I'm about to give up.

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I brewed a wheat beer last night as the base for my blueberry wheat.
1 oz of saaz at 60 min.
5lbs of red wheat
3lbs of 2-row
1lb of flaked oats
I was looking for 4 ish percent but, I came in low on the OG (because I forgot wheat needs to be crushed tighter) so I tossed a cup of table sugar in to bump it up.
I'm adding 3 lbs of frozen blueberries post sorbate into secondary I intend to puree in the blender so i'm not too worried about body.

I mashed in at about 152. was 154 then temp drop after grain.
I sprinkled some mangrove jack M20 on it at 72 deg then put the bucket in my high 60's basement.

this morning it smelled like banana bread.
i'll update on what it tastes like before I add blueberries.
 
Here is a some slides of the presentation I was talking about.
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Except for one Berliner Weiss style I made I have never made a mixed fermentation beer (on purpose). That being said it is on my to brew list to make a “Banana Bomb Hef” with this method.
 
Looks like White Labs offers Torulaspora delbrueckii but it mentions fruit forward IPAs in the description. Any other places one can purchase the strain for banana use? Seems like a cool lever to pull in a hefeweizen.
 
Bassman2003 said:
Looks like White Labs offers Torulaspora delbrueckii but it mentions fruit forward IPAs in the description. Any other places one can purchase the strain for banana use? Seems like a cool lever to pull in a hefeweizen.
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According to what was posted above by @Bobbybob it produces isoamyl acetate which is found in a lot of fruits but comes across as banana so it is a natural for hefeweizen, but it would also work well with fruity hops in an IPA to boost the overall fruit impression.
 
I found this product from Lallemand - LEVEL2 Biodiva™ | Catalogue | Lallemand Wine

It is Torulaspora delbrueckii for the wine industry. Pretty sure this is what would create the banana flavors paired with the right yeast from reading other articles. I have only found it in 500g or 125g packs, so pretty pricey. If they had 11g packets it would probably cost $5-6.
 
I couldn't get Brewer's yeast at the beginning of quarantine. Now I'm a pro with my instant Baker's yeast, like the flavor and getting ~85% attenuation.
It's got a little banana and clove. I would compare it to WLP 300. It costs about $4.50 for 4 oz and my wife used it for baking.
I was gonna order US-05 or -04 and couldn't find them as recently as 2 weeks ago.
I'll try with my next Homebrews order, but that's probably a month or 2 out.

Even a 1 gallon batch and a $1.35 pouch of Fleischmann's is worth the test
 
So your experience is baking yeast is good for Hefeweizen? That would be super convenient!
 
Gruel said:
So your experience is baking yeast is good for Hefeweizen? That would be super convenient!
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I always assumed baking yeast was perfect for Brown Porters. Huh.

Joking aside, you can find lots of reports by people that tried using baking yeast. The results have been mixed. I would not assume that all baking yeast was the same. I would also not assume that yeast specifically designed for baking would perform as well at making Hefeweizen as a yeast strain that has been selected for its ability to produce Hefeweizen. It's certainly possible, but not all too likely, I'd say.
 
A few years ago I tested one wort with multiple yeast, one of which was bread yeast. Over the years we have selected bread yeast for its ability to produce lots of gas bubbles relatively quickly so our bread will be nice and soft. We have not selected for any special flavors. the intense gas production strips out some of the nice flavors you are working so hard to put INTO your beer

All fermenting yeast gives you alcohol and therefore beer, but each yeast lends a different flavor. Bread yeast was not as interesting as the ale yeasts.
But any yeast is better than no yeast, so maybe you could add a bit extra flavorful grains to offset the bland and flavor stripping bread yeast you
CAN get right now
 
monkey, amber, thanks for the comments, but this was more a question for dnr .
 
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Probably more his son Max, a biophysicist who got a Nobel Prize for viruses.
 
Jayjay1976 said:
I fermented this latest batch with Munich Classic, brewed a week ago Sunday and kegged the following Friday. Fermented it in our laundry room where the temp is pretty steady, 71-73F, it seemed to finish out in about 60 hours. It was set up with a blowoff tube but with 1.5 gal. headspace in a 7 gallon fermonster it didn't ed up needing it. Its conditioning now at 32F and 12psi CO2. Tasted a bit green still with a hint of sulfur and so far no noticeable banana. How much time should I give it before concluding this is another failure?

This batch was 66% wheat, 33% GP, some melanoidin and enough acid malt to put it around 5.2, with mandarina hops. I'll post the recipe shortly.
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Wait a minute. Five days is not long enough to clean up undesirable fermentation flavor and aroma. It sounds like you might be covering up banana with green apple.

Racking to your keg after five days dropping to 32F with ale yeast is not conditioning the beer on a biological level that would occur at 62F. It is not a lager yeast strain that can operate at that temperature.

Take a look at the difference in appearance of this Hefeweizen batch of mine between 6 days
IMG_20200704_104817.jpg
IMG_20200710_075527.jpg
and 12 days (when I rack my ales at 14 days).
 
i've been using mangrove jack's m20 dry yeast and adding half a block of fresh finnish baking yeast, i've noticed none of the normal dry yeast perform perfectly, but mangrove jack's seems the closest.

Finnish baking yeast is used for sahti, which has even stronger banana notes.
 
Jayjay1976 said:
Where are you getting those glass airlocks?!? Yummo..
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I got them back in 2013 and 2014 from Midwest Supplies. I don't think they carry them anymore, they are prone to breaking if you're not careful. I hate plastic with a passion.

Here is a pic of the first pour of my Hefeweizen batch. I used a fifth gen fermentis dry S-04 yeast (1 cup thick slurry) for a 5.5 gallon batch, fermented at 62F and got good results (banana flavor etc.)

I used
IMG_20200712_092430.jpg
50% pale wheat, crushed by MWS, the other 50% was Salzgitter pils crushed by me. 10 IBU 60' of DE Perle pellets. Step mash: 15 min protein rest at 120F, 30 min at 146F and 30 min at 158F. 60 min boil. Fermented at 62F for 14 days, carbed at 3 vols @15 psi (burst carbed at 40 psi for 36 hours).
 
And just to give you an idea of the banana flavor above, when I gave some to my wife to taste she asked if the banana tones will eventually go away (she assumed I didn't want that in there). And that's after breaking the rules using "the wrong yeast strain". I think my conclusion is the fermentation temperature of 62F (thank you, Jamil) is more important than the strain and letting it clean up for a full 14 days in primary before racking to the keg. I want to also believe the german step mash procedure made it more "german tasting" but it's probably more the malt and hops ingredients I used.

Hope that helps!
 
I also stand by my original advice of limiting or eliminating the flavor hop addition and keep the IBU to 10 for a 1.048 OG to allow the wheat malt to stand out.

I should also mention I added gypsum to raise Sulfates and quite a bit of CaCl to raise Chlorides to balance towards "malty".
 
I have a hefe dunkel in the fermenter right now at 62, but im trying ot get away from the banana in the dark version. In the regular version I want eye popping banana flavors so ill ferment higher.
 
I had a pint of my most recent Hefeweizen last night. No major flaws or obvious off flavors, just a complete lack of expected flavors, it's just honestly the least interesting beer I've ever brewed. I'm going to order a packet of Torulaspora delbrueckii and co-pitch that with Lallemand Munich classic. If that doesn't give me the results I'm after, I'm going the circus peanut route.
 
Bassman2003 said:
Sorry to hear that. Please keep us updated on the Toru usage and results. Hope it works for you. Where did you order it and was it a small packet? Thanks.
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I asked my LHBS to special order it from White Labs, but they can't get that through their distributor LD Carlson so I will have to order online from elsewhere and take my chances shipping liquid yeast in hot weather.
 
Kharnynb said:
i've been using mangrove jack's m20 dry yeast and adding half a block of fresh finnish baking yeast, i've noticed none of the normal dry yeast perform perfectly, but mangrove jack's seems the closest.

Finnish baking yeast is used for sahti, which has even stronger banana notes.
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Any and all Mangrove Jacks yeast always stalls out on me. I don't know why. I brewed a hefeweizen earlier this summer with the M20 and while the flavor was spot on it only finished at 1.020. Still really enjoyed the beer.
 
i meant to ask earlier, are you bottling or kegging? Try bottling some and then do the swirl and pour to get the dregs. If there’s banana in there, it could be simply lying on the bottom.
I couldn’t make myself comb back thru the entire thread to see if anyone had suggested this already so... 🍺🤙
 
Snuffy said:
i meant to ask earlier, are you bottling or kegging? Try bottling some and then do the swirl and pour to get the dregs. If there’s banana in there, it could be simply lying on the bottom.
I couldn’t make myself comb back thru the entire thread to see if anyone had suggested this already so... 🍺🤙
Click to expand...

My first several attempts at Hefeweizen were all bottled; I started kegging early this year and since then I have kegged two weissbiers, both lacking any noticeable banana character.

I suspect that chilling the wort by recirculating through a copper counterflow chiller is doing something to my beer chemically. Maybe going through the pump a bunch of times is affecting it. I'm going to borrow an immersion chiller to rule those out.
 
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I have a copper loop in my fermenter, and there is plenty of banana; as I mentioned I'm trying to get away from it, by tweaking my mash profile.

Jayjay's troubles seem to be a total fluke; usually people complain about too much banana (which really is an off flavor, if you think about it; just not considered one for Weizen).
Jayjay, are you pulling our leg?
Or, option b, did you notice any change recently with your sense of smell (keyword, ahem, corona)?
 
Gruel said:
I have a copper loop in my fermenter, and there is plenty of banana; as I mentioned I'm trying to get away from it, by tweaking my mash profile.

Jayjay's troubles seem to be a total fluke; usually people complain about too much banana (which really is an off flavor, if you think about it; just not considered one for Weizen).
Jayjay, are you pulling our leg?
Or, option b, did you notice any change recently with your sense of smell (keyword, ahem, corona)?
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I'm as serious as a heart attack. I've been brewing for a couple of years now, more than three dozen AG batches so far and I'm at the point where I'm tightening up my techniques to eliminate any perceptible off flavors and addressing other shortcomings in my recipes. My sense of smell is fine, my brew buddies and the guys at my LHBS are all stumped as well. It's just got to be my chilling setup. I've changed every other possible variable. The only other thing I can think of would be to try fermenting in glass. I've used PET fermonsters from day one and my other beers turn out fine, just can't seem to get the banana notes in any of my beers, but especially my weissbiers.

By some weird twist of fate, my neighbor/beer drinking buddy has a doctorate in chemistry and has access to liquid chromatography equipment. I've shared my torment over the lack of isoamyl acetate in my beers and he's graciously offered to analyze samples, so I will be sure to post his findings in this thread.

Edit: the copper in your fermenter isn't the same thing as copper in my kettle
 
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I'd be seriously surprised if it's your chilling setup. But it's an easy thing to test, so why not...
 
beersk said:
I'd be seriously surprised if it's your chilling setup. But it's an easy thing to test, so why not...
Click to expand...
I've read elsewhere that copper in the brew kettle can cause some compounds to oxidize, maybe the precursors necessary to the formation of isoamyl acetate are being used up in that reaction?

If you have any other ideas, I'd be super glad to hear them.
 
Jayjay1976 said:
I've read elsewhere that copper in the brew kettle can cause some compounds to oxidize, maybe the precursors necessary to the formation of isoamyl acetate are being used up in that reaction?

If you have any other ideas, I'd be super glad to hear them.
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You could try using Brewtan B to mitigate that. It's supposed to protect against Fenton reactions (oxidation of polyphenols by the metals like copper, etc.).
 
Just FYI, the slotted lauter manifold in my mash tun is also copper. It's true that I have no copper present when I'm boiling the wort.
 
I would be surprised if an immediate, first pour, lack of character was all because of a copper chiller coming in contact with (initially) hot wort, rather than the recipe, water, ingredients or primary fermentation conditions/length being less than ideal.

Copper is the traditional material of commercial boiling kettles for many good reasons, while adding tannic acid for extended shelf life is a new abomination.

Brewtan B experiments I found online comparing beers in a blind triangle test were inconclusive in the first four months of the beer's shelf life. Obviously for an extended period precipitating haze-forming proteins out of the beer will reduce oxidation, but you can do the same thing with gelatin (though not recommended for a Hefeweizen), but who here can keep a beer sitting around in a keg more than a couple of weeks before running out?
 

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