Bavarian Hefeweizen: Banana, Clove & Wheat 20-Litre Homebrew Recipe

Hefeweizen is Bavaria's cloudy wheat beer: pale gold, hazy with yeast, topped with a tall, fluffy white head and bursting with aromas of ripe banana and clove. None of that fruit or spice comes from hops or added flavourings. It is all produced by a special wheat beer yeast, which makes this one of the most satisfying styles to brew at home, because your fermentation temperature decides how the finished beer tastes. It is also quick: there is no lagering, no dry hopping and no long conditioning, and a hefeweizen is at its best young and fresh, often within three or four weeks of brew day.

Recipe at a Glance

• Batch size: 20 litres into the fermenter

• Original gravity (OG): 1.050

• Final gravity (FG): 1.012

• ABV: approx. 5.0%

• Bitterness: approx. 11–12 IBU (Tinseth)

• Colour: pale straw to gold, fully cloudy

• Brewhouse efficiency assumed: 70%

Equipment Needed

• Brew kettle of at least 30 litres (or an all-in-one electric system)

• Mash tun, or a large grain bag for brew-in-a-bag (BIAB)

• Fermenting vessel of at least 25 litres – wheat beer yeast throws a huge foamy head, so leave plenty of headspace

• A blow-off tube in place of an airlock for the first few days

• Hydrometer and trial jar

• Digital thermometer, and ideally a way to control fermentation temperature

• Wort chiller or an ice bath

• No-rinse sanitiser

• Strong bottles (about 40 x 500ml) and caps, or a keg

Ingredients (20 Litres)

Grains (all-grain)

• 2.5 kg pale wheat malt (about 55% of the grist)

• 2.1 kg German Pilsner malt

• 200 g rice hulls (not a malt, but they stop the sticky wheat mash from setting solid)

Extract option

• 3.2 kg wheat dry malt extract (most UK suppliers sell it as roughly 50–60% wheat, 40–50% barley), or 3.8 kg wheat liquid malt extract

• No steeping grains are needed; a hefeweizen is meant to be pale

Hops

• 25 g Hallertau Mittelfrüh or Tettnang (about 4% alpha acid) – 60 minute boil

• That's it. Hops should be barely noticeable in this style; the yeast does the talking.

Yeast and Extras

• 1 pack of a German wheat beer yeast: Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen or WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale (liquid), or SafAle WB-06 or LalBrew Munich Classic (dry)

• Priming sugar if bottling (see Packaging)

• No Irish moss or finings: the haze is part of the style

Ordinary ale yeast will not work here. Without a hefeweizen strain you will get a perfectly pleasant pale wheat beer, but none of the banana and clove that make the style.

Mashing

1. Heat the strike water: Bring about 14 litres of water to roughly 72°C.

2. Mash in: Stir in the crushed grain and the rice hulls slowly, breaking up any clumps. Wheat malt has no husk, so the mash will feel stickier than you might be used to.

3. Optional clove rest: For more clove character, many brewers mash in at around 44°C and hold for 15 minutes before raising the temperature. This rest releases ferulic acid, which the yeast turns into the clove-like compound 4-vinyl guaiacol. Skip it if you prefer a fruitier beer.

4. Main rest: Hold at 65–66°C for 60 minutes for a fairly dry, highly drinkable beer.

5. Mash out (optional): Raise to 75°C for 10 minutes.

6. Sparge slowly: Rinse with water at about 75°C until you have roughly 25–26 litres in the kettle. Go gently; wheat mashes are prone to stuck sparges.

The Boil

1. Bring the wort to a rolling boil and add the hops. Boil for 60 minutes (some brewers boil Pilsner-heavy worts for 90 minutes to drive off a sweetcorn-like compound called DMS; 60 minutes with a vigorous, uncovered boil is usually fine).

2. Switch off the heat and chill the wort to about 16–17°C as quickly as you can.

3. Transfer to a sanitised fermenter, aerate well and check your original gravity.

Fermentation

This is where you shape the beer. Wheat beer yeasts produce more banana (isoamyl acetate) when fermented warmer and more clove when fermented cooler. A good middle path is:

• Pitch at 17°C and let it rise to 18–19°C over the first few days for a balanced beer.

• More banana: let it run at 20–21°C. Go much warmer than that and you risk solvent-like, boozy flavours.

• More clove: hold it at 16–17°C throughout, and use the clove rest above.

• Expect a vigorous, foamy fermentation. Fit a blow-off tube for the first two or three days.

• Fermentation is usually finished in 5–7 days. Check that the gravity is stable at around 1.010–1.013 over two days before packaging.

Packaging

Hefeweizen is traditionally served with a lot of fizz, around 3.5 volumes of CO2 compared with roughly 2 for a typical British ale. About 200 g of dextrose dissolved in a little boiled water will get you close for 20 litres, but only use heavy, thick-walled bottles (the sort German wheat beers come in) at that level. With standard 500ml bottles, play it safe at about 150 g. Keep the bottles at room temperature for about two weeks to carbonate, then chill. If you keg, set your regulator to give around 3–3.5 volumes at your serving temperature.

Drink it young. Unlike a stout or a barley wine, a hefeweizen does not improve with age, and the banana and clove fade after a couple of months.

Tasting Notes and Tips

• Expect: banana, clove, a little bubblegum or vanilla, soft bready wheat, very low bitterness and a creamy, mouth-filling texture from the yeast and high carbonation.

• Too much banana? Ferment a couple of degrees cooler next time and avoid underpitching.

• Too much clove or smoky phenol? Ferment warmer and skip the clove rest.

• Serve it right: pour into a tall, curvy weizen glass at 6–8°C. Pour most of the bottle slowly down the side, then swirl the last couple of centimetres to pick up the yeast and pour that in on top.

• Lemon slice? Many Bavarians would wince, as it kills the head and hides the yeast character. Try it without first.

Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen and Kristallweizen

"Hefe" means yeast and "Weizen" means wheat, so a hefeweizen is simply wheat beer with the yeast left in. Filter it bright and you get kristallweizen; add a little Munich and dark crystal malt and you have a dunkelweizen, with caramel and bready notes alongside the banana. Belgian witbier, which we cover in our witbier recipe, is a different animal: it uses unmalted wheat, coriander and orange peel, and a Belgian yeast with a peppery rather than banana-and-clove character.

Food Pairing

Hefeweizen is the classic partner for a Bavarian breakfast of Weißwurst, sweet mustard and a soft pretzel, but it works brilliantly with lighter food at home too: grilled chicken, prawns with garlic and lemon, a goat's cheese salad, Thai green curry or a slice of banana bread. Its high carbonation lifts rich food and its low bitterness keeps spicy dishes in check.

Get hold of the right yeast, control the fermentation temperature and leave room in the fermenter for that enormous foamy head, and you will have one of the most rewarding beers a homebrewer can make, ready to drink in under a month.