2/11 Edelweiss

Ingredients:
5 lbs Pale wheat malt
2.5 lbs German Pilsner malt
2 lbs Munich malt
0.5 lbs Melanoidin malt
0.5 oz Centennial hops
0.25 oz Amarillo hops
1 packet White Labs Hefeweizen Ale

Method:
Crush the malt and steep at 144-152 °F in 2.5 gal water for 60 mins.
Filter the mixture and pour 5 gal water over the mash.
Simmer for 60 mins.
Add half of the Centennial hops when mixture starts to boil.
Add rest of Centennial hops after 30 mins.
Add Amarillo hops after 58 mins.
Chill to 70°F, filter the mixture and pour into a container.
Add Yeast and leave sealed in the container at for 3 days for primary fermentation.
Bottle for secondary fermentation and carbonation and leave for 7 days.

This recipe is copied from the brooklyn brew shop book.


This is the second recipe I’m following through and I personally like Hefeweizen Ale. So I am pretty excited to see how this will turn out.

It seems that the instruction for water is way too much. A total of 7.5 gal of liquid reduced to 5 gal? I don’t even know if that’s possible. Anyways, I had to reduce the amount of water for sparging. Instead of 5 gal of water, I used 3 gal for sparging. And it actually ended up perfect at 4.5 - 5 gal at the end. So I guess this is ok.

2/14 Bottling

Yield: 41 bottles
Before I get into bottling, I should note that the cap pop up during fermentation. I think what happened was the rapid fermentation created too many bubbles, and which carried stuff up to the airlock chamber, which in turn clogged up the system and busted open the top, which resulted in spillage and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Note to self: remember to use tube for first 3 days of fermentation instead of airlock.
Bottling wasn’t hard, this batch yielded 41 bottles.

Before

After

2/28 - Taste

I believe failing to follow the instruction of adding 7.5 gallon of water is a bad decision. It might be ultimately the reason why the cap popped out. It might also be why the beer is extremely foamy and filled with bubble. I should be more aware of the fermentation state before put the beer into the bottle. It sure is tricky to make this one. Too early, you end up with over-carbonated beer; too late, you'd get flat beer. I will someday do this one again!

Let's go back to the taste, the over-carbonate seems to kill the taste buds before the flavor of the beer can hit the pallet. If you could somehow get pass that though, it actually taste very much like your typical hefeweizen. I do prefer less of a yeasty taste though, so i might do an extra two days of secondary fermentation before bottling.