1st BIAB, lemon/ginger Hefeweizen

[iowarider]

I'm looking for suggestions for my first biab recipe. I've done 5 batches of extract beers with steeping grains and have had great results.

The beer I'd like to brew is a Hefe base with an herbal/ginger/lemon kick to it. Here's my recipe so far for a 5.5ish gallon batch, mashing in a 10 gallon kettle:

6.5# German Wheat
4# German Pils
0.5# Honey Malt

0.75oz Hallertau @ 45min
0.25oz Hallertau @ 15 min
Zest of 2 lemons @ 5 min
Crystallized ginger @ 5 min
Possibly a small flameout addition of an herbal hop??

White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale or equivalent Wyeast
Thinking I won't do a starter for this one since the gravity is so moderate, but that'll really depend on how long between purchasing the yeast and brew day.

The thing I'm most concerned about is the strength of the ginger and lemon. I'd like them to be noticeable, but not super strong. From searching the forum, it seems like the zest of 2 lemons is about right. But I've found posts of people using anywhere from 0.5oz-6oz. Thoughts?

 

[potseeslc]

If this is your first all grain batch I would keep it simple. If going liquid I would still do a starter as it will get it going faster. I personally just hate lag time. I would ditch the ginger and the lemon. Just because you're going to have so much other stuff to deal with.

 

[iowarider]

Thanks! I'll do the starter then. Doesn't take much time and I've got the homemade stir plate and flask, so might as well. I'll do a straight-styled batch for my next one, but I really want something interesting at the moment. Plus I'll be entering it in my homebrew club's Wheat Beers competition in August so I'd like to have something that stands out from the rest. I do appreciate the advice though.

 

[potseeslc]

To be honest your additions are pretty simple, I love my stir plate and it is super easy. Use a blow off tube hefe yeast is a monster.

 

[iowarider]

Anybody know how much of the crystallized ginger to use? Not sure if I can get fresh.

 

[Murphys_Law]

I've never done a starter with a hefe. I've always heard you want the yeast to stress a little to get the right profile.

 

[iowarider]

Hmm come to think of it I remember reading that somewhere as well...

 

[iowarider]

For the benefit of anyone finding this thread later if trying to craft a similar brew, here's what I ended up doing.

6.5# German Wheat
4# German Pils
0.5# Honey Malt

0.75oz Hallertau @ 45min
0.25oz Hallertau @ 15 min
1/2 oz dried ginger @ 10 min
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 min
Zest of 3 lemons @ 5 min
Juice of 1 lemon @ 5 min
1/2 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrient @ 5 min

Fermenting with WLP320 American Hefeweizen because it was the closest thing my LHBS had.

My LHBS was very helpful. Suggested that I'd get better extraction if they double-milled the grain for me, and it seemed to work well. She also told me to use the 1/2 oz of dried ginger for what I was going for, and by the taste of the wort, it was dead on.

Ended up messing up a bit with temps during the mash. Mash temp was around 151 for the majority of the mash but fluctuated between 148 and 154. Couldn't seem to keep a steady temp even with the 90 degree ambient temp. I didn't really know how long to mash, so I started with 60 min and then ended up making it 90 because the SG wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. Even after that I didn't get the efficiency I was hoping for, so I adjusted the amount of sparge water and sparged until the SG was 1.041. This resulted in the post-boil OG being 1.052, which was darn close to what I was aiming for. Total volume into the carboy ended up being about 4 gallons, so about a gallon shy of what I'd been shooting for, but not bad for my first all-grain batch.

Any thoughts from this as to how I could improve? I used the Priceless BIAB calc for estimating volumes and then adjusted from there based on my actual SG.