Beer Number 3
Back to Larry’s as usual, we decided to go for about the simplest recipe possible, a Hefeweizen. Some people think (not home-brewers, of course) that a Hefeweizen would be a difficult beer to make. In fact, it is just malt and hops. No extra grains to steep or anything (there are alternative methods using grain only). Many say the real flavor in a Hefeweizen comes from the type of yeast used. I guess after this batch we’ll be able to see if we need to change our yeast type in the future. Due to a freezing problem, they didn’t have any liquid Wyeast, so we used the dry yeast instead.
| Malt | Hops | ||
| 7lb. | Bavarian Wheat Malt | 1 oz. | Tettenang Hops |
| Yeast | Other | ||
| 1 package (+1) | Safbrew WB-06 Dry yeast (Weihenstephaner) | 1 tsp | Brew Salts |
| 3/4 cup | Priming Sugar | ||
Process:
We heated two gallons of water with brew salts to 160F. Turned the heat off, stirred in the malt extract.
Brought it to a slow boil, stirring occasionally. Added 1 oz Tettenang hops (we tried a new method, putting them in a muslin bag). Boiled for one hour and removed the bag of hops. Then we added to cold water (we forgot to make enough ice before hand) and topped off to five gallons in the primary bucket. We let it cool until it got to about 80F and then added the yeast.
In primary on 2/24/09. We then thought it wasn’t fermenting, since there was no activity in the airlock, so we picked up some more yeast and threw that it on 2/24/09. We later realized our bucket’s lid didn’t seal properly, but a little extra yeast never hurt. We racked it to secondary carboy on 3/8/09.
On 3/14/09 we added warm water and priming sugar, stirred it into the beer and bottled. We got 20 0.5L bottles and 27 12oz bottles this time around.
Tags: brewing, Hefe-wiser, hefeweizen, home-brew, recipe, simple, wheat
Fixing the bucket’s seal was a pretty easy repair. We just went to the local hardware store and bought a new bucket lid, then pulled the gasket out of it and put it into the lid for the brewing bucket. Seems to be working fine now, and airlock activity has returned to normal. This repair should make future batches behave correctly.