Happy Jack Hefe 5-Gallon Beer Making Ingredient kit

Happy Jack Hefe — 5 Gallon Kit

Happy Jack, Arizona sits in the ponderosa pine forest southeast of Flagstaff, a quiet, lightly populated spot with an outsized name. How it got that name depends on who you ask. The most popular local legend says it was named for a particularly cheerful lumberjack who worked the Southwest Lumber Mills there in the 1940s — a happy-go-lucky character memorable enough to leave his nickname on the map. Another story traces the name through a Coconino National Forest supervisor who borrowed it from a location in Wyoming, which was itself named after a notorious frontier bandit.

A cheerful lumberjack or a frontier outlaw. Either way it’s a good name for a Hefeweizen.

Hefeweizen is one of brewing’s most distinctive and most joyful styles — the kind of beer that makes a hot sunny day better and a cool evening more interesting. This version uses a blend of wheat and barley malt extract and a traditional German Hefeweizen yeast that produces the style’s signature banana and clove character. No specialty grains needed — the yeast does the heavy lifting here.

This is one of two kits where we use a traditional style-specific yeast rather than Kveik. The banana and clove flavors that define a Hefeweizen come entirely from the yeast — substitute it and you have a different beer entirely. We use a Hefeweizen yeast with a fermentation temperature range of 59-77°F. Brew it at the warmer end of that range for more banana character, cooler for more clove.

The Dry Malt Difference
Our kits are made exclusively with dry malt extract. It’s more expensive than liquid malt extract but it doesn’t darken or pick up off flavors with age and temperature the way liquid extract does. Fresher ingredients, truer flavors — that’s why we’ve always used it and always will.

Color: Straw
Body: Medium
Bitterness: Low
Hop Aroma and Flavor: Low
Alcohol: 4.8% ABV
IBU: 12

Kit includes: Dry malt extract blend, specialty grains, hops, dry yeast, muslin grain bag, priming sugar, bottle caps and step-by-step instructions.

To brew this kit you’ll need: A 5-gallon or larger brew pot, a 6.5-gallon or larger fermenter with airlock, siphoning and bottling equipment, and about 53 clean bottles. A kitchen scale is helpful too.