First brewing attempt

On October the 1st I finally decided to go for it and brew my very first batch. I'd already spent a lot of time on the internet buying the equipment, learning the basics of home brewing and trying to find out which recipe would be at the same time easy to make as well as "likely successful" for a beginner. I went for a German Hefeweizen. The rationale behind that was that hefeweizen is a simple beer to make; only two different types of malt and two types of hops that must be tossed into the pot at the beginning of the boil, therefore you can concentrate on the brewing technique without having in mind complex hop additions requiring accuracy in tossing times, thing that can be quite confusing for a beginner. Also it is one of my favourite type of beer (Erdinger, Paulaner, Franziskaner etc).

The equipment

I bought a set of two plastic 32 litre buckets for £120, one of them is fitted with a 2,400kW electric heating element and I used it as a hot liquor tank and the other one can be used as sterilisation tank or even as a fermenter.

A good colleague from work gave me a thermos type of mash tun and the only thing that I had to take care of was the boiler. This wasn't very easy though because it seems that due to covid19 lockdown many people started homebrewing so boiling pots with draining tap and fitted heating element was out of stock everywhere I looked into. I was left with only one choice; to make my own pot. I bought a conventional 50 litre stainless steel pot for £65, a 2,400kW heating element for £25 and a 21mm valve with a tap for £10. I used Q-max punch hole cutters to open two holes on the pot (that wasn't very easy to be honest) and voila my boiling pot was ready!!

After the wort is boiled it needs to be chilled down very fast, rapidly if possible (this is very important for the quality of the final product). There are some ways of doing this; one is to fill up your sink with icy water and put your hot pot there (it takes 70-80 minutes for the temperature to go down from 100 Celsius to 20 and also you have to replace the ice almost every 3-4 minutes) or alternatively to use an immersion chilling system which is connected to the water tap and does the job in 25 minutes. It cost me £80!

You also need a fermenter, so I bought a PET 27 litre carboy for £25. I was set to go.

The brewing

I came back home from work and started at 6 pm. By the time I finished cleaning it was 1 am (LOL). I used malts, hops and yeast bought from "The Malt Miller". This store has an excellent service I must say. I used Wyeast and I was not disappointed. Things ran smoothly, I remained stuck to my plan and I followed the recipe religiously. As a result there was no surprises! I found a list on Spotify named "Beer brewing music", I had 3-4 pints of IPA as well and in the end my evening was awesome.

Fermentation kicked in a few hours after the wort settled in the carboy. It was really intense, maybe more intense than I expected. After 8 days the beer was ready to be bottled. You know that when the specific gravity of your beer stops going down for at least 3 days. Then I primed my beer with a bit of corn sugar and bottled it in swing top bottles I had already bought for 65 pence each.

I have attached a word document with some technical information as well as some pitfalls and mistakes I think I made during the procedure. Next time will be better. The beer will be ready to drink after 3 weeks of conditioning. Updates will follow.

The tasting

As mentioned before, the beer would be ready for drinking on the 28th of October, after 3 weeks of conditioning as per recipe. The days were going by and every now and again I was going past the place where the crates with the bottles were stored thinking "can I open one now?". If curiosity killed the cat, what did exactly impatience do? On the 16th of October during breakfast I watched a video on youtube, it is this guy who does the home brew challenge trying to brew 99 different types of beer in 99 weeks. This fellow brewed a beer and then he said that "some beers it is better to be drunk fresh". He had his beer only 1 week after the end of fermentation!!! And he said it was good!!

This quote about drinking fresh beer was turning around my head all day. So, I returned home from work, I went past the crates again and then I said to myself "what the hell, I will drink one right now". I opened the bottle and heard the pfssst noise; I said "ok, carbonation seems to have worked". Then I emptied the beer into a glass. The impression was quite good; hazy beer (you expect this from a weiss), with a proper foamy head and without sediment or spare pieces of yeast at the bottom of the bottle. The smell was very wheaty and malty, it automatically brings German weißbier to your memory. The body of the beer was very solid and there was a distinct banana flavour with a very light note of clove and some slight bitterness coming from the Saaz hops. I mashed the grains at 65 Celcius and fermented the beer at 20 Celcius therefore banana flavour was expected. If I wanted more clove flavour then I should have mashed and fermented at lower temperatures, or alternatively tweak the percentage of my wheat grain in my mix over pilsner grain.

That was a very pleasant beer to drink and I must admit that I really enjoyed it! I held very limited expectations given that this was only my first attempt, however in the end I think that the result was awesome. The next one will be an American Pale Ale :-)

Hefeweizen beer (2).docx

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