light bodied wheat beer

[GoaT34]

I'm wanting to make a light bodied wheat beer. I was wondering what you think of this because this is the first recipe that i have tried to make myself. I'm basing this off of a mangrove jack beer kit my buddy did that tasted good. The mangrove kit was 1 can (3.74 lbs. I think) of Bavarian wheat lme and 1 kilo of dextrose. i want a little more flavor so i was thinking about:
1-3.3 lbs briess bavarian wheat lme
1-1.5 lbs light pilsen light malt dme
1-1.5 lbs dextrose
1 oz hallertau hops
11 grams danstar munich yeast
I would boil all fermentables and 3/4 oz of hops for 60 minutes then adding 1/4 oz of hops with 10 minutes left.
rehydrate yeast and pitch at 68 degrees
Does this sound ok or should i change something? Sorry for such a noob question but i really want to make a good beer that I'll like and I am still new to this.

 

[boozecruz]

I also am curious on how this turns out. Anyone have any input?

 

[strangegreenman]

Generally, recipes you haven't made yet, or ones with questions belong over on the forum and not in the recipe DB.
That said, you've got some good questions. I'll try and answer as much as I can.

It looks like your recipe will give a wort of ((1.5*45)+(3.3*38)+(1.5*46)) gravity units... so 262GU in 5gal is 1.052 wort, which is perfect. You're adding 3.75HBU (.75oz*5% alpha) of Hallertau pellets at 60min, so about 19IBU and another 3IBU from the 10-minute addition. That's a good balance of malt and hops, too.

So.. spot on weizen! Except... the dextrose, though it lightens the body, it will detract from the flavor. Something funky happens when you have a lot of simple sugars in the wort, about 10% being the threshold. Yeast are a bit lazy (energy-efficient), and during the growth phase they'll ferment the dextrose first before they attack the maltose/maltotriose in the wort. They do this because they will not have to synthesize maltase enzyme until the dextrose runs out, and synthesizing enzymes takes energy and resources that the cells don't want to spend if glucose is already available. Later, when the anaerobic fermentation phase has started, the glucose will run out and the cells will synthesize the maltase enzyme, making off-flavor compounds while they do so, and this makes the beer that uses over 10-20% corn sugar taste cidery. Since you have about 25% corn sugar in your wort, you're over the limit. Try replacing the dextrose with rice syrup solids, which are maltose-based: that will taste much better.

So...I'd say go ahead and brew it with rice! Tell us how it tastes when you're done, I'm curious now.

By the Way, Magic Hat makes a nice Hefeweizen called Circus Boy, which has a nice light body, if you want something delicious while you're waiting for your homebrew.
Good Luck!

 

[DrCDPriest]

Thank you for the dextrose lesson! Typically I have been brewing porters, I just finished the wort for a wheat beer and after (of course) I had it in the primary, it hit me I had not added any dextrose during the boil - was doing a frantic search to see if I missed something - since my recipe was a compilation of a few recipes (all similar).
I appreciate hearing the science behind it.