hefeweizen help

[nate79]

I have a couple questions about brewing a hefeweizen recipe on this site. Its going to be a biab starting with RO water. I was planing on using 8.15 gallons RO water with 2g gypsum and 4g calcium chloride. Is this anywhere near right for this style? The following is what ezwater puts out for amounts.

Ca - 50
Mg - 0
Na - 0
Cl - 63
SO4 - 36

Second question is mash pH. When I put my grain bill in ezwater it says room temp pH is 5.87. That seems high from what I have read. Should I add the acidulated malt I have to bring the pH down and if so how much? Will the acidulated malt affect the flavor?

 

[McKnuckle]

That should be a fine water profile for a weissbier. It's a style that's relatively tolerant of both mineral content and pH, as long as you err on the soft side (which you have). I have brewed a couple recently with a very similar profile.

Yes, you will want to acidify your mash to achieve a 5.3-5.6 pH. A simple formula is 1% acidulated malt by weight to reduce the pH by 0.1. So to get from 5.9, say, to 5.5, use 4% of your grain bill by weight in acid malt. If you have 10 lbs. of grain in the recipe, for example, that would be 0.4 lbs. acidulated.

You won't taste this. Supposedly you need to get to the 8-10% range before a sour tang comes into play.

 

[Bassman2003]

Yep. If you want to be strategic in future brews, folks often leave the mash pH a little high for this style then acidify with 5 min left in the boil down to 5.2/5.1 This is a forgiving style but also can be quite complicated if you want.

 

[nate79]

Thank you both! Was a little worried going over the ezwater recommend 3% of grain bill in fear of tasting that sour tang. Will give the 4% a shot. Thanks again for the input!

 

[Bassman2003]

This link has most of what one would need to know about brewing a hefeweizen. http://braumagazin.de/article/brewing-bavarian-weissbier-all-you-ever-wanted-to-know/

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