Here's a really good read. I have followed Jamil's suggestions with great success.
http://byo.com/body/item/2265-german-hefeweizen-style-profile
Here's a really good read. I have followed Jamil's suggestions with great success.
http://byo.com/body/item/2265-german-hefeweizen-style-profile
Jamil does not know everything. No one does.
Stress on the yeast, whether by temperature or underpitching or underaeration or sulfite additions or whatever, will cause off-flavors. Interestingly, in a hefeweizen, we actually WANT the "off-flavors", which are an excess of banana esters and clovy phenols. So we WANT to stress out the yeast on purpose! By severely underpitching like 1/4 of the normal amount, and maybe skipping aeration and just racking the wort into the fermenter quietly, we can really kick the crap out of the yeast and get them to produce more of these desired characteristics.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm actually going to run some experiments in the next couple of months on this topic to confirm. But I already believe it's true based on past experiences. The experiments will just tell me for certain how much it matters or not.
I did a 3 way test on under pitching hefes a while ago. The underpitch was I think the equivalent of 30ml of decanted starter in 5 gallons of 1.050 wort. It had full krauesen within 24h and I couldn't taste any differences from the full pitched version. Unfortunately I still can't make a good hefe, about to give up after 6 tries. It's beyond me how people call this a beginner style.
Not creamy enough, eh? I dare you to replace 1.5 lb of non-wheat base malt with rye malt (per 5 gallons). That should help.
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