German Wheat Beer

Made my first attempt at brewing beer last night thanks to Valerie’s thoughtful Christmas gift of a brewing starter kit. I now have a bucket of malty goodness that’s burping CO₂ at me.

She included a ready-to-brew kit for a German style hefeweizen. From what little bit I know of brewing, it’s about as simple as it gets and make a good first batch (hopefully!).

Ingredients:

• 6# wheat malt extract syrup
• 1# wheat malt
• 1# 2 row malt
• 1 oz Tettnanger pellet hops
• 1 pkg wheat ale yeast
• 1 cup sugar (for priming)
• ~6 G water

Method:

1. Heat 2 qts water to 159˚F then add malted wheat and 2 row.  Let steep for 30 minutes
2. Bring 2 G water to boil in brew kettle.
3. Drain grain brew into kettle, squeezing out as much from grain as practical.
4. Remove heat from kettle and add malt syrup. Stir well to dissolve.
5. Return to heat and bring to a boil.
6. Once boiling, add hops and boil for 60 minutes
7. Remove heat. Remove hops.
8. Gently pour 3 G of chilled water into wort. Chill wort as quickly as possible to below 75˚F.
9. Let stand 30-60 minutes to settle the trub.
10. Siphon into fermenter, leaving trub in the kettle.
11. Add sufficient water to bring final volume upto 5.25 G.
12. Rehydrate yeast with 1/2 cup water at 90˚F for 15 minutes and then add to fermenter.
13. Initial SG: 1.055
14. Ferment for 7-12 days at 62-72˚F.
15. Final SG: 1.015
16. Dissolve 1 cup sugar in 1 cup boiling water and add to beer to prime for bottling.
17. Bottle age 2-3 weeks at 65-75˚F.

Notes from Batch #1:

• Pitched 1/4/10 @ 1:00AM
• Bottled 1/13 at 10:00 PM
• 1.0 oz Tettnag Hops, 4.7% alpha acid by package
• 11.5 gm Safbrew WB-06 yeast
• Didn’t have chilled 3G of water (still warm from boiling)
• Initial SG: 1.040
• Added about 6 cups of water to get to 5.25 G — this was a mistake as I should have taken an gravity reading first.
• Final SG: 1.010
• 3.9% alcohol (by vol)
• Tasting results:  The nose is very much like a German weissbier should be.  A healthy yeasty finish. Not bad for the first brew.  Also, the noggin tells me this is stronger than 3.9% ABV.