Wheat beer temp profile

[mrchicken]

Looks like I will finally have a brew day coming up !!!

Basement is a steady 64 degrees.

I'm planning on 2 wheat beers, a crystal and a dunkel.

My concern is the fermenting temp profile.
1. What is optimal for a rich tasting wheat beer with clove and banana hints?

2. Will I be able to keep the fermenting temp in the happy zone with 64 degrees ambient air temps?

3. If I will be pushing the danger zone, will a swamp cooler be good enough? or will it require ice bottles in the water bath?

Thanks for putting up with all my rookie questions !!

 

[kristiismean]

what yeast are you going to be using?

safale us-05 is 59 - 75 degrees
safbrew wb-06 is 59-75 degrees
danstar nottingham is 57-70 degrees
Danstar London ESB is 65-75 degrees but I have gone lower

(these temps are from homebrewing.org)

64 degrees, figure it will hit 70 inside. you should be fine. pitch at 64 if you can and give it time to clean up after itself.

I have been currently playing with the london ESB and just did a wheat beer with it, Very good.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Looks like I will finally have a brew day coming up !!!

Basement is a steady 64 degrees.

I'm planning on 2 wheat beers, a crystal and a dunkel.

My concern is the fermenting temp profile.
1. What is optimal for a rich tasting wheat beer with clove and banana hints?

2. Will I be able to keep the fermenting temp in the happy zone with 64 degrees ambient air temps?

3. If I will be pushing the danger zone, will a swamp cooler be good enough? or will it require ice bottles in the water bath?

Thanks for putting up with all my rookie questions !!

For clove/banana, use a Hef yeast (WLP300) in the 68-70F range. IOW, your basement should be fine once the ferm temp climbs a bit. Don't worry if it gets up to 72F but not much higher. If it really starts to get up there, a swamp cooler will work fine.

 

[mrchicken]

Ok day 11 in the primary fermentation stage. Its killing me. I have had suggestions to leave it for 3 weeks but I want to brew my next batch over the holiday. So, Should I transfer to the secondary bottling bucket and brew up my next batch? Any problems with transferring to secondary, letting it go another 10 days, then priming and bottling out of that bottling bucket? Wont I stir up a lot of sediment when I prime ?

 

[IslandLizard]

There is really no such thing as a "secondary bucket." The headspace in a bucket tends to be too large.

In general the use of a secondary is not needed and discouraged, as it can create more problems such as oxidation and infection, than it promises to resolve (yeast autolysis). Ignore your recipe instructions regarding secondaries, unless you want to age for longer than 6 weeks (e.g., sours, some fruit beers).

When the beer is done (gravity and taste sample), rack to your bottling bucket, add priming sugar and bottle away.

1. I'd be surprised if that beer isn't done yet after 11 days.
2. Buy another fermentor so you can brew and don't have to wait for this one to empty. A bucket with lid runs $16 or less. Staggered brewing is the best.

Forgot to mention, you can use the yeast cake, 1/3 of it, for your next (wheat) beer.

 

[motosapiens]

A little late to the party here. I developed a taste for authentic bavarian hefeweizen when I was stationed in Augsburg for 6 years. I have had best results (most authentic taste) using weihenstephan yeast, and fermenting it at 62 degrees. Much higher than that and you start to get more banana and other estery flavors that aren't necessarily unpleasant, just not as good as doing it properly, and they start to overpower some of the clove and spice.

If you want to do a secondary, I would advise a carboy, not a bucket, or just buy another bucket for fermenting and skip the secondary, as islandlizard recommends.

 

[Sadu]

Hefeweizens are normally ready quickly and you don't need to worry about clarity since it's meant to be cloudy. But the OP wants a krystalweizen which is something different. Assuming no filtering gear is available, 11 days is unlikely to be long enough to settle the yeast and its going to need cold crashing for several days to clear things up. Would definitely suggest doing a hefe first and a Krystal later since that is an extra step on an already complicated style.

 

[IslandLizard]

Hefeweizens are normally ready quickly and you don't need to worry about clarity since it's meant to be cloudy. But the OP wants a krystalweizen which is something different. Assuming no filtering gear is available, 11 days is unlikely to be long enough to settle the yeast and its going to need cold crashing for several days to clear things up. Would definitely suggest doing a hefe first and a Krystal later since that is an extra step on an already complicated style.

You got a point there about the OP striving for a Krystalweizen, which will need a 6 week long cold crash (lagering) to get anywhere near Krystal territory.

If it were me, I'd enjoy the Krystal as a Hefe, as it is now, and brew a few more before committing to clarity for clarity's sake.

 

[motosapiens]

If you bottle it, pretty much any hef can be a kristall weizen. just don't swirl up and pour in the yeast. Of course I don't think it tastes nearly as good that way, but I never drank kristall weizen in germany either. The ones I bottled in mid-november are entirely clear in the bottle.

 

[mrchicken]

Awesome replies ! Thanks. I will skip the krystal and go for tasty hefe. Once i have some inventory stocked up Ill get fancy and go long with some of these other recipe ideas.