Skip to main content

Birthday Brewing: Mid-Life-Weisses

Apparently I just can't brew enough Dunkelweiss. I've already brewed three here. With my friend's birthday around the corner and time running short, I need to get yet another one going.

My original plan was to simply brew a second batch of my Ein Heldenleben. Unfortunately, I forgot to buy Pale Wheat before my planned brew day. What to do? Amp up the Munch and Dark Wheat from the other recipe, of course. I then added just enough Blackprinz malt (Dehusked Carafa II or III work too) during Mashout to get the color just right. The hops and yeast are the same as the other beer. An all-important Decoction Mash rounds out the brew.

Here's the recipe for five gallons:

Grains:
5 lbs Weyermann Dark Wheat
4 lbs Weyermann Light Munich
2 oz Briess Blackprinz

Hops:
0.5 oz Opal (6.3% a.a.): 60 min

Total Boil Time:
90 min

Yeast:
White Labs WLP300 - Hefeweizen Ale Yeast

Mash Schedule:
Protein Rest: 122F for 20 min
Decoction: Heat and rest ~1/2 of mash at 155F for 20 min followed by a 15 min boil
Saccharification Rest: 152F for 60 min
Mashout: 168F for 15 minutes

Original Gravity:
1.050
Estimated Final Gravity:
1.010

IBU: 15
SRM Color: 14

Fermentation Schedule:
2 Week Primary
2 Weeks Secondary
2 Weeks Bottle Conditioning

Cost: $14 per case
Commercial Equivalent: Hacker-Pschorr Dunkle Weisse: $36
Savings: $22

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kitchen Brewing Part 3: Sparge and Boil

The mash emerges from the oven. Now that we're finished with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, it's time to Sparge. As you can see from the photo, the grains have absorbed a lot of liquid. In a traditional all-grain setup, your Mash Tun has a valve at the bottom to release the first running of Wort. The grains are then rinsed with the sparge water to extract any remaining sugars. My stove-top method doesn't afford such luxury, so a different method is called for. The grains have gained a little weight. There are a couple of choices at this point. One choice is to lift the grain bag out of Pot A and place it into the sparge water in Pot B to steep for 10-15 minutes or more. The other is to lift the grain bag up, put a colander under it and slowly pour the sparge water through the grains into the original pot. I prefer the former, because I get a better extraction rate from my grains. All that absorption means that the grains weigh a lot more than they did going i

Kitchen Brewing Part 2: The Mash

Always start your session with a beer. Now that the equipment is together from Part 1 , it's time to start brewing. I'll be brewing an English India Pale Ale for my demo batch. The beer's details will be out in a future blog. Ingredients ready to go. I'm lucky to have a homebrew shop with a grain mill, so I've crushed my grains at the store. The hops have also been measured out ahead of time to keep things simple. You don't have to do this, but I recommend it. My setup. My stove-top setup is pretty simple. Two kettles, a grain bag and a metal spatula are pretty much it. I also like using a hop bag (available for around $5.00), but it's completely optional. If you're doing all-grain brewing, canning pots work best for batches of 2.5 gallons or less. Anything larger and you'll be battling spill-overs. They also work well for partial-mash batches of up to 5 gallons, where you can top off your wort after the boil. We hav

Saving Money: Simple Yeast Culturing

A few members of the family I just finished racking my English IPA to a secondary fermentor. As part of the process, I saved some of the yeast in the primary for future use. Here then, is the start of a series of articles on yeast culturing. Back in the "good old days," homebrewers didn't have a ton of yeast choices. In some cases, brewers would even use bread yeast from the baking section of the grocery store. In practice, you hydrated the packet of dry yeast you got at the homebrew or grocery store and pitched it. The packets were cheap and worked, but there wasn't much variety to be had. Nowadays, there are several dozen strains available. While a few strains are still dry , most are liquids that come in pitchable tubes , or smack-packs . The liquid yeasts give consistent results and provide tremendous variety to finished beers, but are pricey. If you only use each pack, or tube once, you will quickly discover that yeast makes up 15%, or more of the cost