How much lime in a hefeweizen?

Beer Recipes
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How much lime is OK, enough in a 5 gallon hefeweizen? I ask as a few years ago, while visiting a local brewery, I drank one of their lime hefe’s. Delicious. Yes, I asked and got blank stares in return.

Experimenting at home. Pour myself a 12 ounce hefe. Cut 3 slices from a cleaned, fresh lime and put into glass. Hmm… nothing. Really didn’t make any difference.

Test 2. Pour myself another 16 ounce hefe. Cut an additional 3 slices from the same cleaned, fresh lime and put into glass. This time I still have the 3 slices from the 1st hefe and 3 new additional slices in the 2nd hefe. Still no, apparent, difference.

I realize, I’ll not be able to continue drinking 12 ounces of hefe while keeping coherent notes. That’s why I’m asking others for their input on adding lime to a hefe.

Thanks.

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Please excuse my question, but are you squeezing the lime slices as you put them in? If not, I don’t think you’ll get much lime character.

Depending on the size of lime (assuming you have the standard grocery store lime, versus a key lime or something right off the tree), I would say a quarter of a lime squeezed should do the trick for a 12 oz. glass of beer.

A quick internet search says 1 lime is about 1 oz. of lime juice. So, that’s 0.25 oz of lime juice per 12 oz. serving. 5 gallons is 640 fluid ounces (around 54 12-oz. servings, roughly). So…you’d want the juice from around 12 to 13 limes, at least in my thought experiment.

My calculations are very much back of the envelope. Depending on what you’re looking for, you might juice a bunch of limes or buy lime juice, or use a product like TrueLime. I used the latter in a recent Catharina Sour, and the enhancement was nice.

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I used a long spoon, aka ice tea spoon, to crush the lime slices in the glass and then, with the spoon stired.

Thanks for the input, reply. I’m currently using whole limes, cut into slices, as we just purchased a bag at BJs.

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Cool! Yeah, I might suggest outright juicing them and adding the juice to taste.

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Do you think they might be adding zest in the fermenter, instead of juice?

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For a 5 gallon brew I use 17gr of crystalized lime from Northern Brewer. Could probably get away with 15gr but they sell in 17 or 18gr packets.

I used this in a Margarita Lime Gose. Taste like a Margarita

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Around 99% of the flavor from limes comes from the oils in the zest of the outer peel, not the juice. Forget about juice, and just grate the outer green part (don’t dig into the white pith) from a handful of limes, cover this lime zest with a few ounces of vodka, and let the vodka “tincture” soak overnight. Next day, add your flavored vodka tincture to your beer (without the solid zest portion), package and carbonate the beer as normal, and enjoy. THAT’s the way to do it. I’ve done it. Works very nicely.

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Hmm… hadn’t thought about zest vs juice. Thanks.

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Appreciate all the replies/input.

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I’ll second the thoughts on zest! (and would agree)

If you want that bit of acid, though, I would still add at least some juice.

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Never thought of adding lemon or lime to a wheat beer, but we homebrewers can brew what we like… What we did was using lemony hops…(Cascade 20 years ago… But i rather like the peppery notes from the yeast, when lightly underpitching)

The idea of using zests makes sense. (I use zests in cooking, when i want the aroma and juice, when i want the acidity.)