Keys To Brewing A Great Weizen

I also love hefeweizens and enjoy brewing and drinking weizen beers! Weizen is definitely a yeast-driven style, where fermentation products really define the flavor profile. Let’s set yeast aside for a moment and touch on a few other components of this wonderful style. A great weizen should have a creamy, stable foam, a slightly chewy mouthfeel, above average carbonation, little hop aroma or bitterness, stellar drinkability, and weizen character.

It does not sound like your issue is hitting the right malt profile, although you have unsuccessfully experimented with different malts and different mash schedules. That assumption is based on your displeasure with your beer aroma, and that is a yeast thing with weizen. A great starting point for a solid weizen is 50% Pilsner malt and 50% wheat malt. I like a very small dose, about 2%, of dark crystal malt for a dash of color and an ever-so-subtle touch of crystal malt flavor. Starting the mash around 104 °F (40 °C) also helps with this style because wort ferulic acid is boosted at cooler mash temperatures; this is especially important if you want clove in your aroma profile as ferulic acid is converted to 4-vinyl-guaiacol by weizen yeast (some strains more than others). Some brewers use decoction mashing to increase mash temperature, but step mashing is most common these days and works well for the style. With well-modified malts a two-step mash with a mash-off step does the trick. Something like 20 minutes at 104 °F (40 °C), followed by a heating step to 153 °F (67 °C) for a 30–45 minute rest, then mash off at 167 °F (76 °C) is a solid mash profile.

Intensive mashing tends towards highly fermentable wort, especially with highly enzymatic malts, but weizen yeast often leave a bit of malt sweetness and a full body. That’s part of the profile I personally like. When this is coupled with a high carbon dioxide level, a bit of yeast from the bottom of the bottle, and served in a clean weizen glass, the sensory experience is hard to beat for those who love this style. If you are starting in the 12.0 to 12.5 °Plato (1.048 to 1.050 SG) range, a beer with about 3 °Plato (1.012 SG) in the finish is typical.

For me, I know what I like in my weizen. And that is a balance of yeast aromas that favors 4-vinyl-guaiacol and de-emphasizes banana (isoamyl acetate). The fun thing about weizen brewing is that there are several weizen strains that a brewer can choose from and their flavor profiles are diverse. Weihenstephan weizen yeast and beers brewed from it have never been my favorites. Although I like them, they are a bit too banana-focused for my preference.

Style and recipe tips are topics I usually avoid, but this question is about my favorite style. Here are a few things to try:

• Check out WLP380 (Hefeweizen IV Ale) from White Labs (commercial brewers can check out BSI380 too). This yeast gives a great balance of banana and clove, leaves a nice touch of malt and body, is a true top-cropper, and produces classic Bavarian-style weizen.
• Pitch a touch on the low side and keep the fermentation temperature around 66 °F (19 °C).
• If you don’t use a ferulic acid rest, change your mash profile to include one.
• Aim for 10–15 IBUs and use German hop varieties to minimize any aggressive hop aromas.
• If your goal is to mimic Franziskaner, use German malt.
• Shoot for about 3.0–3.5 volumes of carbonation, preferably in a bottle to make pouring easier and to get a little yeast in the mix.

Response by Ashton Lewis.