Secondary for Hefeweizen?

So i brewed a milk stout and pitched hefeweizen yeast. It gave a NICE banana chocolate flavor after one week, so nice and tasted like a banana split. Racked to secondary, now the banana flavor is all gone. I looked at a few hefeweizen recipes and they do not call for secondary. Im curious, is secondary something that is out of the question for hefeweizens because it allows all the delicious esters to leave?

 

You got it right. A hefe is one of the few beer styles that don't get better with age. They begin to lose the character that makes them a hefe fairly quickly. Being that it's my favorite style i brew them often. I do 10 days in the primary and then right into the keg. A week of force carbonation at 13-15 psi and it's hefe heaven!!!

 

Yeah, the banana flavor fades, sadly. But also I think the flavors of your stout might just be obscuring it as well. You could always ferment it a little warm to get extreme banana, and then age it for a bit to back it off, but you might get into bubblegum territory if you do that.

Hmmm here's an idea. If the flavors of your base stout are covering up the banana you want to keep, how about backing off the roast? Perhaps replace the chocolate malt with either Pale Chocolate or Carafa Special III? Or a mix of them maybe. And knock out the roasted barely entirely, if you have any in there.

I'd think a 'bready' base malt like Munich might make that banana pop a little more, so maybe use that instead of 2-row or MO as you base.

Man, a chocolate banana beer is sounding good right now!