Late Extract Addition in a Hefeweizen

Hey all, I just ordered my equipment and an extract kit from northern brewer a few days ago and will be ready to start my first batch early next week. I plan on doing their Bavarian Hefeweizen

Bavarian Hefe Weizen Extract Kit -- Kit Inventory Sheet

which contains the following:

6 lbs Wheat Malt Syrup
1 lbs Wheat Dry Malt Extract
1 oz Sterling (60 min)

I decided to go with the white labs 3068 instead of the yeast on there because I thought it would do a better job of getting the flavors I wanted (after reading through a number of hefe threads).

I read through the big 15 page late extract addition thread and couldn't seem to find a simple answer to my question so I apologize in advance for making a new thread about this.

I'd like to do a late extract addition, mainly for color and to avoid caramelization. Now my question is regarding the hops utilization.

1) How would I adjust the hops to account for the higher hops utilization? Add the hops later or just add less of it? Is there an easy and reliable way to calculate this?

2) Is this even the right hops to use to get the kind of beer I want? I drank some Franziskaner in Austria a year ago and fell in love with the style, and that is really the kind of flavor I would be looking for (which was why I chose the White Labs 3068). In this thread regarding subbing sterling for hallertau (which I believe to be a commonly used hops for a hefe)

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/bee-cave-brewery-bavarian-hefeweizen-35679/index3.html

Edworts mentions sterling "Should be OK, but watch your IBUs, Sterling is about twice as strong as Hallertau. Depending on the Alfa % you will want to scale back to about 1/2 for each addition."

Does this mean I should maybe scale back the sterling even further with a late extract addition if I want a hefe with a similar taste to a Franzi?

I apologize for my ignorance, but really all I know about beer is what/that I like to drink. Thanks in advance for all the help though, it was less than a week ago that I decided to embark on this endeavor and i've already learned so much from you all!

To answer part of your question, you should look at the AA% on the packages to see about adjustments between types of hops. If your Sterling are twice as high as Hallertauer, you should you use twice as much of the latter.

I don't know what hops Franziskaner uses, but there are several hops that would work for the style. NB's Sterling aren't wrong, and I'd be inclined to go with them. This isn't a hop-heavy style, and there are no aroma or flavor hops in your recipe.

In my experience when doing a partial boil, adjusting the hops to account for the late extract addition doesn't make a huge difference. Scale down the addition for the AA% difference and maybe another 10% and you should be fine. How much wort do you plan to boil and how much extract are you going to start the boil with?

ifishsum said:

In my experience when doing a partial boil, adjusting the hops to account for the late extract addition doesn't make a huge difference. Scale down the addition for the AA% difference and maybe another 10% and you should be fine. How much wort do you plan to boil and how much extract are you going to start the boil with?

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Well I'm not really sure how much I'll boil with (perhaps you can help me with that too!). I'm not going to be moving to full boils/AG any time soon, I was thinking of boiling about 2.5-3 gallons using just the 1# DME to begin with and then adding the 6# LME as a late boil addition. I actually don't have my stockpot yet, and was wondering if you had any suggestions on size.

Stockpot - Royal Palm Restaurant & Event Supply

Has some very good prices, is there any reason not to take the 24 qt over the 20 qt? Thanks!

Very good prices there. No reason not to take the 24 quart, although your boil volume may be limited by your heat source (electric stove? turkey fryer?).

Boil as much as you can (but always a bit under your pot size due to boiloff threats). I'd add some of that LME early too. I don't know if it's the consensus view, but I recently listened to a podcast where they argued that boiling in too watery wort (or pure water) will make the hops harsh. So add about half early, half late.

Excellent advice, I'll do half early half late. As for the heat source, I probably won't be moving to propane for quite a while, and all I have at the moment is an electric stove. My brew plan will basically be to do a partial boil (say 3 gallons) and add the remaining 2 gallons as cold water to bring the temperature down quickly, then to add however much more is needed to get to my 5 gallon batch size. Is this reasonable do you think?

How much room do you typically want to leave for boiling? If I were doing 3 gallon boils would a 4 gallon pot be sufficient?

Also, is there any real advantage to a full vs. a partial extract boil(i know there's a whole thread about it's incredibly long)?

I was considering picking up an inexpensive electric turkey fryer because 2.5-3 gallon boils are right in line with what I want to do for the time being. There are a few threads that mention being able to do 2.5-3 gallon boils with it no problem, so I'll see how much this fellow on craigslist wants for it. Sorry to bombard you with some unrelated questions but thank you in advance!

Half early and half late is probably good. As far as boil size, my pot will hold 3 gallons but I have to watch real close as it first starts boiling to avoid boilovers - there's only about 2 inches left to the top. After an hour of good boiling I will have lost 1/2 gallon or maybe a little more, so you might need close to 3 gallons of top-up water. I buy gallon jugs and put them in the freezer 3 hours before I figure to be finished, that way they really help cool the wort quickly.

Alright in that case I'll probably aim to start off with 3, top off a bit of the way through with more boiled water from my electric kettle thingy, and then when it comes time to cool it I'll toss 2 gallons of freezer water in there to hit 5 gallons. Sound reasonable?

GO here also:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/paulaner-style-hefe-weizen-32811/

homebrewer_99 said:

GO here also:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/paulaner-style-hefe-weizen-32811/

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Yea I've actually referred to this recipe a lot, and it was what I was originally going to do, but I wanted to make sure I got all the right stuff and the kit price was pretty tough to beat. Believe it or not I've come an incredibly long way with my knowledge during this time and realized that some of the stuff in the kit I got may not be what I want in my final flavor. I'll probably tone down the hops addition a bit to account for both the slight increase in utilization and the higher AA% (6-9% for sterling as oppose to what looks like 3-5% for hallertau).

antheus said:

Alright in that case I'll probably aim to start off with 3, top off a bit of the way through with more boiled water from my electric kettle thingy, and then when it comes time to cool it I'll toss 2 gallons of freezer water in there to hit 5 gallons. Sound reasonable?

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Yeah, just remember that the 4 lbs of LME you're adding late will take up some room in the brew kettle - I forgot that once, topped off partway through the boil and it started overflowing when I dumped in the LME

ifishsum said:

Yeah, just remember that the 4 lbs of LME you're adding late will take up some room in the brew kettle - I forgot that once, topped off partway through the boil and it started overflowing when I dumped in the LME

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ah well in that case I'll likely do the late addition before adding the water =).

I just re-read the Paulaner-style Hefe Weizen thread and wow, it is amazing how much more sense it makes to me now than it did just a few days ago when I read it. I'm actually regretting not having just gone with that recipe (I was a little intimidated at first I'll admit) but it's awesome to know I can actually understand what's going on in it now.

I'll probably try doing a more faithful interpretation of that brew next because it looks brils. I don't really have a secondary at the moment, but would a bit more time in a primary aid in clarity at all? My buddies and I are gassy enough as is, not sure we need to be overloaded by yeast as well. I'll also probably only start off with 2 or 3 lbs of the *ME instead of half, I'd really like to try getting as light as I can despite using primarily LME (pipe dream I suppose).

Now as far as sanitation goes, will the one-step that comes with my homebrew kit be good enough/easy enough to use for the time being? I know i'm eventually going to get some starsan but if this stuff is good enough perhaps I'll just stick with it till it runs out. I guess sanitation is just something that scares me a bit and nothing would be more depressing than my first batch of beer being drainwater on account of an infection. During fermentation should I just have a blowoff into a jug of one-step?

One-step is certainly better than nothing. IIRC it takes 10-15 minutes of contact to work properly. I used it for my first few batches with no problems, but I think Star San or Iodophor are better.

Star San works great and lasts a long time.

A longer time in the primary can't hurt. I did a 34 day primary and it got Best of Show.

Well I'm getting ready to brew this tomorrow, just wanted to make sure about the Hops addition. The recipe is as above, I'm going to just use the sterling (7%) but I was thinking of using a fair bit less. The Paulaner clone listed above uses about a half oz of hallertauer to get to 3%, but it also steeps grains and uses different malts, so I'm really not sure how that affects bitterness. The ingredients I'll be using are earlier in this thread, would anyone be able to give me a bit of advice regarding how much of the sterling hops to add? I was thinking .4oz because of the late extract addition and the increased AA%, would this work fine?

I ran your numbers. I figured for a 3 gal boil/ 5 gal batch. 3lbs of your wheat LME at 60 min with the 1 lb of wheat dme. Do the late addition with the remaining 3 lbs of wheat LME at 15 min left in boil. 1 hop addition at 60 min with 1/2 oz 7% sterling. This will give you an OG-1.052, Fg-around 1.013 color 7.8, and IBU's of 11.2. All right in the range of a hefe. Sound right?

Thank you so much. The reason I was thinking of doing less than .5 was because of the supposed increase in hops utilization in a late addition. I think .5 oz assuming 10% more utilization gives an AA% of 3.15, (.9*7*.5), but I'm going to go with that .5. Did you use some sort of program to calculate it? Thanks again!

Yeah, if you didnt do a late addition and all else remained the same, your IBU's would only be about 8. So doing the late addition bumped it up a bit. Rule of thumb is about 25%. I plugged the numbers into beersmith, kicka__ brew software.

Just thought I'd post a little update. It's been exactly a week since the brew day, I decided to take an SG measurement. My OG must have been a bit off, probably due to not mixing the wort enough, because it was at 1.06 (the projected value was 1.049) but whatever. Took a sample today and it looked very light like a weiss (props to late addition) and tasted very much like a weiss (though definite banana esters due to my high 60's low 70's florida weather). The SG is sitting at 1.020 adjusted for temperature, which I am very happy about. Gonna probably check it again on Thursday. Thanks for the help homebrewtalk, I was surprised by how good even this early sample tasted!!!

What did the hops reduction do for you?

I ask because I have found that using the full amount of hops (checking with beersmith) will usually keep you within IBU guidelines in most cases.

antheus said:

Just thought I'd post a little update. It's been exactly a week since the brew day, I decided to take an SG measurement. My OG must have been a bit off, probably due to not mixing the wort enough, because it was at 1.06 (the projected value was 1.049) but whatever. Took a sample today and it looked very light like a weiss (props to late addition) and tasted very much like a weiss (though definite banana esters due to my high 60's low 70's florida weather). The SG is sitting at 1.020 adjusted for temperature, which I am very happy about. Gonna probably check it again on Thursday. Thanks for the help homebrewtalk, I was surprised by how good even this early sample tasted!!!

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Sounds like you've got a winner on your hands. Good one.

Well bottled this today, 2 weeks and a day from brewing, and FG was about 1.013 or 1.014. Couldn't wait any longer because i'm moving tomorrow (target FG was 1.012). The beer tastes like beer, but the smell is like a very tart/sour smell. I've read that this is usually nothing to worry about, is this typical of a hefe? Also I kept getting bubbles in my tube when pouring into the bottles. I was bottling from the spigot in the bottling bucket. Would this lead to oxygenation?

My hefe has also turned out very light using this method.