Whirlfloc in wheat beers?

[zimmerj81]

Hey guys, I have come across more than 1 wheat beer recipe that has called for a Whirlfloc tablet. Proteins in suspension are desirable in wheat beers, so what is the purpose of using a Whirlfloc in them?

 

[RiverCityBrewer]

I would still use it to get the trub coagulated and out of suspension in the boil kettle... I have never had issues with getting a hef cloudy because I used whirlfloc.

 

[amandabab]

wheat beers should be hazy with a slight yeast character.
this is often interpreted as cloudy yeasty muck.

whirfloc won't hurt it and will make it clear faster but not completely kill the haze.

 

[zimmerj81]

So do you mean that whirlfloc will also help with yeast flocculation?

 

[heferly]

I used whirfloc and gelatin in this american wheat...was a little worried with the gelatin, but it came out nice and hazy...wouldn't fine a hef, though.

Sorry if it's sideways, posted off my phone

 

[user 98891]

I think the haze is all from the yeast. I recently brewed a wheat beer using WLP001 and no whirlfloc or any other finings and got a near crystal clear beer out of it. With a grain bill that was over 65% wheat I was expecting it to be hazy, but it's not at all.

 

[zimmerj81]

I think the haze is all from the yeast. I recently brewed a wheat beer using WLP001 and no whirlfloc or any other finings and got a near crystal clear beer out of it. With a grain bill that was over 65% wheat I was expecting it to be hazy, but it's not at all.

Most of the haze in wheat beers is from protein in suspension. Wheat malt has a higher protein content than many other malts. Did you bottle it from a keg? If so, your proteins probably fell out of suspension & needed to be resuspended prior to bottling. When I bottled a wheat from a keg, I just inverted the keg once or twice a little while before bottling. This is why when you pour a wheat from a bottle, you should leave a little bit of beer in the bottle, swirl it, then pour out the rest.

 

[user 98891]

Just normal bottle primed homebrew, I didn't have my kegging setup yet when I brewed it. Dumping the whole bottle in does give a slight haze, but it's way clearer than my first extract kit ipa. I guess the long primary could have caused it to clear more than I expected.

It sat in my basement for 3 weeks in the primary, was then transfered to a secondary for some dry hops and bottled 7 days later. The basement stays around 65F. I just figured it had to do more with yeast flocculation.

 

[zimmerj81]

Just normal bottle primed homebrew, I didn't have my kegging setup yet when I brewed it. Dumping the whole bottle in does give a slight haze, but it's way clearer than my first extract kit ipa. I guess the long primary could have caused it to clear more than I expected.

It sat in my basement for 3 weeks in the primary, was then transfered to a secondary for some dry hops and bottled 7 days later. The basement stays around 65F. I just figured it had to do more with yeast flocculation.

Dry hopped wheat..sounds interesting! How did it turn out? If it was only in the fermentor for a month, I don't think too many proteins should have settled out. I did a raspberry honey wheat that I believe I left in the primary for 3 weeks, and it has a nice haze. Have you tried pouring all but about 1/5 into a glass, swirling up the sediment on the bottom, then pouring the rest into the glass? I find that I like the flavor of wheats better when I do get the sediment back into suspension.

 

[user 98891]

Dry hopped wheat..sounds interesting! How did it turn out? If it was only in the fermentor for a month, I don't think too many proteins should have settled out. I did a raspberry honey wheat that I believe I left in the primary for 3 weeks, and it has a nice haze. Have you tried pouring all but about 1/5 into a glass, swirling up the sediment on the bottom, then pouring the rest into the glass? I find that I like the flavor of wheats better when I do get the sediment back into suspension.

It's a pretty good beer. We were basically shooting for something similar to 3floyds gumballhead. So we took the gumballhead clone recipe and tweaked it to have more a bit more wheat, and a bit more hops. I wanted a clean yeast for the hops to shine, so we went with WLP001. It ended up very crips with a lot of hop aroma and with a bit of hop flavor and a smooth bitterness. I believe it was around 35 IBU. It's good enough I want to do another batch to keg for the winter.

 

[zimmerj81]

What kind of hops did you use, Hallertauer or something along those lines? I'm a hop head but never would have thought hop flavor would work well in a wheat. I may just have to try it.

 

[user 98891]

We went with all Amarillo which is the hop gumballhead uses in their american wheat.

I just looked up the recipe we used. We didn't use variant I thought we did. We did use the the gumballhead clone recipe that everyone else has had good success with, but we increased FWH to .50oz because we thought the original recipe needed a bit more. If I was to change this any more, I might up the 1 minute hop addition, more a bit of the 5 minute hops to 1 minute or add a bit more dry hops. I really think the hop flavor can't shine enough in this beer.

The IBU rating is off on this beer because the amarillo hops we got were a bit higher in AA than beersmith's reference material. I'd guess it's probably 35-38 IBU. Unfortunately, I didn't record the actually AA for the hops used.

Recipe: Gumballish Head
Style: American Wheat or Rye Beer (and it's totally out of style)
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.10 gal
Estimated OG: 1.058 SG
Measured FG: 1.010 SG
Estimated Color: 5.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 31.3 IBUs
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name
6 lbs Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM)
5 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1 lbs Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Amarillo - First Wort
0.25 oz Amarillo - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Amarillo - Boil 15.0 min
1.25 oz Amarillo - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Amarillo - Boil 1.0 min
1.0 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) (1600ml starter)
1.50 oz Amarillo - Dry Hop 7 days

Mash Schedule: Batch Sparge 152.0 F 60 min
Batch prime with 4oz corn sugar by weight.