rcd@nbires.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (02/26/86)
> >> While I was in Germany I fell in love with the Weizenbier > >> (wheat beer) that they have there. As nothing comparable is > >> available on this side of the Atlantic I hope to duplicate. > >> (or at least approximate) this delicious drink. Does anyone know > >> anything about this beer, or how it is brewed?... There are (at least?) two styles of German wheat beers--Weisse, which means "white" and which has a moderate wheat content, and Weizen, which means "wheat" and which has more wheat. You will also find variation as to whether they are either clear or "mit Hefe" (or Hefeweizen). Hefe means yeast; i.e., it's like a bottle-conditioned beer with yeast sediment at the bottom. > Trevor's article never made it here. You can get Anchor Wheat Beer > here in San Francisco... > ...it is made without barley here in what is supposed to be > the German fashion... I doubt the "without barley" part. Anchor's wheat beer seems (to me, without knowing their recipe) to be in the Weizen style, and without yeast--however, it is almost surely made with a significant amount of barley, as are the German wheat beers. (Significant means at least 1/3 barley, 2/3 wheat as best I can figure.) The reason that you need barley is that one of the early steps in brewing, called "mashing", involves an enzymatic conversion of starches in the grain into fermentable sugars. The enzymes required for the conversion are abundant in barley but almost totally lacking in wheat--so a wheat beer is made with enough barley that the enzymes in the barley will work on the starches in the wheat as well. It might work to extract the enzyme and add it to an all-wheat mash--but that isn't traditional and wouldn't be allowed in a German beer anyway. And yes, you can make wheat beer at home. The winning beer of AHA's 1985 competition was a wheat beer. You will have to be well along in your homebrewing, to where you are brewing all-grain rather than extract--I don't know of any wheat-malt extracts or kits (yet). -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Worst-case analysis must never begin with "No one will ever want..."
spp@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Stephen P Pope) (03/04/86)
> > Trevor's article never made it here. You can get Anchor Wheat Beer > > here in San Francisco... > > ...it is made without barley here in what is supposed to be > > the German fashion... > > I doubt the "without barley" part. Anchor's wheat beer seems (to me, > without knowing their recipe) to be in the Weizen style, and without > yeast--however, it is almost surely made with a significant amount of > barley, as are the German wheat beers. (Significant means at least 1/3 I recently went on the Anchor Brewery tour (which I really recommend) and they claim it's all wheat. They taste just about all their beers at the end of the tour, and the fresh tap steam beer is excellent. Everything else in in bottles, unfortunately. steve