first Hefeweizen

[cmillsLA]

Just tried my first home brew beer. I made an American Hefeweizen but it tastes a little off. The color seems darker than it should be too, so I am trying to figure out what happened. It has a mild citrus flavor as expected but something else that I can't figure out, maybe it's just the ingredients I used or something went wrong.

Couple things:
- I fermented at around 80F for two weeks
- I didn't remove the water from heat when adding the extract

Not sure if either of those have an effect.

I used:
Perle 8% hops
Whitelabs WLP320 yeast

 

[ob_1jr]

extract kits tend to be a bit darker. 80F is a bit warm for that yeast to ferment and is probably where the "off" taste is coming from. It says 65-69F for optimum fermenting.

http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp320-american-hefeweizen-ale-yeast

 

[RM-MN]

Extract has to go through some heating to dehydrate and that darkens it some. Adding it to your water at the beginning of the boil will darken it further in what is known as a Maillard reaction. One way to reduce that Maillard darkening is to add the bulk of the extract very near the end of the boil, using only a small amount for the entire boil to aid the hop bittering. That will likely also have the effect of changing the flavoring.

Yeast varieties have a preferred range of temperatures and most will do their best at the lower end of that range. Keeping my beers cool at the beginning of the ferment when the yeast are most active was the single most improvement to my beer's flavor. If the wort is too warm at the start, the yeast will push that temp up and then you will find the off flavors.

 

[gwapogorilla]

+1 on the extract for color. It's hard to control your color when using extracts. They are what they are, and we have all been through that. Get into partial mashing, and you will notice a change.

I also agree that your ferm temp was a little too high. I think 72-74 would have been a better "high" temp, to help the banana flavors develop.

 

[cmillsLA]

Thanks for the advice. I will try this hef again and drop the temp down a bit and maybe not add all the of extract at the beginning of the boil.

 

[petrolSpice]

My hef and my buddies hef both came out a little weird and with little carbonation. I wonder if hef's are harder beers to make?

80F is quite hot for any yeast except a saison, so you may have gotten quite a bit of banana flavor.