Lübecker Hefeweissen

German wheat beers are great for summer. I love their fruity taste, light color, and slight phenolic / clove character. Their appearance when poured into the proper type of glass is magnificent. My wife doesn't like them much but I have wanted to brew one for a while. The below recipe is scaled from Brewing Classic Styles. The fermentation temp is pretty low because apparently higher temps can result in a unbalanced bubblegum or overly banana like flavor. What I'd like is the right balance of banana and clove character.


Lübecker Hefeweissen
3 Gallon batch
2.75# Belgian Pilsner Malt
2.75# Weyerman Wheat Malt
0.25# Briess Extra Light DME

0.5 oz Tettnanger, 3.5% AA, 60 mins

Expected OG: 1.044
IBUs: 13

Mash
112F for 15 mins, to get 4-vinyl guiacol, a precursor to the clove character
152F for 60 mins
167F mash out for 10 mins

90 minute boil to reduce DMS.

Whitelabs Hefeweisen Ale, WLP300.

Ferment at 62F, raise to 68F after active fermentation to get good attenuation.
 

6/16/12
Mash conducted using infusions of hot or boiling water. Ended up with a pretty dilute mash after all those water additions. As a result, the first runnings were almost the complete pre-boil volume, so this ended up more like a no-sparge than a batch sparge. Crappy efficiency, thus the .25# of DME added to the boil to up the gravity a little.

Next time I think I'll try a decoction mash or direct heating the mash when I need to do multi-step mashes. That way I can avoid overly dilute mashes.

Pitched at 65F, when beer was in 55F tub of water. Pitched around 3PM. No starter.

Didn't take post-boil OG reading. Got a little more than 3 gallons into the 3 gallon carboy. Only a little headspace.

6/18/12
Very active primary fermentation despite the low ambient temps around 64F and that the beer was sitting in a tub of 60F water. Used a blow-off tube.

6/22/12
Still slight activity visible through the glass carboy. Replaced blow-off tube with airlock. One bubble / minute or so. Lost some beer to blow-off. Now there is almost exactly 3 gallons in the carboy.

6/28/12
No visible activity, some yeast has flocculated but still a lot of yeast is floating at the top of the carboy, especially on the carboy walls. Looks a beautiful hazy yellow / orange color.


7/1/12
Bottled with 2.75 oz of table sugar, for about 2.8 - 3 units of CO2. FG was 1.011. Got almost exactly 3 gallons. I used mostly 22oz and 16oz bottles, which apparently can withstand high pressure. I did use a few 12 oz bottles, which I hope will not explode as 3 units is roughly their pressure limit.