My wife and I brewed her first brew three weeks ago, a double decoction hefeweizen, and all went well on the brew day except that one of the hop bags got pinned to the bottom of the kettle for the last 15 minutes of the boild and burned up. So we have 5 gallons of a pretty good hefeweizen with an aftertaste somewhere between camp fire and ashtray. que sera. It's my first dumper.
Trying to salvage something from this experience we tasted, ignoring the nasty as best we could, and her critique is that she would like more flavour. Without being able to really finely analyze the beer cause it's too gross to have more than a couple of sips that is really the best we can do. so I figure I will try to bump up as much flavour as I can through yeast/ferm temp manipulations to start with and then, if still not right, start messing with the grain bill and hops.
the recipe was a simple one
60% weyermann malted wheat
40% weyermann pils
16 IBU of hallertaur at 60 minutes
111* acid rest
130* protein rest
144 beta
150 alpha (missed this temp a little should have been 155)
160 (missed this temp should have been 168) mashout
fermented cool (don't have a temp controller so just use a timer on the fridge and it hovered around 60 for the first three days then the weather cooled a little so dropped down to 54 for a week or so and finally down to 50 for the last day or two.
WLP380 in 1 qt starter
How do I do this?
I am thinking
1) make a slightly smaller starter, but I am hesitant to do this as I don't want a banana bomb
2) ferment a little warmer (leaning towards this)
3) just leave it alone and try to hit my temps better.
Thoughts?