Wheat beer / Weissbier

merc230ce

Ok lads, here's my latest 'There's no right answer to that' question:

I want to do a brew for my brother-in-law for Christmas. He's a weissbier fan, particularly Paulaner. Part of the difficulty I have in deciding what to do is that I don't like them, so I hope some of you can give me opinions...

I'm going to use a wheat beer kit + wheat malt. I don't think that dry hopping would be appropriate for the style, and have read that wheat isn't suitable for steeping so I can't 'freshen it up' with specialty grains either. So without either of these options I believe that the majority of the flavour comes from the yeast - the banana and clove flavours are particularly mentioned. Now I'm trying to decide whether to use a Munich yeast and go all out for those flavours, or use a standard ale yeast and brew a less-characterful wheat beer. The room I ferment in is rock-steady at 20 deg, and I've had good results with US-05 in there, but I wonder if it would be a bit warm for the Munich - would the flavours be over the top at that temp? My only option for a cooler spot is the shed, with no temp control.

So, are there Paulaner fans with experience of brewing wheat beer kits out there? What do ye think? Are the kits generally more or less flavourful than commercial Paulaner? Are the flavours from Munich yeast really powerful? Do you like wheat beers or do they seem tasteless to a weissbier fan?

mayto

The yeast in a wheat beer really does make all the difference to get that banana/clove aroma. Ideally you would use a liquid yeast otherwise a dried yeast will do a good job. Some brewers have said that they got really good results from fermenting at 17C. Wheat malt will need to be mashed so I would not bother steeping any. It could be worth looking at making an extract wheat beer, if you have moved on to that yet:) .

merc230ce

Hi Mayto, thanks for the reply. Can you suggest an extract recipe? I'll probably chicken out and use a kit, but I'd like to check one out.

mayto

This is roughly the recipe from brewing classic styles,an excellent book imo. You can add a little more/less dried wheat malt to make it stronger or weaker. Beertools calculates the colour as 9.6 SRM, but it should come out lighter than that. If you start off with about 26 litres in the boiler,you should end up with roughly 23L left after 60 min boil due to evaporation~ 10%.

Category: German Wheat and Rye Beer
Subcategory: Weizen/Weissbier
Recipe Type: Extract
Batch Size: 23 L
Volume Boiled: 22.71 L
Mash Efficiency: 72 %
Total Grain/Extract: 3.30 kg
Total Hops: 23.0 g

Ingredients

---

3.3 kg Dry Wheat
23 g Hallertau (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
Yeast: White Labs WLP300 Hefewizen Ale

Notes

---

Vital Statistics

---

Original Gravity: 1.052
Terminal Gravity: 1.013
Color: 9.58 SRM
Bitterness: 12.8 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2 %

BiddyBob

mayto wrote: »

This is roughly the recipe from brewing classic styles,an excellent book imo. You can add a little more/less dried wheat malt to make it stronger or weaker. Beertools calculates the colour as 9.6 SRM, but it should come out lighter than that. If you start off with about 26 litres in the boiler,you should end up with roughly 23L left after 60 min boil due to evaporation~ 10%.

Category: German Wheat and Rye Beer
Subcategory: Weizen/Weissbier
Recipe Type: Extract
Batch Size: 23 L
Volume Boiled: 22.71 L
Mash Efficiency: 72 %
Total Grain/Extract: 3.30 kg
Total Hops: 23.0 g

Ingredients

---

3.3 kg Dry Wheat
23 g Hallertau (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
Yeast: White Labs WLP300 Hefewizen Ale

Notes

---

Vital Statistics

---

Original Gravity: 1.052
Terminal Gravity: 1.013
Color: 9.58 SRM
Bitterness: 12.8 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2 %

"3.3 kg Dry Wheat" . . . wheat spraymalt?

mayto

BiddyBob wrote: »

"3.3 kg Dry Wheat" . . . wheat spraymalt?

Ye , wheat spraymalt.