Fritz's Weissbier

[Fritzpoll85]

Thought I'd write up my brewday - second all grain brew. This one is a weissbier, a copy of one from Jon Finch bought at the Malt Miller. Weissbier is my favourite style, thanks to my background (there's a reason I'm called Fritz!), so hope to try a few of these.

Grain Bill
2kg Crisp Pale Wheat Malt
2kg Crisp Maris Otter
130g Crisp Munich Malt

Hallertauer hops 25g at the start of the boil. Batch size was 19L.
Water
I decided to try following the advice from this very forum and try treating the water (so thanks to @strange-steve for a really helpful set of guides - I now have a shelf that looks like a weird chemist's!)

I did my tests and got an alkalinity of 166.47 ppm. I am using CRS/AMS to fiddle this, and I wanted to get the mash water and sparge water to around 20ppm. A reduction of 146.47 ppm gave me ~0.77 ml/L dose rate. Calcium test showed 90ppm, which is probably more than enough for a weissbier, but my local water report has a little more sulphate than chloride, and you don't really want to accentuate hops in a weissbier at all, so I added a little calcium chloride, about 0.1g/L. Also used some sodium metabisulphate to get rid of my chlorine.

Applied all three treatments to my mash and sparge, and hopefully that went well!

The mash / boil
I did three mash steps using my Grainfather:

• 15 mins @ 45 deg C - this is something I'd read about as a 'ferulic acid' rest to try and extract the stuff that gives weissbier the precursor to the clove flavour that appears in the style
• 60 mins @ 65 deg C - normal one
• 10 mins @ 75 deg C - the mashout

In the second step, the wort kept just swamping the overflow pipe. So I panicked a bit and thought I had a stuck mash - I paused the recirculation and it wasn't draining well, so I popped the top off and gave it a stir to loosen the grain bed. After that, I still had some issues, but found I could keep the wort draining completely through the grain bed by marginally slowing the flow rate by just nudging the switch on the ball valve on the recirculation pipe.

This definitely had a good effect, and the wort went from a pale cloudy straw to a rich amber-brown over the course of the rest of the mash. I sparged, and let everything drain through. The boil went off fine - at the end it looked quite interesting, with lots of little pale clumps in suspension, that I had not seen before. I then ran it through the chiller into the fermenter - pitched some rehydrated Mangove Jack M20 and sealed up.

Results so far....
The gravity before I pitched was 1.044. This was a little lower than I'd hoped - I wonder if I either didn't sparge well enough, or if the slightly lower flow during the mash meant there wasn't enough conversion? Would be interested in anyone's thoughts. Maybe I should have used some rice hulls to break up the grain - is that effective?

As I mentioned in another thread, I woke up this morning and it was bubbling a fair old whack - I've got it down at 18 deg C now, and it is insanely bubbly on the airlock - about 2-3 bubbles per second. I'm a bit worried it is going far too fast, but I don't know what else to do but let it ride. Will update when I know more but any feedback welcome - I'm still learning and probably getting ahead of myself on a lot of this stuff.

 

[Fritzpoll85]

(also, sorry if that's too much detail - I'll get the hang eventually!)

 

[strange-steve]

Weisse is a great beginner beer, it's quick, easy, and delicious. Also you could probably have gone bigger with your CaCl2 addition if you wanted to get more chloride in there, don't be afraid of getting your calcium up to 150ppm or so if needs be thumb

 

[dad_of_jon]

As I mentioned in another thread, I woke up this morning and it was bubbling a fair old whack - I've got it down at 18 deg C now, and it is insanely bubbly on the airlock - about 2-3 bubbles per second. I'm a bit worried it is going far too fast, but I don't know what else to do but let it ride. Will update when I know more but any feedback welcome - I'm still learning and probably getting ahead of myself on a lot of this stuff.

Don't worry I used M20 on my dunkleweisen and it climbed up the stairs and tried to strangle me in my sleep. I chucked a clean old towel over it replaced the bubbler airlock with a blow off tube and made my escape.

 

[cushyno]

I'm interested to hear about the ferulic rest and why you thought it was necessary (and if it was worth it).

My limited experience with Weissbier is that you need to underpitch the yeast and elevate the temperature slightly. A good underpitch and 21degC with the Weihenstephan strain gives very healthy banana esters. Rapid fermentation too.

Good call adding Munich malt for a bit of extra flavour

 

[Fritzpoll85]

I'm interested to hear about the ferulic rest and why you thought it was necessary (and if it was worth it).

My limited experience with Weissbier is that you need to underpitch the yeast and elevate the temperature slightly. A good underpitch and 21degC with the Weihenstephan strain gives very healthy banana esters. Rapid fermentation too.

Good call adding Munich malt for a bit of extra flavour

Thanks! I quite like the clove spice flavour in weissbier and I fancied one with a little less banana.

My reading suggested that to get this, I needed to get some ferulic acid into the mash, so it gets converted later into 4VG which is that sort of phenol/clove flavour. I've then done it at 18 degrees C to lower but not eliminate the ester production

I didnt read about underpitching the yeast until just now. How does it work? Just put in less yeast?

 

[Fritzpoll85]

Weisse is a great beginner beer, it's quick, easy, and delicious. Also you could probably have gone bigger with your CaCl2 addition if you wanted to get more chloride in there, don't be afraid of getting your calcium up to 150ppm or so if needs be thumb

I was going to but there's a lot of contradictory advice out there - including some saying no calcium because it comes from the malt (which sounded wrong)

I've got books on weissbier but all of them want decoction mashes, which I'm not sure about, and not sure how to achieve on my kit!

 

[Fritzpoll85]

Don't worry I used M20 on my dunkleweisen and it climbed up the stairs and tried to strangle me in my sleep. I chucked a clean old towel over it replaced the bubbler airlock with a blow off tube and made my escape.

Out of interest, what dunkelweisen recipe did you use? I'd like to give that a try

 

[cushyno]

I know about the underpitch from using a smack pack of 3068 that was a few months old. Rather than make a starter I just pitched it straight in. From various online viability calculators, I estimated the several month old yeast to be about 50% viable, so effectively a 50% underpitch. Then read later that underpitch stresses the yeast enough to give esters, and that one was a real banana bomb.

I understand now what you've done to get the clove flavours. That sounds about right. It makes sense to keep the fermentation temperature lower too.

 

[Fritzpoll85]

As the feementer is winding down, I'm now wondering how to correctly carbonate it in the keg while it conditions. When I did a lager, I just bunged on 1 bar and let it sit there for a few weeks but maybe I need to be more precise?

 

[Fritzpoll85]

So this had pretty much finished by Thursday, but I gave it a couple of days before kegging.

This is the colour is came out:

Which I think looks about right for this brew. Smell was definitely right - took a taste, but hard to tell what might be wrong given it was warm and not very carbonated. Slightly sour note on the aftertaste which will hopefully disappear

Popped in it a keg. Luck to have just redone the kitchen, so have my old fridge in the garage. Popped it in at 2C and about 1.3bar. Will probably leave it for a week to carbonate/condition, so I shall report back on the first drink next week

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Weisse is a great beginner beer, it's quick, easy, and delicious.

It's a very forgiving style that's easy to make a decent one, but a lifetime's work to make a great one.

Thanks! I quite like the clove spice flavour in weissbier and I fancied one with a little less banana.

My reading suggested that to get this, I needed to get some ferulic acid into the mash, so it gets converted later into 4VG which is that sort of phenol/clove flavour. I've then done it at 18 degrees C to lower but not eliminate the ester production

Although professionals regard a ferulic rest as essential, there's some debate about how worthwhile it is at homebrew level. But if you've got a Grainfather it's no bother to add so you might as well do it.

There's a classic rule of thum b that says for weissbier the sum of the pitching and fermentation temperatures in Celsius should =30, so eg pitch at 12C and ferment at 18C is a traditional profile.

M20 is probably repacked Lallemand Munich Classic which is the best of the dried hefe yeasts, classic liquid yeast for cloviness are WLP380 and WLP351/Wyeast 3638. Or if you can get it as it's a rare Vault strain, WLP037 Yorkshire Square Ale!

In general stressing hefe yeast pushes them towards banana esters - warmth, underpitching etc. If you want the balance towards cloves then don't go too warm - 17C is plenty. Anecdotally WLP037 goes more clovey when it doesn't get enough oxygen, but that won't be an issue with dry yeast as they don't need oxygenation. Don't have the fermenter lid on too tight - they can be sensitive to even quite small excess pressure.

 

[Fritzpoll85]

@Northern_Brewer - thanks for that - it's interesting info. One of the things I enjoy about all this is the sort of blend of art and science that it all entails.

I love weissbier - most of my family live around Munich and I've been drinking weissbier since I was around 16. I know this week's batch will not be perfect but I hope to get good (and consistent!) over time.

My books on weissbier are always a little intimidating because they insist on decoction mashes. I know enough to know it is a controversial topic - but will revisit it before I do a dunkelweizen

 

[Fritzpoll85]

So I grew a little impatient....

(sorry for the detritus in the background - I just got my son off to bed after tea, and decided to have a beer before cracking on)

The head holds for quite awhile, which is good. The taste is definitely on the clovey end, but is full on weissbier flavour. I'm very pleased with it and will happily have another (then,I will honestly tidy the kitchen...)

If I'm being critical, then every so often, the aftertaste is just a spot watery - no problem when drinking it, but just as the last of the liquid goes down, it becomes a spot....yeah, watery. And not always. I wonder if this is a side-effect of the lower than targeted SG? Or maybe I've just started drinking it too quickly.

Sadly, it suggests I will have to have another go! But very happy with this first stab so far

 

[Fritzpoll85]

Do I need to reduce the pressure in the keg as I (slowly) empty it?