First Brew, a Dunkleweizen, Lacking Flavor. Please Help.

Hello,
I am new to the forums but in my searches on the internet, this website consistently showed up. After reading some of the posts on this forum I could tell that this would be a good place to gain insight from helpful people. For my first beer my wife and I decided that I should brew a Dunkleweizen. She likes dark beers, I am starting to like beers that are more hoppy, but this was our compromise. After receiving my single fermentation bucket kit for my birthday we went to the local brew supply shop and talked to the owner about what were our tastes in beer and what we wanted to brew the first time out. He put together the following ingredient list and gave us some basic instruction on how long to steep, when to add the hops, etc.
Ingredients:
-6.6lb of Liquid Wheat Malt Extract
-8oz of Carmel 60L Malt
-4oz of Midnight Wheat
-1oz Tettnang Hops pellets(45mins)
-1oz Tettnang Hops pellets(5 mins)
-1 smack-pack of Wyeast 1099 Witbread Ale Yeast
-.3125lbs of Corn Sugar (for priming)


Procedure (As directed from brew shop owner):
-Steep grains in 3 Gal of water for 30mins below boil temperature. (I averaged about )
-Remove grains and bring to a boil. Add all of the extract and 1oz of hops. Boil for 40mins.
-Add 1oz of hops. Boil for 5mins.
-Remove from boil. Chill wort and strain into fermenting bucket. Pitch smack pack yeast.
-Let ferment for 2 weeks.

My OG= 1.047. I let the beer sit in the bucket for 2 weeks at 65 degrees F. The airlock bubbled quite a bit for the first few days (3-4) then maybe 1 bubble for every 2-3 minutes after that. My FG= 1.019. I added the priming sugar solution (priming sugar+ 2 cups of water, boiled) to the bottling bucket and siphoned the beer from fermentor into the bottling bucket. Bottles stored at 65 degrees F for two weeks so far. We cracked open a couple bottles just yesterday and my wife and I both agreed, it was severely lacking in flavor. It tasted more like a light beer. I am left wondering if I messed up in the process or if the recipe was off. I also see a lot of recipes using Secondary fermentation, would that have benefited here? Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated as I want to hone my skills to excel at this hobby. Also, if more info is needed I can provide.

I would add flaked wheat to your mash, and I would use a different yeast. Try wyeast 3056 or 3068 and ferment 65-70 degrees.

That's a pretty simple but solid recipe they gave you.

First of all after a couple weeks in the bottle it might be a little green, so give it another week or two before you condemn it.

I also think the yeast was not the best choice for you, nor do I think crystal malt should have been used alone with the wheat. I would have used munich or a combination of munich and crystal.

The thing about weiss/weizen style beers, in my opinion, is that they are very hard to make at the same quality as good commercial varieties. Typically you need something like carapils or flaked wheat to help out the mouthfeel. It can be tricky to get the yeast to stay in suspension like they are supposed to, which is why a lot of commercial breweries add more yeast at bottling and/or add chemicals to make it look and feel cloudy. Fermentation temperature is also really important to getting the right flavors out of the yeast.

So yes, your beer may not be as great as you had hoped but since you attempted a very tricky beer for your first time, take it for what it is and enjoy it with a citrus fruit garnish in the summer heat and brew up another beer.

I'm fairly new to the the hobby too but from what I see, you may need to condition it more. Two weeks in the bottle is enough for carbonation but it may taste a little watery until it has some time. Most people say 3 weeks as a minimum but it'll taste even better if you let it sit longer.

With a SG 1.047 and FG 1.019 you'd think there would be more flavor there ( Common for medium to lighter beers to finish ~1.014 ish). However, as Apache mentioned, the crystal malt by itself won't impart alot of flavor. Some caramel is about it.

So adding other steeping grains would help that recipe, and I would suggest doing just that - Add some munich or other malts (make sure you don't have to mash them!) to the mix and brew it again. The way to learn recipe calcs is to brew, tweak and brew again till you get what you want, along the way you learn too. Plus you get more beer to drink!

As for age, yes, 2 weeks is pretty young for any beer. I usually primary for 2 weeks, secondary for 1, bottle/keg and let it sit for a minimum of 3 weeks. But I've found that even more aging can help a beer out. So have some patience and keep trying it. Remember, you're now tasting it to see what it's like at 3, 4, 5, etc weeks. If it tastes great, drink it, but since this is your first batch you should be experimenting to learn

The majority of the flavor in a wheat beer comes from the yeast. 1099 is an English Ale yeast. 3068 Weihenstaphaner is the most commonly used but there are others. You will be amazed at how much your recipe will change just by changing the yeast.

Thanks for the suggestions. I planed on letting it sit in the bottle for longer, but we had family over this weekend and couldn't resist a little showing off. I would like to add more ingredients and I will certainly change the yeast next time around. The chosen yeast was recomended by gentleman at the brew store after hearing of my wife's aversion to banana scents/tastes which can sometimes be found in beers of this style. The beer is still very drinkable in its current state, even if continued bottle aging has no effect. I still plan on serving this at my daughter's first birthday party in July either way.