All Grain Recipe #11, or, How I Almost Made a Weizenbock

After creating a delicious Mr. Beer German Hefeweizen recipe, I was in the mood to repitch that WLP300 and make myself another hefeweizen, but this time from scratch and all grain. In the process, I learned a lot of hard lessons.

First off, I took what I learned from my previous two batches about grain crush and efficiency. I talked to the guys at MoreBeer about their grain mill being set too coarse and they tightened it up for me. I ran it through three times just because I'm paranoid, of course.

Second, I thought I'd see how well oven mashing would work. Basically, I heated my mash water to strike temp, doughed in my grain, set my oven to 170 and stuck the (covered) pot in there. I mashed for two hours just because I wanted to be 100% sure of conversion and because I wanted to take a trip to Starbucks for a ghetto iced latte (4 shots espresso, add my own milk from the condiment bar, half the price of a regular iced latte).

The temp tended to go up when set at 170, so next time I will try preheating the oven and turning it off.

I thought about doing a mashout, which is where you heat the mash to 168 in order to stop conversion and thin the mash to make sparging easier. The problem is that the temp went up so slowly that it would've taken forever to actually do it, so I gave up and just sparged three times with about 3.3 quarts each. The sparge water temp was about 170, but when added to the grain I only got 150 F. It turns out that you want the actual grain to be 168 F during sparging, so you need to heat up your sparge water closer to 200 F!

After doing a fine crush, mashing for two hours and sparging three times (not to mention squeezing the grain bag), I got a whopping 89% extract efficiency on a recipe I originally calculated for 65% efficiency! My hefeweizen had suddenly become a weizenbock.

To make up for it I let the trub settle out in my boil pot and didn't transfer the bottom couple of quarts. I then topped off the fermentor with a couple of quarts of distilled water and got an OG of 1.051.

I really don't like how haphazard all that was, though. From now on I'll be focusing harder on getting repeatably results. I've gotta be able to isolate variables and diagnose specific problems, or I'll just keep making mistakes. This is probably just a side effect of my anal retentive programmer background.

Anyway, I pitched my jar of harvested yeast and went on my way.

Here's the recipe, Harold-is-Weizen hefeweizen from Brewing Classic Styles.

Harold-Is-Weizen Hefeweizen (WLP300)

Weizen/Weissbier

 

Type: All Grain	Date: 4/23/2011
Batch Size: 11.00 qt	Boil Size: 13.83 qt
Boil Time: 60 min	Equipment: Brew Pot, Full Boil All Grain (6 Gallon)
	Brewhouse Efficiency: 89.00
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 2 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (1.6 SRM) Grain 50.00 % 2 lbs 8.0 oz White Wheat Malt (3.1 SRM) Grain 50.00 % 17.01 gm Hallertau (MoreBeer 2011) [4.30 %] (60 min) Hops 15.9 IBU 0.50 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc 5.00 items FermCap-S (Boil 0.0 min) Misc 8.00 gm Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc 1 Pkgs Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP300) [Cultured] Yeast-Wheat
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.006 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.11 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 5.99 %
Bitterness: 15.9 IBU	Calories: 227 cal/pint
Est Color: 4.0 SRM	Color: Color
Mash Profile
Mash Name: BIAB Triple Sparge	Total Grain Weight: 5.00 lb
Sparge Water: 9.23 qt	Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F	TunTemperature: 72.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE	Mash PH: 5.4 PH
BIAB Triple Sparge Step Time Name Description Step Temp 120 min Mash In Add 7.00 qt of water at 165.0 F 152.0 F
Mash Notes: After mash out, remove the bag and drain as much liquid from it as possible before setting it aside in a drip tray (a cooling rack placed atop the brew kettle works great, as does a pulley or hook with the bag attached). Transfer your liquor to a bucket and return the grain bag to your mash kettle. Add one third of your sparge water, stir and wait 10 minutes. Repeat two more times (drip, drain, sparge, drip, drain, sparge).
Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Corn Sugar	Volumes of CO2: 2.8
Pressure/Weight: 83.2 gm	Carbonation Used: 76gm
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 72.0 F	Age for: 28.0 days
Storage Temperature: 70.0 F