Belgian/blonde/hefeweisse beers

I might be wrong and if I am believe me I want to know, I think it's the yeast that gives the turbid or cloudy appearance as well as the banana flavor. That flavor is what is meant by "estery" and is caused by higher fermentation temps?

 

The flavors you mentioned are generally characteristic of the yeast strains, while the haze is the result of different wheats and the beer being unfiltered.

That's my answer until patt1ro (spelling? I forget) or jesskidden come on here and tell me I'm wrong.

Shouldn't be too long.

 

Basically fruity tasting byproducts of the yeast. Some yeasts create a lot of banana like esters. Belgian and German wheat strains tend to produce a lot of banana flavors.
Wheat can make a beer cloudy. Hefeweizens are intentionally cloudy as the yeast is left mixed in the beer.

 

Well I will take a stab at this but I can only hope I am right. Esters are chemicals made by the yeast and those can include, banana, vanilla, and bubblegum. I think? The cloudiness comes from the fact that they are unfiltered and has yeast as sediment at the bottom of the bottle. So you pour it out with the rest of the beer and that gives the turbid appearance. If you pour it right you pour it to almost the bottom, then swirl or roll the bottle to pick up all the remaining yeast and then dump it into the glass like a little bomb of yeasty goodness.

 

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

 

As others have said, the banana flavors in these beers come primarily from the yeast. The cloudiness is also due to the yeast as the hefe strains are very low flocculators (they stay in suspension longer).

 

hefe means yeast in german

 

Esters are organic compounds that are byproducts of certain yeast strains found in certain wheat beers. Basically it's a carbon attached to a main carbon chain, a double bond with an oxygen atom, and a then attached to another carbon chain via another oxygen atom (ether, as they call it). Look it up on Wikipedia if you like...

The cloudiness generally comes from wheat proteins and residual yeast (which havent been filtered out) that cannot full dissolve into water, thus they precipitate, causing "cloudiness".

 

not a stout, but there is a dunkelweizen which is basically the same beer brewed with darker malts. Its delish!

 

Weyerbacher Tiny and Allagash Black come immediately to mind, but I am sure there are others.

 

dunkelweizen

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/91

 

Yeast.

 

Yeast is everything. In my early days of homebrewing Hefe-Weizen I couldn't believe how the exact same recipe changed so much in results when I paid up for the nice Whitelabs yeast. Heaven.

 

So if I use some Belgian yeast when I make bread, can I create a pseudo banana bread?

 

Yeast and yeast. Typical bottle conditioning performs cloudy rich texture, and to the best of my knowledge, certain German (Belgian) yeast strains provide the signature bananaish/tropical stuff so highly prized and reviled. I've always thought that great German wheat beers were the best way to make everyone drink beer earlier in the day. Wit ales also.

 

Yeast for brewing =/= yeast for baking. I'm quite sure that the high baking temps wouldn't be so good for baking. A different way to do it would probably be to find a recipe that requires beer, then use a Hefe or Dunkel or something. Or, in your case, you could pick a Belgian style.