"To Style" Hefeweizen Recipe and Tasting

When I decided that I wanted to brew a "to-style" beer for this year's DC Homebrewers Cherry Blossom Competition I was tossing around a few different ideas: British Bitter, American Pale Ale (the category I entered last year), Berliner Weisse, or a Witbier.  I was going through my inventory of hops, spices, and washed yeast and going back and forth when I decided to ask my girlfriend Alyssa for a recommendation.  Her answer: make a Hefeweizen.

There are a few beers that I accredit my love for the craft to. Allagash White and Duvel were two of the first Craft/Import beers which truly opened my eyes to the range of beer flavors and styles when I had both on my 21st birthday.  St. Bernardus Abt. 12 made me say "Oh my God this is the best beer" a few years before the similar Trappist Westvleteren 12 overtook that place on my list. Then there is Weihenstaphaner Hefeweissbier.

While craft beer (and to some extent even the imported beer) industry is constantly changing, with some hot new thing getting all of the hype, this Hefeweizen, from the oldest continuously functioning brewery in the world, never goes out of style and currently holds the highest rating of any Hefeweizen style beer and the 138th overall position on Beer Advocate.  While at any time a new IPA or Russian stout could be better than the last greatest thing, this beer is simply perfection that all other Hefeweizens should attempt to follow.

Frankly, I don't remember when I had the beer for the first time.  My very first homebrew was a hefeweizen and used the Wyeast 3068 Weihenstaphen Weizen yeast strain.  That beer turned out remarkably well and I searched down the source of the famed yeast.  While I don't remember when or where it was, I do remember thinking: this is a perfect hefeweizen.  While I have only brewed one other Hefeweizen influenced beer (my tasty but unfortunately explodingly carbonated LimeWeizen) the hefeweizen style has been one of the most influential in my brewing experience.

As my tastes have changed over time, hefeweizen has faded from a favorite style to more of a situational/seasonal beer for me.  I haven't made a light, refreshing, low hopped wheat beer in a long time and I had much better success with my to-style weizen than my to style wit, so, very long story short: I went with Alyssa's choice.

In order to attempt an award winning hefeweizen (also known as Weissbeer) I went with Mino Choi's recipe featured on Chop and Brew.  I did decide however to not go with the traditional decoction (or in this case triple decoction) and instead did a step infusion and added a half pound of Vienna malt to up the malt character.  The recipe ended up being exceedingly simple:

6 lbs. Wheat Malt
4 lbs. 2-Row
.45 lbs. Vienna
1 oz. Tettnanger hops
WLP 300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast


2/6/2015
With the gravity down to a stable 1.008 for a week now I decided the beer was done.  Flavor is underwhelming and there seems to be a strange clumpiness to the yeast.  I decided to keg 3 gallons as a krystallweizen and bottle the rest.  Bottled portion received 1.30 oz. of sugar blended in 1 cup of filtered water, ended up with only a little more than a gallon of bottles (11), a little worried about over carbonation.

Bottled "hefe" version on the left and kegged "krystal" version on the right.

2/26/2015
Side by Side Tasting
Appearance-
Bottle: Cloudy, almost no head.  Looks like a hefeweizen except for the lack of carbonation.
Keg: Mostly clear but with some small specks floating throughout.  A much nicer head of a couple inches that fades to a thin layer.

Smell-
Bottle: Bananas, butterscotch, vanilla, light spice, apple.  Pretty classic hefeweizen aromas but fairly low on the clove.
Keg: Much cleaner/lighter without the proteins and yeast added. Banana, light grain, fairly clean.

Taste-
Bottle: Some light banana and spice followed by a light snappy tart apple character.
Taste: Cleaner and brighter than the bottled version.  Light banana and spice, but almost Pilsner like in its cleanness.

Mouthfeel-
Bottle: Moderate to high body with very low carbonation.  Hopefully the bottles continue to carb up some, I was actually worried it would be too high so I'm surprise it's so low at this point.
Keg: More moderate to light in body with a much higher, but still only medium, carbonation level. Seems to be better in both categories, though this doesn't save the low level of yeast derived character.

Overall-
Both: All around this is a fairly disappointing though not offensive attempt at the style.  The low fermentation temperatures (~68F) didn't produce enough yeast character.  The bottle conditioned version with all of the extra bottle dregs poured in definitely had a small increase in flavor, but also didn't have as nice of a carbonation or look.  Were I to make this again I would increase the fermentation temperature slightly and likely do a decoction.

Other Variants:
Second runnings were turned into a sour (Berliner Weisse? too high gravity and wheat content. Gose? no salt or coriander. So I don't know). WLP677 Lactobacillus Delbrueckii added for 3 days prior to pitching a British ale yeast.  Bottled with 0.60 oz of sugar for 9 bottles (and a half bottle that I drank). Wheat Extract wort pitched on top of straight Lacto and fermented fully, bottled with 0.40 oz of sugar for 7 bottles.  The beer fermented with both lacto and ale yeast was much tastier with a much stronger lemony sourness and a nice wheaty and malty backbone while the purely WLP 677 version is pretty mild and bland, not bad but nothing exciting, probably similar to Mike Tonsmeire's experience with a 100% lacto fermented beer with this same strain.

Lime hefeweizen Tasting #1

I brewed up an all grain hefeweizen a while back. Though I used a couple types of wheat it had a fairly simple, classic bill. I bottled half of it straight and it's a drinkable, though very mild, hefe without any thrills. The second half however I added roughly half a container (about .75 quarts) of Simply Lime limeade to.

Appearance: With all the wheat this beer pours with a big head and (purposely) cloudy.
Smell: The nose is yeasty and doughy with just a little hint of citrus and banana.
Taste: The flavor is fairly tart with the lime the dominant flavor and the other flavors backing it up.
Overall: This is somewhere in the middle of those I've made in terms of quality, with no major flaws and a refreshing quality, but without the hefe characteristics or malt-to-fruit balance I would have liked. I could see this going over well with ladies and those who are less into beer and it's certainly quaffable.

Hefeweizen Salad Dressing

With lots of leftover lettuce from my birthday dinner my girlfriend and I decided to have a nice salad tonight.  She asked me to make the dressing...which meant that I had free will to experiment on this one.  I took some similarities to a recipe we made for the salad we made for my birthday but made a bit of a modification in adding beer.  The recipe below is an approximation of the recipe I made as I just eyeballed amounts which looked good:

1/8 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup bavarian hefeweizen

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp mixture parsley and basil (or italian seasoning)

1 tbsp. grated parmesan

This then went on a salad of romaine lettuce, croutons, parmesan cheese, olives and pepperoncini.  One thing is for sure: pepperoncini and hefeweizen go extremely well together.  There was enough dressing for several salads, and I even put it onto a sandwich the next day, delicious.

Hefeweizen #1 Tasting

I brewed this Hefe in late December and am getting down to my last 12 pack but just now decided to write a review. (I apologize for the bad view on the pic, the camera was dying and I was in a rush when I took it)

Appearance- Pours a muddy tan.  Clearly way too dark in color for a true hefeweizen. This is almost certainly due to the extract darkening a little during the boil.  It still looks enjoyable with hints of light pale on the sides.  The head is huge and fades at a moderate rate leaving tons of lacing.

Smell- Yum, smells like banana bread and clove.  The smell is enticing and right about what you would expect. I might ferment a bit higher next time to increase those phenols but I'm happy with it.

Taste- The taste is like the smell but a little bit muted.  The banana and clove are there but are weak and theres a little more complexity going on that I find enjoyable but seems less to style.  When comparing mine side by side to a commercial hefe I found mine to smell and taste a little stronger but more muddled with the commercial (Stone Cat Hefeweizen) being clearer and less wide a range of flavors, even if lighter in taste

Mouthfeel- Just right, feels wheaty and goes down super easy.  The carbonation and body seem to be perfect for the style

Drinkability- Very high, but I would like a little more flavor to keep me interested.  I would certainly be willing to pay for this beer but probably wouldn't grab a six pack (although at the cost of this homebrew I'd pick up the two cases I made and more) I'll definitely try to make this style again as I enjoyed it as much or better than most commercial hefeweizens I've had and its an easy drinking style.

Bottle Bomb

I thought it only happened to people who didn't carbonate correctly and use WAY too much priming sugar. Well today I went and checked on the closet full of homebrews and noticed something: the smell of beer.  Uh-oh.  Looked under the towel covering the cases of bottles and sure enough one bottle was shattered. 

Now the good news about this bottle bomb:

1. This means that the bottles are carbonating, thats a plus
2. Only one bottle broke so it doesn't seem that they're all overcarbed
3. The one that broke was a clear bottle, likely to skunk and
4. It was a Strongbow Cider bottle, hence: I now know only to use beer bottles

Due to #4 I grabbed the other Strongbow bottle which hadn't broken and decided to crack it open before it cracked itself.  Didn't pour into the best glass for the style but here is how it looks and lets just say, I'm happy with it.  Has the correct color and a BIG head.  Smell is strongly of cloves as is the taste.  Might still be a little green still but tasted more like beer than when straight from the fermenter.