I was quite busy recently, so I didn’t have time to give you an update on the Hefeweizen that I brewed in August.

Fermentation went fine, but took a bit longer than expected to finish up. I then bottled the beer with Speise, and let it referment in the bottle. It carbonated properly.

I first tried the beer about 3 weeks ago. It pours fine. The yeast has formed a relatively hard sediment that took a while to swirl up. When poured, the beer forms a relatively dense foam that falls down at a moderate speed. Colour-wise, it looks a bit darker than your average Hefeweizen, in fact quite close to several commercial products branded as “Urweisse”. Definitely looks pleasant.

In the nose, you get a whiff of acidity, with hints of a phenolic character. It certainly smells like a Hefeweizen. When tasting it, you again get an acidity that almost gets too much over time. It is spritzy, and that acidic component makes it refreshing. The greatest disappointment are the other flavours, though: there is barely any banana coming through, maybe a hint of pear, even though I specifically optimized the wort for ester production. The phenolic side of things is… different. Yes, there are phenols, but it’s not the typical clove character that is so uniqie for the beer style. Not chlorophenolic, though, but still odd.

All in all, I’m a bit disappointed. It is an alright beer, but some of the flavour is just off for the style. I blame the yeast. 😉 I had had quite a few beers, even commercial ones, brewed with WB-06, which exhibited similar issues (high grade of acidity, very few esters and phenols), but I was a bit naive in thinking that I could do better. I wouldn’t mind brewing the beer again, but not with the same yeast. Wyeast 3068 it is next time.