Help with Southern Tier Heavy Weizen Clone

I had a couple of bottles of Heavy Weizen from Southern Tier last summer and my wife and I both enjoyed them. I think it would be a good beer to have on tap this summer. So, I'm trying to work up a clone recipe. Here are the notes from the bottle:

Alc. 8.0% by Vol.
18 degrees plato
38 IBUs
2-row pale malt
malted white wheat
kettle hops: hallertau magnum
aroma hops: czech saaz

Seems straightforward enough. Here's what I came up with in BeerAlchemy:

Heavy Weizen Clone
OG: 1.074 SG
FG: 1.016 SG
Expected Color: 6.5 SRM
Expected IBUs: 39 IBU
Expected ABV: 7.8%
70% Brewhouse Efficiency
5.0 gallon batch

7.0lb US 2-row Malt
7.0lb White Wheat Malt

.75oz German Hallertau Magnum (11.0) (60 mins)
.75oz Czech Saaz (3.0) (1 min)

Yeast: Fermentis Safbrew WB-06

On paper, it looks pretty much like what Southern Tier describes. I was hoping some who has a bit more experience designing recipes than I (and maybe has tried Heavy Weizen) could weigh in on the probable accuracy of my clone. Thanks!

Even just some feedback on how the recipe looks in relation to the general style (Weizenbock?) or just how good or awful this is likely to be would be awesome...

I imagine no one commented because there is nothing obviously "wrong" with the recipe. I'd just make sure to keep fermentation temps down, a big beer with a yeast like that can get very estery if fermentation climbs into the 70s. Good luck.

Oh man, I love that stuff. Subscribed!

Finally made it around to brewing this today. Pretty much stuck with my original recipe, except that the Magnum I got was a bit higher AA than what I'd originally spec'ed. Dropped that down to 0.5oz and upped the Saaz to 1oz. Also, somehow my mash efficiency decided to go through the roof on this batch. 85% from typical low 70's! My OG is a full 20 points higher than anticipated. I'm sort of debating adding some water to bring it down a bit, not sure if the yeast will be able to ferment up to 10% ABV...

fluxgame said:

Finally made it around to brewing this today. Pretty much stuck with my original recipe, except that the Magnum I got was a bit higher AA than what I'd originally spec'ed. Dropped that down to 0.5oz and upped the Saaz to 1oz. Also, somehow my mash efficiency decided to go through the roof on this batch. 85% from typical low 70's! My OG is a full 20 points higher than anticipated. I'm sort of debating adding some water to bring it down a bit, not sure if the yeast will be able to ferment up to 10% ABV...

Click to expand...

So fluxgame how did this thing turn out? Did you prime your bottles with any yeast? I dig this beer myself and I am considering copying your recipe.

In the end I just decided to let it ferment out and call it a wheat wine. It isn't awful, but pretty hot and definitely nothing like Heavy Weizen. I kegged it up to bulk age it and pretty much forgot about it until now. I suppose I should pour some off and see how it's faring. I'll check back in with an update when I do that.

anything new?

Yeah, dumped it a couple weeks ago. It got worse, rather than better. I might consider trying it again, but definitely would make sure to get my SG spot on. Probably would switch to a liquid yeast too. I made a standard Hef with WB-06 last summer as well and wasn't too impressed with it either.