Brewing Hefeweizen: Tips from the Pros
Crooked River Brewing Co. was born in 1994. Located in the Flats, the brewery derives its name from the Mohawk word Cuyahoga, which translates to English as Crooked River.
Brewer: Stephan Danckers
Brewery: Crooked River Brewing Co., Cleveland, Ohio
Years of experience: 14 years professional brewing
Education: MS in Brewing Science, University of California, Davis; brewing school at Weihenstephan
House Beers: Settler’s Ale, Black Forest Lager, Lighthouse Gold, Cool Mule PorterStephan Danckers, in the early 1990s, knew one thing without a doubt: He wanted to brew beer. He wasn’t sure if he would open a brewpub or a microbrewery, but the Fulbright Scholar from the Technical Brewing School at the University of Munich and former brewhouse supervisor for Stroh’s Brewing Co. knew he wanted to be a part of the craft-beer industry. The question was where.
“We looked through the Midwest, and it was obvious that Cleveland was experiencing a Renaissance,” says Danckers. The city had suffered the ravages that befell many Rust Belt metropolises in the 1970s. The steel business collapsed, and Cleveland was left with a legacy of empty factories and polluted waterways. On one fateful day the Cuyahoga River, which flows through the downtown flats district, actually caught fire.
But the 1980s brought cleanup and revitalization, and by the time Danckers began looking for a brewery location in the early
’90s, the city was enjoying a period of vigorous growth and massive investment.
“At the time it was something like the 13th largest metropolitan area, and it only had one brewpub. We saw it as a huge market with a bunch of beer drinkers who needed to be exposed to craft-brewed beer,” he says. “It was truly a beer vacuum that was wide open with opportunity. And the customer profile was excellent. They displayed a strong sense of brand loyalty, and that was important to us.”
Though the local brewpub, Great Lakes Brewing Co., was succeeding, Danckers and his partner had decided on a microbrewery. “In the end we decided a brewpub went against our entire focus,” he explains, “which was to produce the best beer possible and sell it. Running a restaurant would just confuse things.”
Danckers formed an Ohio limited partnership and organized a small number of big investors. Operating on a shoestring budget of $900,000, he pieced together a warehouse brewery that boasted five 60-barrel fermenters and one bright beer tank.
“The money was enough to build a brewery,” he recalls, “but we should have had more. We needed lots of cash just to operate the brewery and even more to market. And you can’t do that effectively on a tight budget.” Despite the uphill battle, Crooked River has found its niche. The brewery produced 2,000 barrels during the last five months of 1994 and has grown at a steady 30 percent pace ever since. In 1997 production reached 6,000 barrels.
With its growth the brewery has witnessed astonishing change. Today it boasts eight unitanks, two horizontal lager tanks, and three bright tanks. Two years ago, Crooked River upgraded from a simple four-bottle filler to a state-of-the-art Krones bottling line, replete with a depalletizer, rinser, filler, and capper. The brewery also abandoned the difficult and time-consuming task of self-distributing and handed the reins to a local distributor.
”We had a couple of trucks and drivers and would deliver anywhere within 50 miles of the brewery,” says Danckers. “But we couldn’t completely service our accounts. Our distributor gives us the 100 percent coverage that we could never achieve (ourselves).”
Crooked River produces Ballpark Draft for exclusive sale at Jacob’s Field and Arena Draft for Gund Arena. The brewery is also the official and exclusive beer sponsor of the Cleveland Grand Prix Indy Car Race until the year 2000.
The house beers include three ales and a lager. Settler’s Ale is a high-gravity, hoppy English ale, exactly what you imagine a craft brewery should produce. Black Forest Lager represents Danckers’ attempt to recreate one of his favorite Munich beers. “It’s too heavy to be a Helles and too light to be a Märzen,” he explains.
Lighthouse Gold is a lightly hopped, refreshing ale that was entered as a Kölsch in this year’s Great American Beer Festival (GABF). “It’s the bottled version of our Arena Draft,” says Danckers. “People kept asking if they could get our draft in the bottle. Finally, some light bulb went off in our heads and we decided to sell it to the general public.”
Cool Mule Porter is Crooked River’s dark beer and the gold medal winner at the 1997 GABF in the Robust Porter category. It has a rich flavor and complex texture that complement the beefiest steaks and heartiest ribs.
Seasonal drafts round out Crooked River’s selection and offer visitors to the brewery’s newly opened tap room some exciting new flavors. Their Pumpkin Ale is a local favorite and the Hefe-weizen reflects Danckers’ Bavarian background.
“We brewed the hefe-weizen two years ago in celebration of Cleveland’s Bicentennial, and lots of people liked it,” explains Danckers. “We didn’t make it last year because of capacity reasons, but we brought it back this year.”
Tips on Brewing Hefe-weizen
Danckers employs a blend of 50 percent two-row and 50 percent wheat malts to achieve a starting gravity of 1.048 and an alcohol by volume of 4.5 percent. “I don’t think you need to worry about the percentage of wheat malt that you use,” he says. “I know people who use more and some who use less, but the real flavor of a Bavarian hefe-weizen comes from the yeast.”
Among the dangers of brewing hefe-weizen, the worst begins with the sparge. Because wheat malt contains no husk, a stuck mash is a distinct possibility. In this case the grain tends to settle thickly in the mash-tun, preventing the flow of sparge water through the grains.
Choosing recipes with 50 percent or less wheat malt is the easiest way for homebrewers to avoid this debacle. Instead, rely on a higher percentage of malted barely and the natural filter it provides. Similarly, another suggestion is to maintain a coarse grind on your wheat malt and malted barley. This might sacrifice some yield, but it will prevent you from pulverizing your wheat malt into fine powder, which will set like concrete during the sparge. More important, the larger barley husks will create a thicker filter bed.
“I’d also say that you don’t want to beat up your mash,” says Danckers. “Keep the mash as simple as possible, with few, if any, steps. Try a one-step infusion and then raise the temperature to mash out. And the less you stir and mix the mash, the less thick it will become.”
Proper sparge water temperature will help keep your sparge hassle free. A temperature between 168° and 170° F reduces viscosity of the wort and loosens the mash. “We made the mistake once of sparging with 150° F water,” recalls Danckers, “because we were trying to hurry things up. And we paid the price for it.”
Running a slow sparge is equally important. Recirculate the first several gallons of wort at a slow rate until it clears, and keep it moving at a trickle until you introduce the sparge water. Step up the rate slowly, being careful not to suck the grain bed onto your mash screen.
For his hefe-weizen Danckers uses the Wyeast Hefeweizen yeast and produces a stylistically accurate brew. With this summer seasonal he finds he can safely reuse the yeast through seven generations and believes he could at least double that if he were brewing year-round.
“Growing the wheat yeast is really important to prevent lag times when pitching,” he says. “We step it up from three barrels to 30, and the crop we get from that we can use for a full batch. But you have to be careful what you grow it in. We don’t have the hefe-weizen (wort) all the time, so we use our Lighthouse Gold because it’s the lightest and won’t produce any flavors in the hefe-weizen.”
Growing your own yeast is as simple as procuring some powdered light malt extract. Clean and sterilize a growler, boil and chill the extract, and add the yeast. Attach a fermentation lock and when fermentation ends, harvest the yeast and repeat if necessary. Enough yeast for a five-gallon batch should be about two inches high in a growler.
“We keep the yeast viable for future batches by drawing off the trub and sediment that settles in the unitank in the first few days,” explains Danckers. “We dump for the first 72 hours during fermentation before we collect yeast. By then we know that what we are getting is the strongest and healthiest yeast.”
For homebrewers, dumping trub and dead yeast means storing your carboy upside down during fermentation. According to Danckers, this is the best solution for harvesting healthy yeast. Ask your homebrew supplier about kits that make this carboy conversion possible.
The perfect brew, of course, will fall to shambles if you ignore the importance of fermentation temperatures. If you ferment in your closet or in the kitchen, temperature spikes can ruin a perfect brew with strange flavors and odd aromas.
For the best hefe-weizen, assemble a wort chiller that will drop your wort temperature to 70° F. Danckers suggests a counterflow chiller, a cold refrigerator, or a large container filled with ice that will hold your boiling vessel. But remember, the slower your temperature drop, the more susceptible your beer becomes to unpleasant microorganisms.
Next, equip yourself with a refrigerator that will keep temperatures around 68° F. For about $20 you might purchase an external thermostat that regulates a refrigerator’s internal temperature. Or if you can go without milk for a while, you could sacrifice your family’s refrigerator for the homebrewing cause.
“It matters incredibly what (temperature) you ferment at,” says Danckers. “We did a test batch and didn’t have any temperature control. The beer probably got pretty cold and then warm. We ended up with a completely different flavor than we expected. It was super banana tasting, tangy and wild.”
A true Bavarian hefe-weizen should burst with the flavors of banana and clove. American wheat beers, which are often fermented with a standard ale yeast, are light but bland, lacking the vibrancy that true hefe-weizen yeast imparts on the finished brew. For the best results use a Weihenstephan-style hefe-weizen yeast or a comparable product. And regulate fermentation temperature to keep the yeast’s exotic but enticing flavors in check.
