Here in Melbourne, Australia, we're about to finally start our Summer. One of the best summer beers you can have at this time of year is Hefeweizen. This Southern German (Bavarian) wheat ale can be incredibly tasty and, even better, is incredibly simple to make. And while it is a simple beer, it can have great, complex flavours. You'll often find this beer having strong banana flavours or strong clove flavours, and everything in-between. There can even be some vanilla flavors or other citrus flavours. It really comes down to the brewer and their preference at the time.
I'll keep my review brief and without formal structure this week as I want to focus more on how to make a beer like this one.
I was fortunate enough to find the Schöfferhofer Hefeweizen at my local bottle shop this weekend.
The Basics:
Volume: 500ml
ABV: 5%
Origin: Southern Germany (Bavarian)
Style: Wheat Beer
This is a beer has a light mouth feel, which is why it makes a great beer for summer. Hefeweizen translates to wheat with yeast, since the beer is traditionally cloudy. This cloudiness results from the unfiltered yeast.
Unsurprisingly, this beer pours a cloudy light golden colour and presents a frothy white head that retains well. There are aromas of clove with hit of light banana peel. The flavours of the clove is nicely balanced by the subtle sweetness of the banana.
The beer has a slight tartness as well. The bitterness is low with medium body and medium carbonation. Overall, I found this to be a nice Wizen that is well balanced and all too easy to drink.
I score this beer 3.5 out of 5 steins.
So how do we make a clone of this beer?
Choosing the right Hefeweizen Yeast
As with many beers, one of the most important factors in making a Hefeweizen is your choice of yeast. I prefer the WPL 300 yeast which gives your beer more banana flavours. This is the Hefeweizen that is traditionally associated with the German variety of this beer. WPL 351 and WPL 380 yeasts will accentuate the clove flavour and could also be a perfectly good choice if you prefer less banana flavours in your beer.
Making Your Hefeweizen
The recipe for this beer is incredibly simple. I have chosen this beer partly to show how simple it can be to make great beer at home.
The recipe is usually 50-50 wheat malt and either pilsner or 2-row malt. To make a true German version, you need to add at least 50% wheat malt. Some brewers will add a small amount of Crystal 20L malt to give the beer slight sweet flavor, but you can omit the Crystal malt to keep it simple and more traditional if you prefer.
If you don't want to try your hand at all-grain brewing and want to make a quick extract beer, you can even make this beer using 100% wheat malt extract. If you decide to go this route, make sure you do a full wort boil. You don’t want the beer to darken too much. Your end product should be a pale straw colour.
The hops in the beer are incredibly minimal. Some of the older recipes the use of hops all together. This is not recommend however, since the hops provide an antiseptic quality which prevents bacterial infections.
Hefeweizens use Nobel hops. In the future, I will be using an ounce of Hallertau per 5 gallon batch for bittering (4% AA). I won't use any aroma or flavour hops since the beer doesn't call for this. The beer should have little to no hop aroma or flavour.
Ingredients
8.5 lbs Wheat Liquid Malt Extract (LME)
1 oz Hallertau (4% AA – full boil)
White Labs Hefeweizen (WPL300)
SG 1.050
FG 1.012
Method
Boil the beer for at least 60 minutes. You might even want to boil for 90 minutes to reduce the DMS levels as much as possible.
If you want to make this beer using an all-grain recipe, use 5.5 lbs of wheat malt and 5.5 lbs of pilsner malt. You can use German varieties, but the yeast is really what makes this beer. For all-grain versions, try to use local malts. Mash the grains at 67 degrees celsius for 60 minutes.
Fermentation
You will want to ferment the beer on the lower end of the temperature range for the yeast (16 – 18 degrees celsius). The lower temperature produces a cleaner flavour. Brewing classic style beers suggests fermenting the beer as low as 17 degrees celsius.
Carbonate the beer at 2.5 to 3.0 volumes.
Summary
So there you have it. Hefeweizen is a very easy beer to brew at home! Are you game to try making this one yourself? Let me know how you go in the comments.
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