Right on Hoover Hefeweizen

[This recipe is featured in the January/February 2018 issue of Zymurgy magazine.] Make your yeast starter 2–3 days ahead of time. In a large kitchen pot (not your brew pot), heat 2 gallons (8 L) of water to 159° F (71° C). Place crushed malts in a nylon steeping bag and steep them in this water for 60 minutes. Hold temperature as close to 148° F (65° C) as you can reasonably manage over this period. (This is a small mash.) Stir occasionally. Additionally, heat 1 gallon (4 L) of water to 170° F (77° C) in a small pot. And finally, heat 1 gallon (4 L) of water to a boil in your brew pot. When the mash is over, transfer the grain bag to a 3-gallon (11-L) beverage cooler. (The kind with a spigot for dispensing beverages.) Pour the wort from the small mash gently into the cooler. Recirculate the wort by drawing off one or two cups into a measuring cup (or similar) and returning this wort to the top of the cooler. Repeat until at least 8 cups have been recirculated. Begin running off wort by collecting 1–2 cups of wort from cooler and transferring it to the brew pot. After each transfer, add an equal volume of water to the cooler from the pot of 170° F (77° C) water. Once this water (the sparge water) runs out, simply empty the cooler by continually drawing off 1 to 2 cups and moving it to the brew pot. When you are finished collecting wort from the cooler, dissolve roughly half of the malt extract in the brew pot and resume boiling. Boil the wort for 75 minutes, adding hops with 60 minutes the boil. Do not let volume dip below 3 gallons (11 L) during boil. Top up with boiling water, if needed, to avoid this. Stir in the remaining malt extract during the final 10 minutes of the boil. When the boil is finished, cool the wort to 54° F (12° C), or as cool as you can get it with a reasonable effort. Transfer to a sanitized bucket fermenter and top up to 5 gallons (19 L) with cool water. Aerate the wort and pitch the sediment from the yeast starter. Ferment, allowing the temperature to rise to 64° F (18° C). Take the lid off the bucket for the 1 to 2 days when the fermentation is at it’s most vigorous. Reseal the bucket and affix the airlock, as you normally would, after this period. When fermentation is over, prime beer with corn sugar in bottling bucket. If using standard beer bottles, prime for 3 volumes (6 g/L) of CO₂ using 6.5 oz. (180 g) of corn sugar. If you are using heavy wheat beer bottles, prime for 4 volumes (8 g/L) of CO₂ using 9.5 oz. (270 g) of corn sugar. Store bottles somewhere warm for two weeks. Check for carbonation, then move beer to cold storage.