Brewing a Hefeweizen

[MN_Jay]

Sorry, I should know to post the recipe by now... It's an extract recipe from Midwest supply

"Hank’s Hefe Weizen: There once was a homebrewer named Hank. He liked to brew Hefe Wiezens. He gave me a bottle of his favorite recipe one day, a traditional Hefe Weizen. I drank it. I liked it. I brewed it. Now it’s your turn to brew the legend of Hank. Wyeast is recommended for best results. Our ingredients for this recipe include: 6 lbs. Wheat liquid malt extract, 1 lb. of Light DME, 8 oz. Carapils specialty grains, 1 oz. oz. bittering hops, yeast, priming sugar and a grain bag."

Straight from Midwest website. Thanks again.

 

[DeathBrewer]

looks like a pretty standard extract hefeweizen. like i said, you can't go wrong!

 

[cuinrearview]

Sounds about like the hefe I bottled yesterday, my first as well. Two pieces of advice:

1)Look into washing the yeast, as you'll probably want to make more (I already do) for the summer and $8 a batch pretty much sucks

2)Ferment in the basement. I did mine in a water bath in the low 60's and still got lots of 'nanner out of it, with the clove to balance, at least at bottling time

The hydrometer sample was sooooo smooth, and unique compared to most everything I have drank. This one is a keeper, and at 3-4 weeks from brew day to glass it's something that I'll easily have on hand. Plus, it's meant to be drank with the yeast. This means I can pack the cooler for kayak floats down the river and not have to worry about dropping my glass 3/4 of the way through the trip.

 

[xamers]

IMHO, that violates a lot of what I know about single celled organisms and rehydrating things. I'll explain to why I think it's not accurate and let you guys pick it apart.

I've been baking longer than I've been brewing and I have to tell you that in baking, you don't rehydrate yeast in plain water because that can kill your yeast. Even in baking, you rehydrate your yeast in sugar water. The normal solution is 1 teaspoon of table sugar in 1/4 cup of water. That's 1 teaspoon sugar to 12 teaspoons of water. If you do the math on it, that's a fairly high gravity solution.

Basic biology says that too much water can make cells pop. That's why you have isotonic solutions. The names for what we're discussing are technically isotonic, hypertonic, and hypotonic. Hypertonic would be your high gravity worts for big beers. Hypotonic would be plain water. What you want is a solution that's approximately isotonic. This allows the dehydrated cells to pull in fluids at a rate they can manage. Too much of a concentration of water and they can become flooded and explode. Anyone who's ever dropped a contact into water and found later will understand what I'm talking about.

Just my 2 cents,

M.

Since we resurrected this thread I'll address the yeast exploding thing....

Hyper/Hypo/Iso tonicity are relative terms to describe amount of solute in solution. A specific liquid is not inherently hypertonic or hypotonic. It is what it is and the terms are used to compare two differing solutions.

The issue comes up with injecting yeast into a hypotonic solution. In this case, the free water in the hypotonic solution will attempt to naturally equilibrate to the environment inside the yeast cell (which is hypertonic compared to the original solution). If there is a permeable barrier for this to occur, then the yeast cells would literally overfill with this free water and burst. Fortunately for yeasts (and plant cells), they have nice thick cell walls than afford them two luxuries. First they selectively do not allow unlimited osmotic movement of free water. Only enough to satisfy the cellular demand. And second, the walls are tough and don't break easily to external environmental changes.

Thus, yeasts will not readily "explode" when placed in a hypotonic solution. This is why it is safe to "wash" reharvested yeast cells after your fermentation is completed and why it's safe to rehydrate yeast cells in water.

 

[MN_Jay]

1)Look into washing the yeast, as you'll probably want to make more (I already do) for the summer and $8 a batch pretty much sucks

2)Ferment in the basement. I did mine in a water bath in the low 60's and still got lots of 'nanner out of it, with the clove to balance, at least at bottling time

1) That's something I haven't tried yet. I'm still a green noob (as opposed to just a noob...) so I have yet to wash yeast. In fact, I have yet to make a starter on anything. When I ordered this kit, I upgraded to the Wyeast Activator so that will something new for me.

2) My basement is about running a constant 65F this time of year, not low enough?

Thanks again.

 

[DeathBrewer]

i like mine in the low 60s as well, but mid to high 60s is good. you move into the 70s and you get the heavy, unpleasant phenolics. some people think you need to be in the 70s to get good banana flavor. those people are wrong