Alan's and Melissa's Ireks Wheat

Bodensatz Brewing

Ireks Hefeweizen

2000.12.29 - Note that word on the street is that Ireks is no longer making it's malt extracts, so you can now only purchase Ireks grain malts. Anything you find on the shelf is likely to be out of date now and to be avoided. Quite a pity since they made extremely good beers!

We've had a 3kg can of Ireks Wheat Malt Extract in our closet for months, trying to figure out what to do with it. Finally Alan came up with this recipe. In the future we may try it again, but replace half the Crystal Malt with Malted Wheat. We suspect it will turn out to be an excellent beer as is, though. With any luck, Alan's search for a true German Hefeweizen may finally be over.

Ingredients

3 kg can Ireks Wheat Malt Extract
500 g light dry malt extract
500 g crystal malt
2 oz Hallertauer hops
1 oz Mount Hood hops
1 package Paul Arnauer Ale yeast (from Kitzingen, Germany)

Method

Crack the crystal malt (with a rolling pin if you must) and put it into a grain bag. Put 6-8 litres of cold water into your brewpot, put the bag in the pot, and turn on the heat. Just as the water starts boiling, remove the bag.

Empty the extracts into the water, stirring well. Put the 2 oz of Hallertauer hops into a bag and immerse into the boiling wort. Boil for 1 hour, adding 1/2 oz Mount Hood hops with 10 minutes left in the boil, and the other 1/2 oz with 3 minutes left.

Remove the hops and sparge into a carboy which is about 1/3 full with cold water. Now empty the wort from the brewpot into the carboy.

Pitching

Made a starter out of 30 grams of dry malt extract powder boiled in 500ml of water for 10 minutes. Allowed it to cool, then put it into a sanitzed juice bottle with the yeast. A fermentation lock was affixed. It was pitched just before high kraeusen.

Data

brewed: Dec 2, 1995
pitched: Dec 3, 1995
bottled: Dec 18, 1995 with 1-2/3 cups DME boiled in 500ml water
O.G. 1.044
F.G. 1.015

Fermentation

It's been steady at about 22C the whole time. Pitched on Sunday afternoon, and it was 7:30 Monday (Dec 4) morning when the first signs of fermentation were obvious. By that evening a vigourous fermentation was in progress.

Fermentation remains vigourous to this day (Wednesday Dec 6th), albeit a bit slower than before.

Taste Tests

yummy!
Yield
650ml x 2
600ml x 4
500ml x 18
330ml x 23