Novice needs help (wheat beer recipe)!!

[pittsy]

Hi all, I've been reading lots of your posts and been finding it really helpful , I'm new to home brewing ( apart from some early brews some 22 odd years ago when i was 15 ) and i was hoping i could get some help with a recipe for some wheat beer brewing. I've just kegged (plastic) a Muntons wheat beer and since then would like to improve my recipe, I'm about to use a Thomas Coopers wheat beer in a 5 gallon fermenter and id like to use 500g of spray dried wheat malt also poss 300g to 500g of spray dried light malt and also brewing sugar not sure if i should use between 300g or 500 g of this and also I'll be using some Munich yeast ,i will also be fermenting at around 21c to get that bubble gum smell/taste and finally is it best to use brewing sugar or cane {table) suger when bottling (plastic kegging ) . Any help on any of this would be very welcome !! Before i start i'll wait for your replies , cheers beer drinkers
many thanks, Mark, happy brewing in the Westmids.

[Oliver]

Hi Mark, and welcome.

Also, welcome back to brewing!

I haven't used the Coopers wheat beer kit before, but the recipe sounds fine. You might try a search, which turned up several useful threads for me when I entered german wheat beer, including:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6809
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8851
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8724
There were heaps of others ...

I assume the Munich yeast to which you refer is the Dansar Munich Wheat Beer Yeast? The yeast that comes with the Coopers kit is a wheat yeast so there's no harm sticking with that and saving the Dansar for another brew.

Go with 300g of (Coopers?) brewing sugar. Although the main thing it will be doing is adding alchol, along with some body. If it were me, I'd leave it out.

Just use table sugar or caster sugar to prime. Or bulk prime. Again, do a search for instructions.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Oliver

[pittsy]

Thanks Oliver , you've been very helpful. At some point in the future i want to start all grain brewing but i need to walk before running

[pittsy]

I've found a recipe for a hans hefe weizen that im gonna try in my next batch , im gonna try moving up to extract brewing , all thoughts and comments would be very welcome ,

for 5 gallons ,
1.8 kg pale malt extract ( i think that converts to approx 1.5 spray dried )
1.8 kg wheat malt extract
750g hallertauer hops (as pointed out a mistake here should be 75g )
110 ml liquid weisser yeast ( ill be using a dried wb 06 yeast )

i will be boiling water then dissolve extract by stirring etc with half the hops (35g) as soon as it brings back to boil then half of the remaining hops (17 g ish ) at 30mins boil then the remaing hops at 50 mins boil , total boil time 60 mins, cool wort to 15/16c (60f) pitch yeast then ferment at 15 c ( although i always thought a higher temp , all grain version my info says 18c ) for 3 to four days or untill sg reading correct ,( i think i'll be leaving mine for about a week or so from reading other posts) then bottle with priming and store at room temp (uk) 18c and above for 5 days then refrigerate between 4c and 8c for 3 weeks then serve at 8c if poss .

sounds like i could cope with this , hope it sounds ok
This comes from a chap thats visited over a dozen or so of bavarian brewers including Erdinger , Paulaner , Schneider , Franziskaner , Widmann and some others that ive never heard of

there is an old bavarian dunkles weissbier extract recipe thats almost the same instead of pale malt use dark and use 80g of hops boil time 70 mins, add hops at start, 40 mins then 55 mins, ferment at 20c store first at 20 to 25c then cold for 4 weeks serve at 9 c

If anyone wants all grain recipes for wheat beer ive found ,
Isar Weizen
Reunification Berliner Weisse
Christoph Probst Weizenbock
Austrian style Kristall Weizen
Old Bavarian Weissbier

I'd just like to add i don't know jack shit about any of this im just following what ive found , but one day i intend to have brewed them all ( all grain )

all thoughts and comments most welcome before i start the extract version
from pittsy in the westmids uk

[emnpaul]

G'day Pittsy,

Don't mind a good Hefewiessen myself, although I'm yet to have a serious crack at perfecting one. Stuck on Belgian Witbier at the moment.

To the best of my knowledge 17*c is generally regarded as the apprpriate temperature for brewing German Wheats. The yeast should throw a good combination of cloves and bannana at that temp. Go higher if you want more banana, lower for cloves. A discussion of wheat yeast characteristics can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7957&p=80866&hilit=matr+yeast+wheat#p80866

I'm assuming 750g of Hallertau is a typo, or do you really, really, like hops?

3 or four days or until FG reading is correct could be a little short for your brew to be in primary. If you leave it a little longer, for mine usuallly 2-3 weeks at ferment temp', it seems to smooth out a few of the rough edges, as the yeast are afforded a bit of time to clean up some of the less desirable products of fermentation.

On an unrelated topic, being from the West Mids, have you had a chance to try Banks Barley Gold. In Australia "gold" commonly refertes to a mid strength beer, but unless I'm mistaken Barley Gold is along the lines of a barley wine, which doesn't seem right coming from a can! Is it any good?

[pittsy]

Hi Emnpaul ,
Regarding Banks Barley Gold ,to be honest its horrible a very heavy drink haven't tried it in years though. If you wanted to be pissed in 2 glasses then that's the 1. My mates mom used to drink it when we was kids other than that can't think of anyone else that likes it . Its not a barley wine though and it comes in small bottles very dark and thick from what i remember , the sort of drink piss heads drink , lol , having said that banks do have some good bitters and i started my early drinking on banks mild ale (very smooth). These days i tend to drink larger mainly as there's almost no where that sells draught wheat beer ( i love wheat beers) in fact its hard to find (bottles)even in the super stores , i guess we poms aren't big wheat drinkers ( although i aim to make up the numbers drank lol ).
Thanks for your info , yes i thought the fermenting that i said a little short compared to info already given in this forum etc , i think i'll go with the 2-3 weeks as you say . cheers !