Weizenbock Brewday

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I'd just written a lovely post, but the eejits at Lenovo decide to place a close tab button next to the volume button, so that particular piece of prose is lost, forever. Here is a slightly ****ter version.

This will hopefully be my last brew on my current plastic equipment as I am currently converting 2 33l pots and a 20.5l thermopot.

I wanted to brew something a bit stronger for the New Year (unfortunately my stout brown porter seems to have developed an infection, resulting in massive over-carbonation that I don't think I'll be able to correct) and with a recent penchant for Schneider Weisse Aventinus and Mathilda Soleil a Weizenbock seemed to fit the bill.

This is the first time I've made a starter. I tried three different pitching calculators all gave different advice, so I plumped for 250g of DME in 2.5l of water, to which I added my swollen package ;) of yeast. I wanted to avoid overpitching as I've read this can lead to either muted or completely absent banana esters. I prefer the banana over clove so hopefully this starter will achieve this.

Let's get this farting started
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I took advantage of Get Er Brewed's custom grain kit. An excellent idea and one I believe The Malt Miller will be offering soon. It will be good to compare the two. The sack of malts looked good and smelled fresh. They also included a free bag of oxi-cleaner which was a nice touch.

I've been working on this recipe for a while, although the original had a bit of CaraMunich for colour. I didn't order any as believed I had some in stock. Needless to say, when I came to getting everything together, there was no CaraMunich so the recipe was thus:

Batch size: 13l
Estimated Efficiency: 65%
Estimated OG: 1.077
Estimated FG: 1.018
Estimated ABV: 7.8%
Estimated IBU: 20.8

1.5 kg Munich I (30.4%)
1.5 kg Wheat Malt (30.4%)
1.07 kg Dark Wheat (21.7%)
0.43 kg Vienna (8.7%)
0.26 kg CaraWheat (5.2%)
0.13 kg Melanoidin (2.6%)
0.04 kg Carafa Special III (0.9%)

11g Magnum (Ger) - 60 minutes: 20.8 IBU

Wyeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat

Mash at 66ºc for 60 minutes.

Obligatory Grist Shot
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I think these are all Weyermann malts. Due to the high wheat content, I also added a large handful of oat husks to the grist.

I could neither be arsed, nor had the belief my equipment/hungover brain could deal with decoction mashing, so hopefully a single infusion will be ok. I'd read a great article recently where a brewer had made two weissbiers, one with decoction and one with single infusion. The testers preferred the single infusion, so hopefully this will be ok. I added the melanoidin as hopefully this will promote the mouthfeel and uncloying sweetness as weizenbock needs.

I have recently moved and have a different water supply. I e-mailed Sutton & East Surrey Water and got a very helpful e-mail from a lady there who gave me all the necessary details. I had also bought some Ashbeck and the two are very similar. I ended up going for 15l Ashbeck and 11l of Caterham's finest. I input the details into Brewers Friend water calculator and the untreated mix was good for amber beers, so I left as it was. Water treatment confused the Hell out of me, but is something I want to explore.

Due to recent experience of slightly cooler mash temps than intended, I upped the liquor temp by two degrees. Sod's Law has dictated that I was above my intended mash temp by a degree.

Mashed in
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Will update later on.

****, forgot to add the filter to the boiler. Good job it's not a hoppy one. Will add to a bag
 
Mash didn't drop a degree during the hour. I batch sparge, which required two drains on this occasion. Pre-gravity wort was a bit lower than expected, as always seems to be the case, so I added the DME I had left over from the starter. I've read a few people complaining about the crush from GEB, but I can't be certain whether its that or my technique.

Wort - Nice amber colour
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The hose on my wort chiller won't quite reach through the window to the outside tap, so looks like I'll have to lug the boiler over the lovely new cream carpet and out into the garden.
 
Down to 1.016 already, which is good going. Hopefully it should get down to 1.012 or thereabouts. Sample tasted good, definite banana and clove, with a slight bit of sulphur.
 
Sounds like it'll be a cracking brew anyway mate. I too have just discovered the magic of starters after always being too terrified to do it in case I messed it up!
 
Having had a read, I think the low efficiency may have been partially caused by a lack of malts with high diastatic power, in addition to me having the lid partially on and not avaporating enough wort. I've amended the receipe for a second attempt, swapping the Vienna for Pilsner and adding some Caramunich for colour. Hopefully this should result in the desired OG.
 
Down to 1.011 over the past few days, so think it's done. I was hoping to bottle, but I wanted Vichy bottles and no one seems to be selling them at a reasonable price (except a Belgian homebrew shop, I don't trust they won't turn up smashed) so I'll be kegging it at the weekend.
 
Lid was partially off and it does have a steam hole, this one doesn't seem to have developed any DMS, but I take your point.

I'll be moving everything into the summer house once I've finished converting my pots, so will be able to have the lids off completely.
 
Cubby hole under the stairs is between 17-19ºc. If I need warmer I wrap the FV in some bubble wrap. I hope to get a fermentation fridge soon, maybe I'll put it on the Christmas list.
 
Kegged this today. Have primed with table sugar so it doesn't meet the reinheitsgebot (no DME and use sodastream CO2 so can't force carb) but was tasting pretty darn good.
 
Not fully carbonated, but tasting good. Bready, some banana and vanilla, nice caramel dryness. Slight raisiny character too. It seems to be missing *something* in the body, so maybe I'd up the melanoidin if I were to do again - although this may well be due to the conversion problems I seem to have had.

Prost!

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