinus culture from bottle
Yeast Starter: Yes
Batch Size: 10 gal
Boil Size: 12 gal (add 4 gal top up to fermenter)
Estimated OG: 1.085 SG
Estimated Color: 18.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 13.3 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 76.00 %
Boil Time: 70 Minutes
Mash In: 60 Minutes with 12 gal of water @ 152 F
Mash Out: 10 Minutes with 0.00 gal of water at 170.0 F

Ingredients:
---------------
18.7 lb Wheat Malt
4.40 lb Munich Malt
3.30 lb Caramunich Malt
2.20 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Malt
1.10 ln Melanoiden Malt
0.55 lb Roasted Barley
2.00 oz Hallertau (70 min) Hops
2.00 oz Hallertau (10 min) Hops
5 grams Irish moss (10 min)

Total Grain Weight: 30.25 lbs


This was created from research of different clone recipe attempts, trying to build on the consistencies and successes. I'm planning to do this on September 9, any feedback prior to then would be GREAT!!

Any one have an all grain recipe of this, I like this beer and would like to try and make some.

scheeps said:

Any one have an all grain recipe of this, I like this beer and would like to try and make some.

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i've gotten close in the past, and I'm brewing one this weekend. It's one of my favorite beers after living in bavaria for 6 years in the army. Here's what I'm doing.

malt lbs oz lov
wheat Base Malt 7.0 0.0 2
pils Base Malt 2.0 0.0 2
munich Base Malt 3.0 0.0 8
melanoidin Base Malt 0.0 12.0 25
choc wheat Roast Malt 0.0 8.0 350
crystal 80 Crystal Malt 0.0 8.0 80
crystal 120 Crystal Malt 0.0 8.0 120

with 3/4 oz of perle or whatever german hops I have laying around for 60 mins.

In my experience it is key to ferment at 62-64 degrees, and also to use the weihenstephpan yeast, and also to do a rest at 111* for 20 mins. These are the things that have gotten me closest to the flavor of aventinus. I also believe from experiments that the mash ph should probably be a little higher than recommended for other styles, but I am learning more about that as i go.

Oh man. I so want to try this. I looooove Schneider Tap 6 Aventinus and Tap 7 Original. I could brush my teeth with them.

If Aventinus was non-alcoholic, I'd still drink it for the taste. I love it that much. About a year ago I came into about 20 bottles of their Aventinus Eisbock. That stuff is amazing.