German Hefe

	63^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.014	1.014	1.053	5.1%

Ingredients

· 6 lbs of Bavarian Wheat Dry Malt Extract

· ½ Oz Northern Brewer Hops 6.8

· White Labs Pitchable Liquid Yeast – Hefeweizen Ale Yeast WLP300

Brewers Log

Beer Date 12092007: <Day 1>

Bought the kit from morebeer.com http://morebeer.com/view_product/18350/. Everybody seems to like a good Hefe J.

Washed out brew pot and threw filled with 2.5 gallons of bottled spring water.

Brought water to a boil, moved off the burner and added the malt extract. Used a whisk to swirl the water into a vortex and dumped in the powder a little at a time. There was lots of foam at the top.

• 6 lbs of Bavarian Wheat Dry Malt Extract

Put the pot back on the burner and brought to a boil, had to watch very carefully as it began to boil as it really foamed up as it approached the boiling point. Had to pull off the burner and stir with a whisk to really bring down the foam and avoid the boil over.

Let come to a nice rolling boil and added hops.

• 0.5 Oz Northern Brewer Hops 6.8

After the boil was complete I moved the cooking pot to the sink and backed 2 bags of cubed ice around the pot. I stirred every few minutes spread the cooling liquid through out and in 20-25 minutes I had the wort to < 80 ^oF.

Bought a new strainer that worked wonderfully. It definitely helped that there was so little hops, but it still would been very helpful in prior batches. Instead of the 20 minutes it took in the last batch, it took les then 2 minutes to strain the wort.

Now to siphon the wort into the carboy. The process went quick and easy and then added the remaining 2.5 gallons and a little more to fill up to the 5 gallon marker I put on the 6 gallon carboy. Intentionally went with the 6 gallon carboy because I heard this Hefe batch is very active. Thought I would give it the room to foam up without blowing everything into my drain bucket.

Next I poured a slight bit out to take a temp and specific gravity reading.

	72^oF	Adj
SPGR	1.053	1.054

The last two batches of brew worked down to a SPG of 1.02, assuming this trend continues we are looking at ~ 4.5% for the hefe. We’ll see J

Agitated it a little further and then pitched the yeast and gave a few more shakes to distribute the yeast as much as possible.

• White Labs Pitchable Liquid Yeast – Hefeweizen Ale Yeast WLP300

Capped the carboy with a hose going into a bucket of water. This will keep air from coming up the hose into the carboy, but will allow gas to easily escape without clogging the air lock if there is a great deal of activity.

Put the carboy in a cooler of water with a damp towel over the top. Even though the room temp isn’t too bad, want to keep this a bit cooler. The directions stated that the warmer temperatures will release banana esters and the cooler temps will release clove esters. It recommended 68 ^oF so we’ll see what we get. I will check in a day or so to see what the temp actually is.

Beer Date 12102007: <Day 2>

Woohoo, bubbling away J Foam has filled the space in the carboy and bubbles are coming out of the overflow bucket.

Beer Date 12162007: <GH 8>

Heading home for the holidays and might not be able to bottle as soon as it is ready. Transferred to a secondary fermenter. I didn’t take a temperature reading until after it was racked and it was time to take the SG reading, so I don’t know what temperature it was fermenting at, but it did have a rather fruity smell. Much more banana then clove L I am not sure how cool I need to ferment it to get the clove esters, but I don’t think I want to cool it much more. Took a little sample and it wasn’t too bad. Had a nice flavor to it. looking forward to the finished product.

Racking went smoothly but there was some severe crustiness on the top part of the carboy. The foam dried up and left a mess behind. Scrubbing didn’t get it, and neither did soaking for a couple of hours, nor did soaking in soap water. Each step helped more, hopefully soaking overnight with soap water will help get the last of it. I also may pick up a new brush.

	69^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.019	1.020	1.053	~ 4.3%

Beer Date 12272007: <Day 18>

	63^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.014	1.014	1.053	~ 5.1%

Beer Date 12292007: <Day 20>

Today was the 3^rd day with the same specific gravity, time to bottle J.

Bottling went pretty well, there was minimal spillage and probably only one dead soldier. One bottle cracked on the inside and another had a slight chip on the outside. I labeled the chipped bottle separately so I can keep track and put it aside just in case. When it was all said and done we got 46 bottles.

I expect this to be a really good batch, there was a partial bottle that wasn’t full enough to cap, we all tasted a little of it and had no problems drinking even before it is carbonated.

	63^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.014	1.014	1.053	5.1%

I finally came up with a name and a logo. I eventually went with Robb’s suggestion of Brianbräu. I don’t think that this is a perfect translation, but it believe roughly translates to Brian’s Brewery ( I read that Löwenbräu translates to Lion’s Brew ). I have not completely settled on the font, and will most likely change the graphic shortly, but I wanted to have something for this batch.

I also came up with a logo for this specific batch of beer.