What Happened to my Hefe?

[MyCarHasAbs]

I made a wheat beer, or at least that's what I thought I was making. Took a final gravity sample about two weeks into it and it was tasting pretty wheaty. Then I added my vodka and lemon peel extract mixture and cold crashed for about a week. When I went to bottle, it tasted next to nothing like a wheat and it was crystal clear. It tastes more like a Summer Ale.

I used dry yeast and what I presume was a suitable yeast to use for a German Hefe. It actually tastes refreshing but I'm baffled as to what happened.

 

[LKABrewer]

Cold crashing and time has settled the yeast. For a hefe, the yeast provides the banana/clove flavors and, once that yeast is removed, most of those flavors go away. Some commercial wheat beer producers store the kegs upside down, so that when they flip them upright to tap them the yeast is mixed back into suspension. A hefe is best enjoyed young and cloudy.

 

[midfielder5]

which dry yeast?
lka brewer is right- you don't want to cold crash or age a hefe. The beer name means "with yeast."

 

[benzesp]

Release the sea monkeys. What was your mash temp(s) and method?

 

[MyCarHasAbs]

Mash was 160ish, strike was around 168-170. I'm pretty sure what I do is called fly sparging only my method is done a little differently. I add water as it needed (1inch or so left on the surface). Collected 6.5 gals, fermented with 5 on the dot. 68-72f for 2 weeks, tested and added the lemon peel extract. Cold crashed the fourth week.

The yeast type? Don't remember. I buy from MoreBeer.com and usually just select whatever dry yeast they recommend per product.

The yeast settles at the bottom so how would I get it evenly mixed back in?

 

[strahmhv]

The yeast is what makes a hef a hef. For most other beers you can get away with using us05 dry yeast or nottingham, but not hefs or belgians.

You can mix the yeast back into suspension to cloud it up if you like, but for your next batch id recommend some WL300 hef yeast.

 

[BrotherBock]

The yeast settles at the bottom so how would I get it evenly mixed back in?

The less flocculant yeast (like hefe yeast) will settle to the bottom but will also have some remaining in suspension.

When you drink your next bottle pour it into a glass, leave about a third of the beer in the bottle, swirl it a bit and then pour the rest. That should put it back in suspension and add back that yeast character you lost.

 

[dcbw]

The recommended dry yeast for http://www.morebeer.com/products/german-hefeweizen-grain-beer-kit-advanced.html is apparently Lallemand Munich Wheat, so the yeast choice isn't that far off. The problem was probably more the cold crash and fermentation temperature, the more you stress Hefe yeast the more banana/clove you'll get, if you like that kind of thing. Under pitching and not oxygenating helps make that happen. Hefes are also supposed to be drunk very young.

 

[AndyRN]

I have two Hefe's right now (fairly similar recipes, same yeast anyway.). One is bottled and one is kegged. The bottled has way more banana flavor, it's not annoying banana flavor but definitely more noticeable.. I think I will bottle hefes from here on out.

 

[joshesmusica]

which dry yeast?
lka brewer is right- you don't want to cold crash or age a hefe. The beer name means "with yeast."

Close. It means yeast wheat. But still the same point to be made.
Though I just made a hoppy hefe and I cold crashed and used gelatin and still have pretty good notes of the hefe.
If you fermented in the temps that you said, you should've gotten some decent characteristics from the yeast, but you could start out at around 70 or so next time and let it get up to 74.
Honestly I think it's the vodka and lemon peels that killed what you had. I did an American hoppy wheat that had a lot of aroma hops in the end of the boil and hopstand. The lemon in vodka added in overpowered the hops aroma.