Extract hefeweizen went wrong?

[-Dan-]

5 weeks ago I brewed a hefeweizen I have made before (when it went well!) with the following stuff:

6.6 lbs wheat LME
.5 lb. 2 row pale grain
.5lb malted wheat grain
1½ oz. Hallertauer
½ oz. Hallertauer Hersbrucker (finish)
As far as I yeast goes I used Wyest Bavarian.

The only difference this time from the last batches was the fact that I pitched the yeast when the batch was cooled only to about 91 degree instead of 80 _and_ what I noticed later I completely forgot the malted wheat grain.

3 weeks later I bottled and after a few days in my pantry I've had a few bottles in the fridge for the last 10 days. Here we are 5 weeks later and I tried the first bottle. Well, the brew itself is good; however, it is FAR from a hefeweizen! Little bit too dark, no head, and absolutely nothing a hefeweizen characterizes. The taste is more like an ale I brewed before and really nothing even close to what it should be. I’m wondering if malted wheat gain makes such a huge difference since I doubt the wort temperature made the different while pitching. To my knowledge 91 is not that dangerous for the yeast than having 100+.

Any ideas?

 

[McKBrew]

I would bet that pitching your yeast at the higher temperature might have made a big difference. It's going to take alot longer to cool down to normal fermenting temperature, so the yeast is going to work a bit differently. Even pitching at 80 degrees is on the high side.

Color might be affected by the type of LME you used. It could have been sitting on the shelf a bit longer, did you boil it longer than normal? etc... Liquid extracts can vary quite a bit.

 

[-Dan-]

Besides the yeast pitching thing and missing malt wheat everything else was exactely the same as before. Same boil temp, length, etc.

 

[Funkenjaeger]

When brewing a hefe, the fermentation temperature is very important. Getting the temp wrong can mean the difference between a great hefe, a hefe with unbalanced banana and/or clove, or a bland, boring wheat beer with no hefe characteristics. I went through some difficulties getting a hefe batch to come out as desired, see this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=33121&highlight=build+weizen
I fermented around 72F and it came out a lot better than previous batches.

I would not expect your pitching temp to have made THAT much difference, though it would affect it some, if anything I would expect MORE of the banana character which is usually more pronounced when fermenting at higher temps.

Neither the pitching temp nor the lack of a handful of wheat malt would be to blame for the color problem, if anything I'd guess it's caramelization during the boil. What was your boil volume? and did you do late extract additions or boil all the extract from the start?

 

[-Dan-]

The boil volume was about 2 gal plus LME which I added at the beginning of the boil after I steeped my grain for 1 hour at 160 degrees. Fermented at about 72/73 degrees
Can't really locate my problem, guess I have to drink the beer and then.

I haven't seen that paulaner clone before maybe I try that at some point in the future out of curiosity.