If it's shipping from the US that's probably going to be way too expensive, if it's good UK beers from England/Ireland/Scotland I'd concider it.

Silly thing about the Reinheitsgebot: If you don't follow it and are a German beer producer you can't call your product beer within the German borders. If sell beer made outside of Germany in Germany you don't have to follow it and still get to call it beer.
As long as it's natural ingredients I don't really care what's in the beer. Love fruit and stuff.

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That's what I do. I have a 50' IC I use, and I started out by trying to use a 25' IC as a pre-chiller. I put the 25' in a bucket of ice and ran from the faucet to the 25' in ice to the 50' in wort. I just wasn't happy with its cooling power. I got a pump from Harbor Freight for like $30, put a few bucks worth of fittings on it, and was ready to go. I just use tap water until I get around 100F, then start recirculating with ice. I'll go through about 30 pounds getting down in the low-mid 60's, and about 50 pounds of ice will get me to mid 40's, which is where I like to pitch my lagers.

This is the pump I got, although I got it on sale. I think its probably overpowered, and have been thinking about putting a ball valve on the output to restrict the flow some.

Any of you guys ever make Apfelwein??? I'm probably going to brew some alongside of my APA this weekend.

Managed to pick up 19 cornies today I am vvv happy atm.

**** yes, Apfelwein is the ****. I have 20g fermenting in my bedroom at the moment (only room in the house that stays relatively cool). 10g was w/ the Montrachet and the other 10g is Cotes de Blanc so we can compare. About a month in I can't really taste much of a difference, but the Montrachet is clearing out much better.

I've probably made about 50g of Apfelwein, and as Ed and many others will tell you, aging really is crucial. It tastes pretty damn good cold and carbed at 1 month IMO, but the batches I actually let sit and condition properly for 6+ months are A-MAZING.

FWIW, I've been making it w/o the extra dextrose lately to keep the ABV < 6% for summer time drinking. On the other hand, chicks really seem to love this stuff which is fantastic when pushing 8%+.

LMAO. My fiance HATES beer. She's never had one she liked, even Blue Moon/Great White/etc... Hopefully this is something she likes. Luckily she always gives my beers a try at least.

There isn't a taste difference due to added dextrose right, just abv boost?

After brewing 6 or 8 batches of beer, I'm probably going to move to wine for a while.

Apfelwein will probably be my transitional brew. I don't think I've ever had any.

Is it the same thing as apple wine?

It's a "hard German cider". So I don't think it is like wine although I may be wrong. You may like to do a mead also. The only few I have ever had are really good, they are closer to wine, just made with a ton of honey.

Yeah pretty much.

One of my best girl friends hates beer too and she loves the stuff. She can normally hold her booze pretty well, but the first she drank it she got smashed on like 2 pints. Pretty funny.

I mean maybe technically it isn't, but it's apple juice and wine yeast, so that counts as apple wine in my book.

Thanks for the info.

Went to Natl Homebrewer's Convention a couple of weeks ago. Interesting experience. Club night (700 kegs of brew, over 30 clubs) was a blast, tasted a lot of great brews. Theme was geared toward hoppy beers, which I lean toward the other end of the spectrum, but there were still plenty of hefes and stouts to keep my attention. The Maltose Falcons out of LA had an ungodly number of different brews with them. Quaff, out of San Diego, had the best beer I drank the entire time I was there, a chocolate stout called "Chocolate Milkstache".

The owner of Russian River Brewery was the keynote speaker, and we had Pliny the Elder and two other beers from Russian River being poured during the entire speech. We also took a lunch trip to Stone Brewery too. Great food, Smoked Porter on tap was like ambrosia.....

I'm going to be bottling a Kolsch and a Hefe tomorrow. One of the things I got out of a session I attended was a 110 degree rest after mash in, for about 10-15 minutes, before stepping to 132 or so. We've not done that yet, we have gone directly to 132 for every batch so far. Going to try the 110 degree rest on the next Hefe batch we do, and also with our Belgians.

Tried getting her a Kriek?

I've never heard of an explicit rest. Most people here mash in at slightly below 132 (at 50C) and if you do the mash at lower temperatures it's usually to cook it up slower. Well I guess you can call it a rest but it's basically boiling up to the 132 in a slow fashion, 10-15 minutes seems about right.
Supposedly you get a slightly better yield if you do it like this. Never tried it though.
Edit: Pre-50C mash in usually starts at 40C (104F) for Weizen and as low as 35C (95F) for a Hefeweizen

This is an acid rest which is usually not necessary unless your water is very very soft or you're using a lot of adjuncts.

Per John Palmer:

A protein rest, if you're using fully-modified malts, is mostly unnecessary as well. In fact, many people notice a reduction in head retention when doing one. Now if you're using partially modified malts, I retract my statement.

While I believe your post is true for almost all styles, acid rests for hefeweizens are still very common. There is a very specific reason but I forget why. I'll try to research it and post back when I have time.

I do know that with all the wheat in a hefeweizen an acid rest is not going to have any negative impact on head retention.


This post from the Northern Brewer forums is one of the best sources on the net for info about brewing hefeweizen's: http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?t=40751

I love belgium blondes (and beers too, ha ha!), not much of a drinker anymore, but I like the good stuff when I do. Some of my faves:

- St Bernardus
- Duvel (gold and red labels)
- Delerium Tremens
- Fin Du Monde (Champagne beer is dat ish)
- Leffe

Sounds like you'd enjoy my local bar promotion.

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Forgot to look last night at the notes I took there, but the friend that I brew with plays softball with me as well. We were talking last night, and the 110 degree rest enhanced the enzymes in such a way that the clove properties were enhanced. We tasted 7 different hefes in the class, and the one with the 110 degree rest had the most pronounced banana and clove, which I prefer. This will also require a ferment at around 70 degrees which should be easy enough to accomplish. The higher ferment gives you the banana balance to the clove. We're going to try it for sure in our next hefe batch. I'm also going to a different yeast, I think. We had been using Wyest 3068 Weihenstephan Wheat but I'd like to try Wyeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat for some different complexity.

We are also going to do a wit soon, trying to replicate Hoegaarden. We had not used unmalted grain in our previous wits, but that seems to be the big difference in the normal recipe vs the one we saw in Zymurgy. This should give us a lighter color like Hoegaarden as opposed to the color we get now, which is somewhat orangey.

That's the cool thing about beer: everybody has their own tastes. I prefer 3068 fermented down around 64F because I'm not a big fan of a strong banana presence in my Hefes. To each their own though!

Also, I'll have to check into the acid rest w/ respect to enhancing clove flavors (<3 <3 <3 cloves if you can't tell). I can't really figure out why that would be the case, but then again there are a lot of things about brewing that we can't totally explain w/ science but it just seems to work (i.e. First Wort Hopping).

This is a FANTASTIC beer.

Well I stand corrected. From what I could find, it looks like a short 10 min acid rest roughly doubles perceived phenols. Hefe isn't a style I've done a lot, so it's always cool to learn something new.

As far as a protein rest though, I still stand by my statements.

Jbrochu's post gives a recipe that calls for the acid rest at 111 and gives a bit of an explanation. It's a good link.

What hops do you like best in your hefes?

I always use whatever noble hop I have lying around and keep the IBUs ~10-15, but honestly it really doesn't matter much since the main purpose hops serve in a Hefe is just to balance the maltiness.

I've tried a few Hefes w/ late hop additions and, personally, I'm not a big fan. I like to let the yeast do all the work.

cardsman: If you feel like experimenting I highly suggest open fermenting half the wort of your Weizen. Open fermentation yields pretty good results for Weizen from what I've seen (most notably an extra bit of banana).
There's also a pretty good BrewingTV episode on open fermentation, it's episode 4, tasting notes a little later (episode 6)
http://www.brewingtv.com/episodes/?currentPage=7

hi guys

been trying to get into more hoppy beers, which i have found that i enjoy alot. could someone who is familiar with these give me recs on what to try?

my favorites i have tried so far are stone ipa and lagunitas ipa...any suggestions would be appreciated

heh, i don't mind either of warsteiner/veltins, although anything german is better than 99% of the crap that's typically available in that style. personally prefer bitburger or lowenbrau (although that's a bastard to find nowadays)