how long in bottle for a hefeweizen?

Planning on bottling my hefeweizen this weekend. It's spent one week in the primary fermenter, and will be on week 2 in the secondary fermenter this weekend. After bottling how long should I wait to start drinking. The recipe says after 10 days, but I see some people on the forum say like 3-4 weeks. Just curious on what timeline I'm actually looking at.

I would go with the 10 days. They are best if you drink them young.

Blindguardian said:

I would go with the 10 days. They are best if you drink them young.

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Thanks, I guess at any rate I probably would have caved in and drank one at 10 days anyway... lol

Agreed with the 10 days. Once they are carbed up go ahead and drink them. The fresher the better for hefe's

I feel they mature well just like any other beer. Difference being they also make a fine young brew.

Four days.

til they're carbed up and taste good

If they are carbonated and tasty, drink em!!!! if they aren't, wait!!!

I just did back to back hefe batches and both were done at 3 weeks total.
I did one week primary, and two in the bottle and they didn't noticably improve in next couple weeks.
They tasted done, and taste remained unchanged after that.
You will have decent carbonation after a week, try one then, if its ok, start drinkin!

As someone who has been drinking German Hefe Weizens since 1975 and brewing them since 1994 all I can say is the brew will tell you when it's ready.

Recipes are only guidelines and (if good) specific notes taken by the brewer delineating what their process was.

Check (sample) a bottle weekly. Once the carbonation level you like is met then place all the bottles in the fridge to retard further fermentation.

I like to keep my HW bottles in the fridge about 3 days before sampling again. For some reason they taste better then.

Sweet, well seeing as how alot of people seem to only keep em in the fermenter from 1 week to 10 days I decided to just go ahead and bottle them bad boys right up. The final ABV% ended up being 6%, I gave the flat beer a taste and it tastes so much better then when I tried them at one week. Looking forward to drinking one that's all ready to go Our work is starting up an exercise next week and I'll be working like 15 hour days until almost the end of the month. So it looks like I'll have a reason to drink when I get home lol.

homebrewer_99 said:

I like to keep my HW bottles in the fridge about 3 days before sampling again. For some reason they taste better then.

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Keep beer in the fridge for 3 days without drinking them all???

DOES NOT COMPUTE