First Brew Blog: Summer Hefeweizen — A Mash Disaster, a Save, and Why I Brew

Nine Years In, Finally Putting It in Writing

I've been homebrewing for nine years now, and I've finally decided to start a blog about it. What took me so long? Honestly, the usual excuses — brew days are long enough without sitting down to write about them afterward, and I always figured the beer spoke for itself. But recently, with the advent of AI tools, I was able to build something that changed my mind: a custom brewing terminal that lets me log batches, track inventory, and post directly from the command line. It's the kind of workflow that actually fits into a brew day instead of adding friction to it. So here we are. First post. Let's get into it.

Why the Hefeweizen?

For this batch — my Summer Hefeweizen — the recipe choice wasn't really mine. I was brewing with a coworker for the first time, and when I asked him what he wanted to drink, he didn't hesitate: something light, wheaty, and easy-drinking. A hefeweizen was the obvious answer. This recipe isn't one I've had for a while, it's the "German Hefeqeizen" kit from morebeer.com. It's a straightforward grain bill — six pounds of white wheat, four pounds of two-row, and I decided to add a pound of light brown sugar for a little extra fermentability. Hop-wise, it's restrained at just half an ounce of Northern Brewer, targeting around 12 IBU. The yeast does the heavy lifting in this style: Lallemand's Munich Classic, a dry yeast that throws the classic banana and clove phenolics you want in a German wheat beer. The recipe targets for OG of 1.035 and we achieved 1.034 before adding the brown sugar, which shot it up pto 1.053. For a 6.5-liter batch — a sessionable, refreshing beer that's perfect for warm weather. It was also a great recipe to brew with someone new. Hefeweizens are forgiving and fun. There's no complicated hop schedule, no fussy water chemistry to obsess over. You mash, you boil, you pitch, and you let the yeast do its thing. Or at least, that's the plan.

The Mash: When the Weather Fights Back

Let me set the scene. We were brewing outside, which I usually enjoy — fresh air, good company, a few beers from previous batches to keep morale high. I nailed my strike temperature at 162°F, calculated to settle the mash right in the sweet spot for this style. And for about five minutes, it looked perfect. Then the cold started winning. It was one of those days where the ambient temperature just saps heat out of everything. The mash temperature started dropping almost immediately, and despite my best efforts — insulating the kettle, closing lids, hovering anxiously with a thermometer — it kept sliding. And sliding. By the time I realized how bad it had gotten, the mash had plummeted all the way down to 138°F at minute 70 (I was planning to go 90 minutes when I saw it reach 146°F). For those who aren't deep into brewing science, here's why that matters. Mash temperature controls which enzymes are most active in converting starches to sugars. Around 148–154°F, you get a good balance of beta-amylase (which produces simple, highly fermentable sugars) and alpha-amylase (which produces more complex, less fermentable sugars that give body and sweetness). Drop below that range, and beta-amylase is still working, but you're not getting efficient overall conversion. Drop to 138°F and you're essentially in no-man's-land — enzyme activity slows dramatically, and you're leaving a lot of potential extract behind in the grain. This is where having AI in my brewing terminal paid off. I pulled up my assistant and described the situation, and it confirmed what I was hoping: I could reheat the mash directly, as long as I stirred constantly to avoid scorching the grain and creating hot spots. So that's exactly what I did. I put the kettle back on the burner, grabbed my mash paddle, and stirred like my beer depended on it — because it did. I brought the mash back up to 152°F and held it there for about twenty minutes. Was it ideal? Absolutely not. A stable, consistent mash at a single temperature for sixty minutes is always the goal. But brewing is as much about problem-solving as it is about process, and I'm confident the reheat salvaged a decent conversion. The wort tasted sweet — a good sign that the enzymes had done enough work despite the turbulence. I don't do the iodine test, but if this happens again, I may have to start.

The Boil and Beyond

From there, the rest of the brew day was mercifully uneventful. The boil went smoothly, the single half-ounce of Northern Brewer went in on schedule, and the light brown sugar dissolved in without any drama. One thing I love about brewing hefeweizens is how short and uncomplicated the boil feels compared to something like my West Coast IPA, where I'm juggling multiple hop additions across boil, whirlpool, and dry hop stages. This was just... peaceful. We chilled the wort, transferred to the fermenter, and pitched two packets of the Lallemand Munich Classic. OG came in at 1.053 after adding the brown sugar (it was 1.034 before giving it the boost)— the kit says to expect an ABV of 4.5%, but I wanted higher which is why I added the extra fermentables, so with this OG I felt I was dead on target, which honestly surprised me given the mash adventure. I'll take it.

Currently Fermenting

As of right now, the batch is bubbling away happily. Fermentation kicked off within about twelve hours of pitching, and boy the weren't kidding when the kit said it was an aggressive fermentation, it was spewing out the top and I had to change the airlock three times! The fermenter smells like banana bread — exactly what you want from a hefeweizen fermentation. The Munich Classic yeast is doing its job. I don't have a final gravity reading yet, so the jury's still out on whether that mash temperature rollercoaster affected fermentability. My concern is that the time spent below 148°F and the abbreviated rest at 152°F may have shifted the sugar profile in unpredictable ways. If the FG comes in higher than the 1.009 target, I'll know the conversion leaned toward more complex, less fermentable sugars — meaning a slightly sweeter, fuller beer than intended. If it lands on target or even drops below, then the extended time in beta-amylase range at the low end may have actually produced a more fermentable wort than usual. Either way, it'll be beer. And probably good beer.

What I'd Do Differently

The fix is obvious: better insulation. I've brewed outside plenty of times, but I usually do it in warmer weather. For a cold-day brew, I need to either wrap the mash tun properly, use a cooler-based system instead of direct kettle mashing, or just plan for a higher strike temperature to account for the heat loss. Lesson learned — or rather, lesson re-learned, because I'm sure I've made this mistake before and just never wrote it down. Which, honestly, is the whole point of starting this blog.

Why I Brew

My coworker asked me something toward the end of the day that stuck with me. We were cleaning up, and he said, "Is it always this much work?" And I laughed, because yes — it is. It's a full afternoon of heating, measuring, stirring, waiting, problem-solving, and scrubbing. You can buy a six-pack of a perfectly good hefeweizen for twelve bucks. But that's not really the point, is it? Nine years in, what keeps me coming back isn't the beer itself — though the beer is great. It's the process. It's the fact that every brew day teaches you something, even when you've done it dozens of times. It's diagnosing a crashing mash temp and figuring out a fix on the fly. It's watching someone new to brewing see wort come together for the first time and realize that they made that. It's the satisfaction of pouring a glass of something that didn't exist a few weeks ago and knowing every decision that went into it. I've brewed IPAs that I'd genuinely stack against commercial examples. And now I've got a hefeweizen fermenting that carries the story of a cold day, a beginner's curiosity, and a save that almost wasn't. That's why I brew. And now, finally, that's why I write. --- This batch is still fermenting — I'll update with final gravity, tasting notes, and a rating once it's carbonated and in the glass. Follow along for future posts on my other recipes, brewing tips, and whatever goes wrong next. Something always does.