Home Brew Forum

Had this orginally planned for thursday, but after being over served at the NI match on the wednesday and taking a tumble which made my knee swell up i had to postpone it.
Lots of ice packs and several days later i reckon the knee should be up to the job so better late than never.

3.5 kg MO
2.5 kg Wheat (torrefied)
0.20 kg Oats, Flaked
0.10 kg Biscuit Malt
1 Pkgs Belgian Wit Ale (White Labs #WLP400)/ 1 litre starter on stir plate.

stryrian goldings to 20 IBU at 60 mins.

mash at 66 C for 90 mins

Good luck with it delboy

Hope the knee is OK.

ECR wrote:Good luck with it delboy

Hope the knee is OK.

Ditto, have a good one delboy.

Have a good one, what spices?

That looks to be a reasonably straightforward recipe delboy.

Will the finished product have that characteristic witbeer cloudiness?

I'd be interested to know how this turns out.

mysterio wrote:Have a good one, what spices?

Oh i'll fire in some crushed coriander and a mere supsong of crushed cumin, i'll put some zest in if i manage to make it out to tescos before they close.

Enjoy db

Change of hops went with 35g of first gold 7 % instead of stryrians, thought the orange taste would go well with this.

A teaspoon and a half of crushed coriander, a quarter teaspoon of crushed cumin and the zest of a lemon (it was all i had laying about the house).

A word to the wise, be careful about using cumin in a wit beer recipe even though i only used a quarter of a teaspoon in 5 gallons at the moment its the dominant flavour, ok i only brewed this on sunday but even so you'd expect the hops to figure somewhere in the taste.
Im hoping this one mellows a bit in the cumin department if it does i can however see how it will really help to give the beer that extra something else if that makes sense

Looking forward to future reports on this one

should be interesting so see what you think of the Belgian Wit Ale verses something like T-58

Are these wits better off kegged or bottled? I'd quite like to do one of these next but can't decide wether to bottle or not........

The White Labs wit yeast likes to have a second burst of fermentation after transfering to the keg/secondary in my experience so that is something to bear in mind. It might be worth checking the gravity once fermentation seems to have slowed/stopped and giving it a rouse if it's not quite there yet.

Zainasheff recommends raising the temperature to 22C in the last third of fermentation, which I did - presumably to get a last burst of energy from the yeast.

I've used T-58 several times and I find it makes an authentic tasting Wit although it attenuates a bit too far for my liking. The yeast from White Labs has a much more pronounced 'spicy' flavour.

Cumin should be an interesting addition, although like you say you'd only want it as a background note... otherwise you might end up with curry beer.

Are these wits better off kegged or bottled? I'd quite like to do one of these next but can't decide wether to bottle or not........

I've only ever kegged mine. You'll need a good length of 3/16 line if you are kegging so you can carbonate it well and still get a good pour. Although I brewed my most recent one for my girlfriends birthday so I can't get away with drinking it all myself... suppose i'll have to bottle a few

Just had another taste from the fermenter and im glad to report that the cumin taste has mellowed considerably from the previous tasting (thank goodness ). It seems the initial vigorous fermentation has done its usual job of stripping out aromatic compounds.
Also hop flavour and (to some extent) alcohol is coming to the fore a bit pushing other flavours into the background. The cumin is still there but you'd nearly need to be looking for it, im actually hoping that it stays around this level and doesn't drop off anymore, all in all jobs a good one .

Had another taste test tonight with swmbo and the consensus is that this is going down the sink, its not infected it just have a funny unpleasant taste. This is the second wheat beer i've been very underwhelmed with although i did manage to drink the first one. This time i figure lives to short to drink crappy beer (stole from aleman ). I have a liquid hefe yeast in the fridge that i'll either bin or brew with a 100 % barley recipe since i think its possible its the high proportion of wheat in the grist that i just don't like.