Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Hawkeye Hefe

I just brewed my last of anything for a while. I decided to brew a German hefeweizen. It is a wheat beer that is at least 50% wheat. hefeweizen uses a specific yeast that doesn't settle out so the beer stays cloudy like the one in the photo below.
Hefeweizen is traditionally a summer beer because it is very refreshing. Hefeweizen yeast produces a flavor of cloves and banana in the beer. It is usually very lightly hopped so it is not too bitter.

I decided to brew hefeweizen because it matures very quickly. You let the fermentation finish in the primary and then you bottle it. You don't have to age it in the secondary because the beer will be cloudy no matter what you do, and the cloudiness is a desired characteristic. The other nice thing about hefeweizen is that it is a very simple beer to brew. There are no specialty grains in my recipe so you can skip the steeping step, thus cutting about an hour off of the brew time.

Hawkeye Hefe

7 pounds Munton and Fison Dry Wheat Extract (55% wheat, 45% barley)

1/2 ounce German Tradition 5.0% AA hops

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen

Bring about 2 gallons water to a boil. Remove pot from heat and stir in the extract. Add the hops to the boil bag and boil the whole mess for 60 minutes. During the last 10 minutes put the immersion chiller into the pot to sterilize it. Cool using the immersion chiller. Aerate the wort very well by stirring. Measure specific gravity. Pitch yeast.

Mine started with a SG of 1.052. I am predicting a final ABV of about 5%. The IBU for this recipe is 10

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