Brew No.11 – German Hefeweizen

RATING: 4/5 Stars

20 September 2008 – I went down to visit Dave at Dave’s Home Brew (www.daveshomebrew.com.au) on Saturday and was looking for something “quick and easy” as I was short on time but more importantly short on beer! He quickly convinced my to try one of the fresh wort’s from ND Brewing (Brewer’s Selection). These essentially are a true All Grain wort no-chilled into a 15L cube. All I had to do was take it home, throw into a fermentor with an extra 5 litres of water and add the Wheat yeast that Dave gave me. Too easy!

Hefeweizen – A traditional German Hefeweizen. Low on hop flavours with a large percentage of locally grown wheat in the grain bill. The use of a low flocculating wheat style yeast it will create a cloudy finish, true to style

2 October 2008 – Bottled at FG of about 1.006 which I thought was pretty low. Used PET bottles and carb drops. Interesting to note their still seemed to be a heap of fizz in the beer coming from the fermentor even though it has been in there for 2 weeks and stopped fermenting.

11 October 2008 – Bloody hell this beer is awesome. True to style with some nice spicy flavours. One of the best things about a wheat beer like this is that it tastes great young, as soon as it is carbed, away you go!

23 October 2008 - Well only a few of these left, so I have put them aside to ensure there are some when friends come over. This is a great beer for those who like a bit of megaswill, or at least lightly hopped beers.

Brew No.10 – Australian ‘bastard’ Lager

Planning
I’m sure you will be wondering about the name of this next brew A ‘bastard’ lager refers to a lager recipe that uses an ale yeast. The reason I am doing this, is because the weather is warming up and lends itself to an ale style yeast.

I will also be using a simple can kit this week as I don’t have the time for a full extract brew.

OK, here is the planned recipe

• Basic Coopers Lager can kit
• 500g LDME
• 500g Dextrose
• 14g POR hops (for aroma only)
• Safale US05 yeast

LDME and dextrose will be brought to the boil in about 2L of water. Hops are added and boiled for 15 minutes before adding straight to the fermentor with the can kit. Topped up to 23L and fermented out.

This time I will be spending time rehydrating the yeast which should ensure a better and longer fermentation. I am interested to see how this goes…

11 September 2008 – Put together brew as above. Rehydrated the yeast for 30 minutes (stir halfway) in 40 deg water. Pitched in fermenter at about 24 degrees. Also tried this one using glad wrap and pin hole rather then the traditional lid.

20 September 2008 - As I’m sick of adding sugar to every #$%^ing bottle. I decided to bulk prime this brew. I carefully siphoned around 21 litres into a secondary fermentor, leaving all of the crud in the first one. I then boiled 180g of dextrose in 2 cups of water before adding and stirring carefully. From here I bottled as normal in PET (sprayer kegs not finsihed yet!). FG was suprisingly low by the way at about 1.008 and had cleared completely.

2 October 2008 – Tastes like crud and tipped it down the sink. This either needs a few more weeks or has caught an infection. We’ll see….

7 October 2008 - Well the difference a few days makes huh??? This is great, exactly the easy drinking, slightly bitter lager (bastard of course) that I was after. Can’t wait for the weekend to slug down a six pack of these babies!