German hefeweizen

I've brewed a lot of beer and by 'a lot' I mean enough to have broken the '200 gallons per household per year' law 5 years in a row. It might come as some surprise that after over 1600 gallons brewed I never brewed a German "hefe". After my friend Jerry made a trip to Germany last year, we have been working brewing some German styles. This is not a hard beer to brew. You only need two grains for your mash, a good German 2-row Pilsner malt and some malted wheat. American versions often go heavier on the Pilz malt but in Germany it's all about the wheat. The first batch we brewed we chose to go 50/50 on the grains and for the second batch we used 70% wheat. Hopping is light, between 3 and 3.5 AAUs per 5 gallons with no finishing hops.

I'm not going to describe the whole brewing process. There are many books and web pages that can do a better job than I at teaching you how to brew. Go to beertown.org to find a homebrewing club near you. If you like beer you should definitely learn how to brew.

For 5 gallons:
5 lbs. Durst pilsner malt
5 lbs. Rahr red wheat malt

Mash in at 50 degrees Celsius with 2 1/2 gallons water for 30 min.
Raise mash to 65 degrees with 1 1/4 gallons of boiling water for 60 min.

Sparge to collect 6 gallons

Boil for 90 minutes adding:
3.3 AAUs (one ounce) Hersbrucker pellet hops for 75 min.
Enough water to leave 5.5 gallons after boil.



Cool and rack off of sediment to your sanitized fermenter.

Pitch with a good German hefewiezen yeast and oxygenate well.

If your yeast culture is strong you should see activity in less than 12 hours. If your yeast is really strong this will happen.



This beer was done fermenting in about six days. We racked half of it to a keg after 8 days and the other half was racked to a secondary fermenter for 4 days of cold conditioning before bottling it. (We brewed 10 gallons). What a perfect summer beer and the clove and banana notes from the 'hefe' yeast (redundant, I know) go great with the fun stuff I'm making with my recent batch of curry paste.



It's not really your beer if you didn't brew it yourself.