This beer will get a name when I brew it absolutely to my liking!

In my eternal quest to brew the perfect Bavarian-style Wheat Beer, I brewed this latest one up the other evening.

It’s a similar grain bill to my other wheats:

2.5Kg Wheat Malt
2.5Kg Pilsener Malt
15 IBUs of 60 minute hop addition (Herkules)
500g of Oat Husks – for lautering and sanity protection

I used my favourite WLP300 Hefeweizen yeast – which I’ll be harvesting, via the gift of my still not entirely satisfactory Fast Ferment Conical Fermenter, and pitching into a Coopers Wheat Beer kit (review to follow…)

This time I fiddled about with the mash…mainly because my last wheat was nice, but couldn’t hold it’s head up at all.  I also decided to re-introduce the Ferulic Acid rest as that’s a pre-cursor for the 4-vinyl guaiacol phenol which gives a Hefeweizen the clove-like notes in it’s flavour and aroma.

The protein rest is there to help liberate a bit more from the (I’m guessing) less-well modified Pilsener malt.

38C Dough-in
43C Ferulic Acid Rest (10 Mins)
50C Protein Rest (15 Mins)
66C Saccharification Rest (50Mins)
76C Mash Out (10 Mins)

(Yes, all you Hefeweizen purists out there, I should really be doing a single or double decoction – but time is never on my side.  I will do one soon, I promise.  I’ll write about it too.  It’ll make a great comedy…)

In the end and after a 60 minute boil, I collected 20 or so litres from the Braumeister at 1054 – which was a shade above the 1051 that I was shooting for, but I’ve no complaints.

I’m fermenting at about 21C in order to get some banana notes out of yeast (the elevated heat encourages isoamyl acetate – which is responsible for banana aromas) – which should complement the clove notes nicely.

Let’s just hope the head holds up!