When I do wheat beers, I go with the traditional 70/30 wheat/barley ratio. I throw in a pound of rice hulls for a 5 gallon batch to avoid the sparging issues (if you can't find those, go with the oats, it should work the same). I also just started reducing the gap in my malt mill when working with the wheat, it increases the extraction efficiency which will suffer if you don't do that since the wheat kernals are smaller than malted barley kernals. Of course, this will make the stuck mash issue worse so some type of inert hulls will be needed to avoid problems.
As far as a protein type rest, I don't do them for a couple of reasons. First of all, I have noticed that head retention suffers when you do it and for a weizen, that is very bad. I want my wheat beers to have a big, billowy head (I also carbonate very aggressively). The other reason I don't do it is because it sets you up for more of a clove taste in the beer. I prefer the banannna/bubble gum flavors with just a little bit of clove for balance. Of course, this is mainly personnel preference although many of the best selling wheat beers do feature the bananna, for instance Paulener. As far as hopping goes, I think any noble German hop will work but you need to keep the IBU's very low, say 15 to 18 max. I personally would not even think about adding Styrian Goldings or any other aggressive tasting hops and certainly not any of the American C hops because it would clash with the yeast and wheat derived flavors. Finally, don't worry about adding any Irish moss, you don't want the beer to clear. The yeast in suspension actually adds to the taste and mouthfeel which is why maybe you have seen imbibers actually shaking the yeast loose at the bottom of the bottle (and sometimes rolling the bottle on the bar) and dumping it into their glasses (that is also one of the neat little rituals involved with drinking weizen beer, very cool).
Maybe you can tell but German wheat beers are one of my favorites and I think it's great fun to see what flavors you can get the yeast to express. I currently have two wheat beers going, a heffe and a dunkel and I am pretty happy with both of them. I will find out how well I did in about three weeks which is when I should get my scoresheets back from our big contest here in Dallas. This summer, I will probably experiment with an American style wheat beer which is somewhat of a different animal. You generally use a neutral ale yeast (although I understand that Pyramid uses a lager yeast) and if you wish, you can hop them up a bit, with American C hops if that is your thing. Anyhow, it's a great style, have fun and let us know how it comes out.
Drinking:Saison (in bottles), Belgian Dubbel (in bottles), Oud Bruin (in bottles), Olde Ale (in bottles),
Abbey Triple (in bottles), Munich Helles, Best Bitter (TT Landlord clone), English IPA
Conditioning: Traditional bock bier, CAP
Fermenting: Munich Dunkel
Next up: Bitter (London Pride like), ESB
So many beers to make, so little time (and cold storage space)
