Article

Brewing Weiss: Tips from the Pros

A Winner’s View of Weiss

Brewer:  Ryan Ashley
Brewery:  Mickey Finn’s, Libertyville, Ill.
Years of experience: 10 years homebrewing, five years professional
House Beers: Main Street Wheat Ale, Abana Amber Ale, Five-Springs Oatmeal Stout, and Raspberry American Wheat

 

All the time Ryan Ashley spent learning to brew weiss beers as a homebrewer paid off in the form of national recognition recently. Ashley, as head brewer at Mickey Finn’s, a brewpub in Libertyville, Ill., returned from the Great American Beer Festival last fall with the top two medals in the German wheat ale category. His Gudenteit Hefe-Weizen and Gudendark Dunkel were awarded, respectively, gold and silver medals in one of the most crowded categories (with 83 entries). He was the only brewer to win two medals in the same category.

“Weiss beer is probably the most fundamental beer you can make,” says Ashley. “It’s 60 percent wheat and 40 percent barley.” Add some specialty malts to the grain bill, and you have dunkelweiss.

Part of what attracts Ashley to weiss beers is the flexibility of the basic recipe. “The sky is the limit for little things that you can do (to affect the beer),” he says.

Ashley’s hefewiess is a traditional wheat beer: a pale, golden yellow with a nice balance of banana to clove. The dunkel is darker with a more subdued banana ester and a stronger malt flavor lending a tinge of chocolate.

“The key to making a weiss beer is knowing how to handle the yeast,” he says. Yeast produces the clove and banana esters that distinguish a weiss. The yeast should not be very flocculent. Some should be left in suspension when the beer is finished, making it somewhat cloudy, another characteristic of weiss beers.

“You can take our recipe and our methods from mash tun to glass and if you were to add a different yeast, you would have an entirely different beer — which is not the case with a pale ale,” he says.

Ashley won a bronze for weiss at the 1996 Great American Beer Festival. Since brewing that beer he traveled to Munich to study German brewing methods. “The biggest thing I pulled away was how to treat the yeast,” he says, “how to identify when it wasn’t happy.”

While in Germany he toured a lot of weiss-beer breweries, observing their different methods for propagating, storing, and using yeast. Ashley returned to put that knowledge into practice at the brewpub. The yeast currently used for the weiss beers at Mickey Finn’s is in its 650th pitch.

“If you don’t treat your yeast properly, it will stress and throw (add) sulfur and produce higher phenols. Rather than clove, you’ll get Band-Aid or unpleasant plastic off-flavors,” he says. “If you are going to brew a weiss beer, I recommend using a new smack pack,” he says. “Make a starter; you’re better off having more yeast.”

If you want to propagate yeast, which Ashley recommends, you have to make sure there is always enough wort to sustain the yeast. “Keep a half-gallon jug with wort (for) growing the yeast,” he says. “When it is done fermenting, decant (the yeast) and give it new wort while storing.” In his lab at the brewery, Ashley at all times keeps yeast fermenting on an auger plate. “The yeast is healthy because it is always fermenting,” he says.

Ashley advises against acid-washing yeast. “Once it has been contaminated, don’t use it again. If yeast is tired or mutated, we throw it out. It’s too easy and inexpensive to grow yeast” to risk using a bad strain.

In addition to caring for yeast, Ashley stresses the importance of making the most of your mash profile. “Our yeast needs to see many different temperatures in the mash profile,” he says. “It helps to do a ferulic acid rest. Mash in at a low temperature, about 108° F. Bring the temperature to 148° and rest for 15 to 30 minutes. This is what the yeast needs to produce the clove phenol.”

Ashley also chooses to do a protein rest at 122° F for 20 to 30 minutes. At 144° F saccharification begins, Ashley says, and the beta-amylase (enzymes) begin breaking down starch to make fermentable sugars. Here he rests for an hour. “Each time we raise the temperature we add hot water, the hotter the better. It is important to get the mash really hot at the end. It should be gummy and viscous,” Ashley says. He mashes out at 165° F at a moderate speed. “The greater the volume of the mash the less water to sparge and fewer tannins are extracted,” he says. “Make your first mash-in thick; the enzymes can get in contact with all of the mash…Apply moderate heat, and keep stirring until your desired temperature is reached. That’s it. Apply moderate heat and stir like crazy.”

If you’ve taken great care to grow your yeast, pitching and fermentation certainly should be done systematically as well. Ashley pitches at 59° F and ferments at 64° F. “Warmer fermentations produce more esters and more fusel alcohol,” Ashley says.

Some fermentations will go as high as 72° F because of the heat produced by fermentation. “The higher over 72° F the more the banana (flavor) will throw the beer out of balance,” he says. According to Ashley, the trick is to balance the banana esters and have enough yeast to make it hazy without having much in suspension

When Ashley was homebrewing weiss beers he bought an old refrigerator and thermometer. Another option is to place the carboy in a large bucket of 72° F water. Because the yeast is creating heat during fermentation, it is important to keep the temperature stable.

Ashley doesn’t use fining agents, and didn’t use any as a homebrewer either. “Drop the temperature to (37° F). Turn the fridge as cold as possible, which will precipitate the hop resins and the yeast will sink out,” he says. Decant the beer from the yeast, leaving enough yeast in suspension to get that hazy quality for which weiss beers are known.

As a bit of quality control, Ashley keeps smaller samples of the fermenting beer. He uses these samples to taste the yeast as it ferments and to identify any off-flavors as they develop.

As for the other components of his weiss beers, Ashley uses only German grain. He uses Perle and Tettnanger hops for bittering. “You’re looking for around 11 or 12 bittering units,” he says. He uses no finishing hops and questions the effectiveness of using flavoring or aroma hops in a weiss beer, because so many other flavors are present.

Ashley comes from a family with a long brewing history. For 70 years his family, originally from Milwaukee, has been involved in some facet of beer making. One of his grandfathers worked for the Red Star yeast company, and another worked for Pabst. A relative worked for Miller, and the family also included “lots of bootleggers,” says Ashley.

Ashley began homebrewing in college in 1989. English ales, lagers, Bavarian wheat beers, and Belgians were his brews of choice. Even after college he would rush home from an engineering job that he didn’t enjoy because he couldn’t wait to homebrew. When Mickey Finn’s was opening in 1994, he was invited to come onboard. The building was owned by some friends of his family, and he laughs as he remembers that as a child he used to run around in the restaurant at which he now brews.

Ashley has brought his love of weiss beers to the Illinois market and it has responded. The weiss beers are the fastest selling, he says. “Keeping enough on tap is the biggest problem. We brew 20-barrel batches and are hanging on to the last few pints.” The weiss beers are brewed from late April to October, building up the anticipation for their release. Ashley prefers to have these as seasonal or specialty beers rather than offering them year-round.

In addition to the weiss beers, Ashley brews Mickey Finn’s Wheat Ale, Abana Amber Ale, Five-Springs Oatmeal Stout, and a raspberry version of the American wheat.

Issue: April 1999