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Monday, October 11, 2010

October Bottling Day: Weizen/Weissbier

  When I unscrewed the lid of the fermenter to pull out the hop sack before bottling I was surprised to see how much krausen was still floating on top of the beer. I couldn't even see the hop sack let alone remove it. So the next thing I thought of was this stuff going to end up in my bottled beer? It didn't and neither did the trub that was compacted tightly at the bottom of the fermenter in the trub tray. I had fermented this wheat beer for 21 days at 60F except for the last 3 days of fermentation when I allowed the beer temperature to rise to 70F, the temperature I would be bottling at.

Weizen/Weissbier With Thick Floating Krausen

 I poured a sample into a small glass for tasting and the beer came out free of trub or krausen with a light amber color that was cloudy, as expected for a German wheat beer. There was already a very slight hint of what I could best describe as lemon present in the samples I tasted. I imagined myself pouring this beer into a tall glass and adding a slice of lemon before drinking it.

Weizen/Weissbier Sample With Residual Co2

I used my Bottle Priming Calculator to help figure out how much priming sugar would be needed to hit the correct Co2 volumes for an Weizen/Weissbier beer style.  The bottle priming calculator takes into account the temperature of the beer at bottling, the type of priming sugar used and the small amount of Co2 that is already in your fermented beer. You look up the level of carbonation for your style of beer  according to BJCP Style Guidelines.

Weizen/Weissbier  Calls For 3.6 to 4.48 Co2 Volumes Of Carbonation

  This bottling day turned out to be a good day, I bottled up my wheat beer without incident and I now have eight more 1 litre bottles carbonating down in the basement where its nice and cool. Right out of the fermenter the beer went into the bottles with no need to rack to a secondary, cold crash or mix any gelatin or use any other methods to clarify my beer, so again I'm really happy about that.

Weizen/Weissbier Ready For Carbonation
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4 comments:

  1. Slovak BrewerOctober 11, 2010 at 7:59 AM

    What do you think of the square fermenters? What capacity? Trying to maximize the space in my ferm chamber.

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  2. Vince FeminellaOctober 11, 2010 at 2:38 PM

    I've been planning to look for 2 or 3 gallon square or rectangular ferments but haven't gotten around to it yet. I built my own fermentation chamber designed to use the 2 gallon Mr. Beer fermenters in the meantime.

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  3. AnonymousJuly 6, 2012 at 11:05 AM

    looks like you've got a fairly large pellicle there. that's the result of a contamination which would explain that "lemon" like flavor, it's infected. the kraeusen is long gone in that photo at the top. unless of course you're going for the berliner weisse or belgian style spontaneous fermentation?

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  4. Vince FeminellaJuly 6, 2012 at 2:53 PM

    Infection or not this one turned out to be one of the tastier wheat beers I've brewed. My only regret is that I wasn't into washing and propagating yeast back then, or who knows I'd still have that strain in my yeast library.

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