Home Brew Forum

Brewing this up tomorrow. I know delboy has some of the wit ale yeast so he'll be interested. Hopefully have some photos up, too.

I split the WLP400 which is the Hoegaarden yeast I believe, as per the Jim method. I tasted some of the starter 'beer' today while making the starter for tomorrows beer and it definately has a wheat beer taste to it, slightly phenolic and spicy.

The spicing in this will be : 43g of fresh citrus zest (oranges and mandarins), 11g of crushed coriander seed & 1g of dry chamomile flowers from a teabag, in that last couple of minutes of the boil. I am slightly worried about that amount of fresh citrus zest, I might tone it down.

This will be fermented at 20C and raised to 22C towards the end of fermentation.

Witbier

Type: All Grain
21/03/2008
Batch Size: 6.00 gal (US)
Boil Size: 6.87 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
2.49 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 46.46 %
2.26 kg Wheat, Flaked (3.2 EBC) Grain 42.16 %
0.51 kg Oats, Flaked (2.0 EBC) Grain 9.51 %
0.10 kg Munich Malt (17.7 EBC) Grain 1.87 %
35.00 gm Hallertauer (NZ) [7.00 %] (60 min) Hops 23.6 IBU
1 Pkgs Belgian Wit Ale (White Labs #WLP400) Yeast-Wheat

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.050 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.03 %
Bitterness: 23.6 IBU
Est Color: 7.2 EBC

Mash Profile

Double Infusion, Full Body Step Time Name Description Step Temp
15 min Protein Rest Add 10.08 L of water at 55.6 C 50.0 C
60 min Saccrification Add 8.95 L of water at 92.4 C 68.0 C

(Recipe is tweaked from Brewing Classic Styles)

Hope it goes well

Looks great there Mysterio

Out of intrest what are the oats in the grist for?
And a double infussion mash, good luck

Just for a nice thick mouthfeel P2, think Hoegaarden.

oats where supposed to be common with wits,


Looks very interesting, hope it goes well

mysterio wrote: think Hoegaarden.

Mmmmm sounds great myst good luck

Have a good brewday mysterio, enjoy it!

Hope it goes well mysterio, as you said i'll be watching this one closely.

Might even make a starter for my wit yeast tonight

I did this recipe not so long ago and it turned out really tasty. Even SWMBO likes it (which was one of the reasons for doing it). I too was tempted to cut down the zest as it seems a lot but I didn't and in fact it's not overwhelming. The chamomile gives it a nice floral background too. The only difference I made was that I cheated and used Brewferm Blanche dried yeast.
The only disappointment was head retention. After forming a nice head on pouring it disappears completely within minutes. Looking back at my notes i hit the mash temps bang on so I'm not sure what to put it down to. I'd be interested in knowing how it turns out for you.

I'm glad it turned out well John, I got fed up with the orange zesting eventually, ended up with around 20 grams. We'll see how it turns out.

I batch sparged and it took a while to lauter this as you might expect, the mash was a gelatinous mass as you can see from the photo. I used 500g of oat husks to help things along, i'd probably double that next time. It also took me between 15-20 minutes to bring the mash temp up, so I hope that doesn't have too bad an effect. I used a mixture of direct heat and boiling water infusions. It's also probably wise to do a thinner mash than you're used to because of all the oats and wheat, I went with 2.8L/kg which worked out well. Everything else went smoothly.

Here's the yeast which I made a starter with a few weeks ago and split into several small bottles, then made another starter with. It's a great method and means you always have plenty of healthy yeast on hand. I usually give the starter beer a taste to check if it's infected - this was so good I drank the whole thing:



Spices, from left to right: crushed coriander, chamomile and fresh citrus zest:



Mash:



Fermentation, about 20 hours from pitching: