I'll start off by saying - we're not Hefeweizen fans. We've had them, don't hate them, but we don't love them either. Usually, I've found that they're way too banana forward for our liking and we're just not fans of that banana flavor. Did some reading on how to push them to be a bit more clove forward and decided to give it a go.
First off, added melanoidin to try and give it some malt character in the end. It's not typical and it didn't actually do what I wanted it to do, but I think it worked out nicely. It gave it almost like a mild honey sweetness in the end product. I think it works nicely.
Gave this thing the ferulic acid rest at 112-113F for 25 minutes. I did not add any water additions at this point. Just added the grains and wherever the grains and my RO water ended up on pH, I left it. Ended up being 5.6 pH during the FA rest.
Ramped up to 153 for a 60 minute sacc rest and proceeded as usual. Added water additions and acid malt at this point. Mash pH ended up being 5.39 here.
For fermentation, I kept it at the low end for the yeast - 64F for 3 days, ramped up 1 degree per day until hit 70 degrees, and let it finish out there. I didn't want to go lower than the bottom temp for the yeast. Didn't want to chance causing issues during fermentation. This yeast did attenuate a bit more than intended. Should have stopped around 1.012 and dropped to 1.007.
Changes for next time:
- Use baking soda to raise ferulic acid rest pH to 5.8 to try and promote more clove.
- Ferment down around 60F. Given how aggressive the yeast is and knowing that other people have successfully done that, I think the yeast will do just fine at 60F and may suppress that banana character even more.
Overall, a very tasty beer. Medium to light body, low banana esters which take a backseat to the clove phenolics. The clove isn't in your face, but definitely more present than banana. Decent head retention and good mouthfeel.
