Beer Forum

I recently brewed my tried and true Weizen recipe. The plan was to brew 11 gallons and ferment with a large, healthy 2L starter of WLP300. However, due to user error I only ended up with about 7 gallons of wort. My second error, I believe, was deciding to still pitch the entire starter. Fermentation was fast and vigorous. After two weeks of rest in the fermenter I kegged the beer and discovered my problem...

The banana and clove flavors the style is known for are WAY over the top. So intense I can hardly tell what the base beer is. It's drinkable-ish, but I'm not comfortable sharing it with friends (especially since they know how good it usually is). I let it age a bit, and this seems to have helped a little. After a couple weeks in the keg it's slightly toned down.

I've come up with only two other options to "fix" it.
1) Brew another batch of the same wort and ferment it with WLP320 to get a more neutral beer and then blend them.
2) Suck it up and drink it as is while making extensive notes about paying attention on brew day.

Time for your advice...
What do you think I should do? Any other options you guys can come up with?

Thanks

Do you control your fermentation temp?

How long did you let the starter go?

Did you step up to 2L or go straight from the vial to 2L?

That shouldn't have been too much yeast for 7 gallons so I'm not convinced that overpitching is the issue.

Fermentation is controlled...using a small fridge with a Ranco temp controller. It was locked at 67F the entire two weeks.

The starter went about 2 days at room temp...65F-70F. Started with 1 vial into about 1.7 L, then dumped a second vial in at the start of my brew day.

Without running the numbers on Mr Malty's calculator, that sounds about right -- a 2L starter for a 5 gallon batch, adding the second vial should not be excessive.

Also -- underpitching is more likely to increase those flavors than overpitching ..... the stress on the yeast will increase those flavors.

How did you end up with only 7 gallons? Was your gravity significantly higher .... ie mashed for 11 gallons but only collected 7? A much higher gravity wort could stress the yeast ........

And yes, I think your two options are the only ones ......

I tried to get fancy with my BIAB setup. Using a second vessel I attempted to do a more traditional water:grain mash, then add the rest of the water and recirc until I hit my numbers. A quasi-Brutus 2.0 idea. I only had a small amount of water in my kettle that I used as a poor mans RIMS. When I saw the gravity I needed I pulled the grains and started boiling...it was right after I dumped the grain that I realized I never topped off the kettle and was 5 gallons low. Gravity was as planned, just didn't have the volume I planned.