Separating Yeast from Sediment in Hefe

My buddy and I are currently brewing a hefeweizen. When we siphoned the wort into the primary fermenter, more sediment than I think is desirable came with it. My question is: when we rack to secondary, how do we make sure we will retain the yeast that will give our hefe a cloudy appearance without also stirring up more sediment and mucking up our beer?

As it conditions in secondary (many pass on secondary when it comes to hefe's) the particulates will most likely settle out and drop. If you leave it there for two weeks you should condition and clarify pretty well.

You could also "crash cold" the beer for a week (providing you can fit a carboy into a refrigerator) which will only enhance the clearing. When it comes time to rack to the bottling bucket, move the carboy well in advance to the location you plan to bottle at. This way you can rack from your carboy after it's again had a chance to settle.

Some people use finings (or claryfying agents) of varying types to further promote clarity to their brew. For your particular style of beer, yeast sediment and cloudiness are deisred for style authenticity.

There are German hefeweissen styles "krystal hefe" which are clear by their style definition, if that's what you're aiming for then the above are ways to acheive it.

Good luck!

I brew lots of Weizens. Many of them clear out after a few days in the cold. If you are bottling then you can always roust the yeast from the bottom as they do in Germany. (I lived in Germany for 9 years so I have PLENTY of experience with this).

As of late, I have used the gyle (kreusening) practice. This guarentees the yeast stays in suspension.

What you do is remove about 45 oz of PRE-YEASTED wort from the fermenter and place it in a sanitized jar (I use 2 mason jars) and then the fridge.

At bottling time you add it back into the brew. This replaces the corn sugar for conditioning. The large amount of sugar in the wort (gyle) makes for a very natural carbonation and the yeast stays in suspension very nicely.

Great advice, and thanks to you both! We do want a cloudy hefe, so the kreusening technique seems especially useful. Plus it's a more natural carbonation as you say. We'll see how it goes.

homebrewer_99 said:

I brew lots of Weizens. Many of them clear out after a few days in the cold. If you are bottling then you can always roust the yeast from the bottom as they do in Germany. (I lived in Germany for 9 years so I have PLENTY of experience with this).

As of late, I have used the gyle (kreusening) practice. This guarentees the yeast stays in suspension.

What you do is remove about 45 oz of PRE-YEASTED wort from the fermenter and place it in a sanitized jar (I use 2 mason jars) and then the fridge.

At bottling time you add it back into the brew. This replaces the corn sugar for conditioning. The large amount of sugar in the wort (gyle) makes for a very natural carbonation and the yeast stays in suspension very nicely.

Click to expand...

Just curious...how does separating out 45oz of pre-yeast wort ensure that the yeast stays in suspension? What does one have to do with the other?

Evan! said:

Just curious...how does separating out 45oz of pre-yeast wort ensure that the yeast stays in suspension? What does one have to do with the other?

Click to expand...

After 2-3 weeks in the fermenters your HW may or may not be clear.

Adding the gyle to the beer to be bottled/kegged the yeast (already in suspension) "push starts" the re-fermentation process during conditioning.

While this action is going on the yeast is looking for new food and stays in suspension longer eating away just as it did in the primary.

If you think I am off in this thinking just say so. All I can tell you is that my brew is staying cloudy for longer than it would be if it were bottled.

I will be bottling some of the next batch just to try it out more. I'll just have to keep good record keeping so I don't overprime since the gyle was for the entire batch.