Hefe moved to Secondary

Last week was busy and I had a wedding this past weekend, so I finally moved the hefeweizen over to the secondary after 2 weeks in the primary. Again, I'm experimenting a little... I went to a local flea market and bought a 5 gal. carboy for $6. This allowed me to split the 6 gallons into 2 carboys - 1 with 2.5 gal. and one with 3.5 gal. In the secondary carboy with 2.5 gallons, I added 1 can of Oregon red raspberries with juice to make a raspberry hefeweizen. Again, I'll let you know how it turns out when I bottle it in a week.

I've already purchased the ingredients to brew an IPA this weekend... This is partly because of my excitment that my local homebrew shop finally has a new supply of hops. I bought several packs of Cascade hops for my upcoming IPA recipe. I'll post the recipe next week after I brew.

Brewed a Hefe Weizen

Brewed a Hefe Weizen. Here's the recipe...

Steeped
.5 lbs Briess Wheat Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 2.2)
.5 lbs Briess Dextrine Malt crushed 6 row (lovibond 1.5)
for 4 hours in 6.25 gallons of hot water from the tap
Brought water to 155-160 F and let rest for 30 min. and brought to full boil and removed grains
1 oz. Vangard pellet hops A.A. 4.4%
1/2 cup of Malto dextine
2 cups of corn sugar
Boiled for 30 minutes
3.3 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
3 lbs Munton's Plain Extra Light DME (7 EBC)
1 cup of corn sugar
.75 lbs Munton's Plain Wheat DME (55% wheat/45% barley, 9 EBC)
Boiled for 15 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 10 more minutes
.5 oz Willamette pellet hops A.A. 4.6%
Boiled for 5 minutes and cooled
Pitched Munton's Gold Yeast directly into Wort at 68F

This made about 6 gallons, and I forgot to measure my original gravity before pitching the yeast. I think I'm going to add a half can of Oregon canned raspberries to 1 gallon in the secondary for a raspberry hefe. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Bottled the Weizen

I'm still not sure if it would be considered a dark hefe weizen or a dunkel weizen, but anyway, I bottled what I'm calling a Dunkel Weizen today (I always put the month it's ready to serve as the month it was bottled on the label so friends don't think it's too old). I decided to call it "1474 Dunkelweizen" in honor of an upcoming fraternity event at the end of July at which time I hope to finally crack one open. It's currently being aged in basement at around 65F. It smelled and tasted pretty good when I checked final gravity. Based on some very basic calculations, I'm estimating the final alcohol by volume to be around 6.5%.

I'm also experimenting with a different way to label my bottles. The logo to the right is my label for the Dunkelweizen. I printed it off on the computer on regular paper, cut it out and then covered the entire thing on the bottle with packing tape. Hopefully the packing tape won't stick too much when trying to take the labels off, but will prevent water from getting to the label if I decide to put these on ice. I'll let you know how that goes.