bottle conditioning a weiss beer with yeast

[grubac]

Hey Kids

Just wanted to get your input on something. I've got 40 L of wheat beer fermenting in my basement. I'm going to rack it a couple of times to filter out the yeast, afterwhich I'm planning on bottle conditioning with yeast and wort.

I don't know which liquid yeast to use. My local brew shop has the following:

WY5056
WY3056
WY5052
WY1021
WY5055
WY3333
WY5050
WY1020

Have any of guys ever bottle conditioned a wheat beer with yeast before? I've heard that it's best to use the biggest strain, but I'm not sure why.


let me know your thoughts



grubac

[Invalid Stout]

Do you have a particular reason not to bottle condition with the yeast that's already in the beer?

[mysterio]

Biggest strain?

I get good results just bottle conditioning with the yeast that is present in the beer.

[grubac]

Well...I've been reading Eric Warner's German Wheat Beer and I really want the beer to turn out yeasty. He claims that the best bavarian wheat beers are condition with a combination of spiese (unpitched wart) and yeast. The key is to filter out (rack a few times) the original yeast first.

A ha...so you've had success just bottling without priming sugar? Not bad. Must admit that I didn't think of that.

Well, I'll probably go head, pick a yeast and try it out, because I'm really interested in finding out how yeasty the beer will be.

Grubac

[coatesg]

I'd just prime and bottle.

Filtering sounds like a pain & liquid yeast sounds like an expensive way of doing the conditioning. If the yeast is knackered when it comes to bottling, I'd probably repitch from a later brew or use Nottingham myself. For a normal wheat beer, that sounds unlikely and the primary yeast should be fine - just prime (you will probably need to prime as you want it well carbonated for a wheat beer) and bottle with the primary strain. Works for me.

(BTW - there are strains there I have never heard of, and can't find on the wyeast site! Namely: 5050, 5056, 5055, 1020, 1021 - what on earth are they?)

[lancsSteve]

I've kreausened all of my three wheat beers - it pulls them into condition in the bottle very quickly (2-3 weeks but as always improve with time) and gives better yeast to reuse from the bottle for future brews but IMHO definitely not worth buying extra yeast for this purpose.

I split my liquid yeast following horden hillbilly's technique (see http://uk-homebrew.tripod.com/id45.html) and used one of the smaller split bottles to make up the starter and kreausen my first one, recultured yeast to make starters for other ones.

I've done the kreausening as a bulk process (in pressure barrel for a week before bottling) but then still wanted to prime again with sugar when bottling as kreausening hadn't brought the carbonation up enough.

There's good info on the process at http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph ... raeusening

Steve

[Invalid Stout]

Some German hefeweizen breweries do do this, but I can't believe it's what makes the difference in quality between a good hefeweizen and a bad one. How are you planning to get all the original yeast out?

[leedsbrew]

I've kreausened all of my three wheat beers - it pulls them into condition in the bottle very quickly (2-3 weeks but as always improve with time) and gives better yeast to reuse from the bottle for future brews but IMHO definitely not worth buying extra yeast for this purpose.

I split my liquid yeast following horden hillbilly's technique (see http://uk-homebrew.tripod.com/id45.html) and used one of the smaller split bottles to make up the starter and kreausen my first one, recultured yeast to make starters for other ones.

I've done the kreausening as a bulk process (in pressure barrel for a week before bottling) but then still wanted to prime again with sugar when bottling as kreausening hadn't brought the carbonation up enough.

There's good info on the process at http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph ... raeusening

Steve

So you as the kreausen to the beer, leave it in the barrel for a week, prime with sugar, and bottle? Does the beer not foam from the Co2 produced by the kreausening?

[lancsSteve]

So you as the kreausen to the beer, leave it in the barrel for a week, prime with sugar, and bottle? Does the beer not foam from the Co2 produced by the kreausening?

I didn't bulk ;prime but added a little in solution to each bottle using a sterlisised syringe - foamed a bit but as they were flip tops I just capped them quick! It worked a treat I must say though not sure I'd both with kreausening in the future - though it was good as makes it better/easier to get viable yeast for a starter from the bottle...

[Hexe]

Well...I've been reading Eric Warner's German Wheat Beer and I really want the beer to turn out yeasty.

Use one of the WYeast packs (iirc they have 2 bavarian ones, or used to) and just ferment open so the yeast has lots of O2 and remember the pitching temp + ferment temp = 30 rule -- go for a high fermentation temp (22-23ish) so the funky, yeasty taste of wheat beer comes out properly, and you'll find that using only a little speise will do the trick very well, no matter how often you rack and how cold you make the beer, wheat yeast likes to float and that will be enough to carbonate and leave an absatz.

IIRC, the yeasts used by the pros are special, neutral tasting yeasts that would not be used to primary ferment a beer, they don't even add flavour as such, but just carbonation. If I was doing what you're planning, I'd be using Saffale or a similiar neutral strain that flocculates well for this endeavour, but, I would not start from here

Don't forget bottled weissbier is quite a newfangled invention, after all, you need at least 2 bottles to fill the smallest proper mass, if not 4 for the man sized ones... by tradition it's a keg beer that has a short turn around time, a bit like stout.

Hexe Froschbein

[Invalid Stout]

Don't forget bottled weissbier is quite a newfangled invention, after all, you need at least 2 bottles to fill the smallest proper mass, if not 4 for the man sized ones... by tradition it's a keg beer that has a short turn around time, a bit like stout.

This is not correct, Weißbier was a bottled niche product until it became fashionable again in the 1980s. Hofbräuhaus Traunstein claims to have been the first brewery to serve draught Weißbier in 1982.

[Hexe]

Don't forget bottled weissbier is quite a newfangled invention, after all, you need at least 2 bottles to fill the smallest proper mass, if not 4 for the man sized ones... by tradition it's a keg beer that has a short turn around time, a bit like stout.

This is not correct, Weißbier was a bottled niche product until it became fashionable again in the 1980s. Hofbräuhaus Traunstein claims to have been the first brewery to serve draught Weißbier in 1982.

But, the recipe originates from Boehmen -- Bohemia(?) pre-1520, and the effort involved in bottling is just too great for that time, glass is expensive. Note that the 'Antique Glass Bottles: Their History and Evolution (1500-1850) ' http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781851493371 starts in 1500 Also, it's one thing to blow a bottle that holds liquid, and quite another to blow one that holds pressure...

Note that the recipe in Bohemia would probably have been used years previously to that, and, I'm not too sure about their ability to sanitize way back then in order to fill bottles successfully, so, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that it actually is a keg beer, especially since it actually doesn't gain all that in terms of quality much by being bottled.

I guess it became one of the 'value-added products', which are made to look desirable(fancy glass, special handling ceremony required), because this kind of thing sells, and I think the marketing in the 80's was actually quite neat, it's kind of nice if a long forgotten beer is resurrected. Still, when you look at what it is, an easy to drink, fast beer designed for thirsty peasants with a healthy palate, the keg seems the logical choice, it's not a venerable ale you want to bottle and pamper for a few month to prime condition :>

Hexe

Ps.: It of course was illegal for peasants to brew Weizen in many parts of Bavaria... but as you know, people brew what they got, working the sickle is hard hard work, and if they have wheat, that's what the farmer's wife'll brew. It was popular enough to be illegal (think about it

[lancsSteve]

Well...I've been reading Eric Warner's German Wheat Beer

I really don't rate that book TBH - his experience is very much in a commercial brewery and has a lot of over-complication for a home setting (it's kind of typically over-the-pond slavishly 'in style' and traditional techniques and faff, but the styles are weird as schnider weisse is not 'in style' for BJCP wheat guidelines as it's 'too dark' despite being the beer that re-introduced weissen! Then techniques like decoction etc. are removed from historical context and unnecessarily applied to highly modified contemporary malts, maybe you have to be a slave to tradition if you don't have any of your own or something ) His phrase that 'only a kamikaze would do a single step infusion mash' is proper b*ll*cks - stepped infusion may help a little but a single temp is fine with over-modified grains and decoction is a LOT of effort for little reward and no need these days. My best wheat beer yet was Graham Wheeler Dunkel in 'Home Brewing' which is 'not proper ingredients or bitterness' in using choc malt (not carafa) and 18IBUs (not 13max) but tasted blinding.

I've used both speisse and kreausen to condition - you dfinitely get more yeast in each bottle and more yeast profile with kreasuening but even following a calculator here http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... arbonation ( a site which also has a VERY good guide to kreasuening ) I still had to prime with sugar as well. I did this by splitting a white labs yeast 6 ways and using some of the spl;it for primary and then making up a starter with speisse (squeezed out from hops post boil, fridged and then boiled 15 minutes and cooled to make a starter for kreausening, if I was doing it again I'd just use wheat DME to make a starter as that wasa LOT of faff, more likely I;d just prime heavily TBH.

One advantage of Kreausening is that the yeast in the bottles is fresher and better for re-use which is a good enough reason I guess especially with the limited run white labs yeasts for example. (The white labs July-August 'Bavarian Weissen' is a fantastic yeast but stinks like a sewer while fermenting, wy300 weihenstephan is great with more bananas than cloves.)

Thread on this at: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27011

Good luck! Gonna have to check out the other yeasts you list.

[mattmacleod]

Many weizen brewers use a lager yeast for bottle conditioning. I'd crash cool the beer fore a few days to drop out most of the yeast, then calculate my priming sugar addition and add it with a package of dry lager yeast to the bottling bucket.


I do rate the book but it's important to bear in mind that it's not specifically aimed at home brewers and it was written nearly twenty years ago.

[Invalid Stout]

Don't forget bottled weissbier is quite a newfangled invention, after all, you need at least 2 bottles to fill the smallest proper mass, if not 4 for the man sized ones... by tradition it's a keg beer that has a short turn around time, a bit like stout.

This is not correct, Weißbier was a bottled niche product until it became fashionable again in the 1980s. Hofbräuhaus Traunstein claims to have been the first brewery to serve draught Weißbier in 1982.

But, the recipe originates from Boehmen -- Bohemia(?) pre-1520, and the effort involved in bottling is just too great for that time, glass is expensive. Note that the 'Antique Glass Bottles: Their History and Evolution (1500-1850) ' http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781851493371 starts in 1500 Also, it's one thing to blow a bottle that holds liquid, and quite another to blow one that holds pressure...

Note that the recipe in Bohemia would probably have been used years previously to that, and, I'm not too sure about their ability to sanitize way back then in order to fill bottles successfully, so, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that it actually is a keg beer, especially since it actually doesn't gain all that in terms of quality much by being bottled.

Well ... yeah, I wasn't thinking that far back, more of the 20th century. But wouldn't all beers be served from the barrel back then?