Beer Forum

Hey guys,

gonna start a new batch of 5 gallon extract/specialty grain beer - dunkelweizen. I'm gonna follow a recipe given to me but wanted to ask your guidance on some ideas, these practices are all new to me.

- I'm going to boil for 90 instead of 60, still following a hop schedule for 60.
- I'm going to pour the cooled wort several times between bucket and brew kettle before pitching to aerate (new to me)
- I'm going to run a starter the night before of 2L at 1.030 of DME (so 15 hrs before pitch)
- I'm going to ferment for 14 days then bottle for 2 weeks. (I usually secondary for 2 weeks, i'm skipping this)
- I'm going to use 2 cups of priming sugar (dextrose?) for the bottles


Does all this sound pretty good.

(Fermentation will be tightly controlled at 68 for 2 weeks, bottles will ferment in closet at likely 70)

All are fine except 2 cups of dextrose is too much.
Typically, you get medium carbonation levels with 3/4 cup.
Use a whole cup to get high carbonation,whichis perfect for that style. 2 cups of priming sugar will give you bottle grenades.

mikevarela wrote:Hey guys,

gonna start a new batch of 5 gallon extract/specialty grain beer - dunkelweizen. I'm gonna follow a recipe given to me but wanted to ask your guidance on some ideas, these practices are all new to me.

- I'm going to boil for 90 instead of 60, still following a hop schedule for 60.
- I'm going to pour the cooled wort several times between bucket and brew kettle before pitching to aerate (new to me)
- I'm going to run a starter the night before of 2L at 1.030 of DME (so 15 hrs before pitch)
- I'm going to ferment for 14 days then bottle for 2 weeks. (I usually secondary for 2 weeks, i'm skipping this)
- I'm going to use 2 cups of priming sugar (dextrose?) for the bottles


Does all this sound pretty good.

(Fermentation will be tightly controlled at 68 for 2 weeks, bottles will ferment in closet at likely 70)

Post results, then everyone can help you tweak the process based on the outcome.

How are you controlling fermentation? That is most important.......

mikevarela wrote:
- I'm going to boil for 90 instead of 60, still following a hop schedule for 60.
- I'm going to run a starter the night before of 2L at 1.030 of DME (so 15 hrs before pitch)
- I'm going to ferment for 14 days then bottle for 2 weeks. (I usually secondary for 2 weeks, i'm skipping this)

-Make sure with your 90 minute boil that you're starting with a larger pre boil volume to account for additional evaporation due to the extra 30 minutes of boiling.

-I would do the starter 48 hours prior to pitching.

-Don't bottle after 14 days, it's too early. Leave it in primary for 3 weeks and then bottle so that you're assured off flavors are cleaned up and that you won't have a ton of sediment in each bottle. The amount of trub in a wheat beer is going to be even larger and will certainly lead to spoiling if there is an excess amount. There's no reason to rush to drinking beer that isn't fully fermented.

-Have fun

I would recommend that you try to cold-crash the starter after it has fully fermented out overnight before pitching it into your cooled wort. This allows the yeast to drop out of suspension and leaves a nice slurry to pitch. Be sure to decant the excess chilled wort on top before pitching the yeast slurry into the fermenter. You simply don't want to pitch that extra oxidized wort into your beer if it can be avoided. Do be sure to leave enough liquid above the yeast so you can swirl it to resuspend the cells enough for pitching.

+1 to a longer starter. 15 hours isn't going to give you a lot of benefit.

Don't plan on your timeline. Bottle it when it's ready. You don't know of that's going to be 2, 3 or 100 weeks without some experience (chances are it won't be 100 weeks, but the point is you don't know). As soon as you pitch, you're on it's timeline. Let it do it's thing, when it looks like it's done wait 2-3 more days. Take a gravity sample & record it. 24 hours later, take another gravity sample. If there wasn't any change at all, you're probably good depending on what the reading was.