Dunkelweizen sour taste

[Christ71]

I brewed a Dunkelweizen using Wyeast 3068 and fermented primary at 20°C, secondary at 21°C. Bottled after three weeks.
Looks good, smells good, but there's a sour taste to it. I always clean and sanitise well, so i don't really think it's an infection.

Does anybody have any experience with this yeast and will the sourness fade?

 

[doomy86]

I had the same happening with a few of my hefeweizen brews. They were not dunkelweizen and the yeast produced the sour flavors.

Maybe in your case its the malt. Can you post your recipe?

 

[Christ71]

19 litres
OG 1.066
FG 1.018

48% Wheat malt 7EBC
41% Munich malt 15EBC
5% CaraMunich 150EBC
4% Special B 350EBC
2% Chocolate malt 900EBC

26gr Tettnanger 12IBU

2gr Wyeast yeast nutrient

1 ltr starter Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephaner

Boil 60 minutes

 

[Christ71]

Mash schedule:
42C 20 min
52C 5 min
62C 35 min
72C 35 min
78C 5 min

 

[Lefou]

I had the same problem early on when trying to make a Dunkel.
Narrowed it down to several things .... my water wasn't treated properly and I found the roasted malt had an effect on pH. I was using low mineral, "soft" water to brew.
The extra adjuncts I had - which aren't present in your malt bill, by the way, didn't help out.

I ended up treating my water, altering the grain bill, and changing yeasts to suit lighter SRM beers.

 

[motosapiens]

I find that if I follow standard spreadsheet advice for water/mash ph, my hefeweizens are a bit sour. After reading the oft linked Brau-magazine article on hefeweizen, i think that authentic hefeweizen benefits from a higher mash ph than other styles of beer. As an experiment, I did my last hefe with no water treatment for mash, and about half the sparge acidification that bru'n water recommended. This ended up far superior to the more sour and slightly cloying version made using 'proper' water chemistr.

fwiw, my water profile is fairly similar to munich. 170-ish alkalinity and very low sulfate and chloride levels. Untreated, it makes pretty bitter and astringent pale ales, but very nice and authentic hefeweizen.

 

[Lefou]

My first Dunkel foul-up has convinced me to switch gears and concentrate on lighter beers.
I read BYO a lot and one of the editors (Chris Colby) claims a good wheat beer can be brewed with soft and hard water. I do what works for me, though I like his ideas and put a few of them to work.

The last wheat brew was made using Poland Springs water treated with a bit of CaCl2, a pinch of Epsom, and NaHCO3 for 5 gallons of water. The mash was around 152-155F with a decoction, hopping to the higher side of style, and WLP320 yeast. The beer turned out to be amazing and better than any of the store-bought imports I favor (Franziskaner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr) so something turned out right.

 

[Christ71]

My first weizen was a Weizenbock. I made no PH adjustments and it was a great beer.

Both your comments are making me think I should stop lowering PH in weizen beers.

 

[Sadu]

I have had similar problems with all of my hefes - am yet to make one that I'm happy with. I get a sour tart taste which is not there in the wort but is there after a few days of fermentation. So very interested to hear what worked for other people with similar issues.

I thought it might be the amounts of acidulated malt I was using, but the flavour is still there when brewed with no acidulated malt or acid additions. I thought it might be yeast, so I tried 3068 and 3638 - same problem. I don't get the sourness with wb-06 dry yeast, but the flavour from that batch was bland and not very authentic. Also tried protein rest vs single infusion which didn't help. Tried a pitch rate experiment comparing underpitch vs normal pitch, didn't make any difference.

My water is very soft, I have been adding a small amount of CaCl2 to bring Calcium to 20ppm which is what I use for pale lagers with much success.

The latest batch I swapped out the grain bill completely, only using weyermann pils + weyermann dark wheat + some acidulated malt + keeping tighter hold on the fermentation temperature at the bottom of the range. Tried the bottling sample and while the sourness is there it's definitely a lot better than previous batches, and the esters and very much reduced. The FG is considerably higher on this batch so it's possible the residual malt sweetness is helping balance the sourness.

 

[didinho]

Does anybody have any experience with this yeast and will the sourness fade?

last time I used Wyeast weizen yeast I had the same problem, four years ago. then I never tried again to brew a weizen