Today we had a second go at brewing with the new brew kettle. I have tons of wheat malt, so we decided to brew a Hefeweizen, a style I haven’t brewed before. The malt bill consists of 60% Wheat, 33% Pilsner and 7% Munich. We hopped with the Hallertau Mittelfrüh that remained from last week’s Pilsner brewday. For yeast we chose Wyeast’s 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen, as Weihenstephaner’s Hefeweizen is among my personal favorite wheat beers (I’m not a great fan of the style to be honest), and I made a 1.5 liter starter on a stir plate. The brewday went surprisingly well, but wasn’t problem-free. We managed to lose 2-3 liters of wort on the floor, as a silicon hose from the pump loosened from the kettle and fell to the floor. My brewing friend got a huge heat exchanger for free from his former employer, so we cleaned it up and used it for cooling the batch (will try to take pictures the next time we use it). The wort cooled from boiling to 15.5C in 5 minutes, and at the same time the wort was transferred to the fermenter. Talk about fast cooling! This will be a valuable addition to the brewing equipment, as the brewday was shortened by about 30 minutes. Will be interesting to see how this one turns out. Recipe below:

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