AG #70 WFH Wit

[BrewerBen]

Yesterday i was able to get a working from home day so got a beer on at the same time. I love a belgian wit and it always dissapears quickly so with 3 empty kegs decided to do a big 50L batch of it.

Belgian Wit
Target Gravity: 1.048
Batch size: 50L
Bitterness:14.7 IBU

Grains
5000g Dingemans Pilsen
5000g Flaked wheat
400g Acid malt
400g Oats
400g oat husks

Water Additions
45ml CRS
Camden tablet
2g Calcium Chloride

Mash Schedule
Mash in 62L @ 38C
Step 1: 15 mins @52C
Step 2: 35 mins @63C
step 3: 35 mins @73C
step 4: 10 mins @78C

Hop Schedule
90 Min
Hallertauer Mittelfrueh 2.9% - 14.7 IBU
15min
50g coriander seeds
100g bitter orange peel

Yeast
WLP400
Fement @ 22C


Nice pile of ingredients from the malt miller:


Yeast ready to get working. I did a stepped starter starting with 1L and then 4L. This yeast just does not want to settle so i didnt bother decanting any for fear of losing too much yeast.
I had a taste of the starter and was pretty tasty and even though it was just spray malt had a nice wit flavour to it. I also saved 3 500ml bottles of it for future use.


Funneling it into the malt pipe with the lid:


Mash having been given a good stir:


This would be the normal amount of water i'd do but i'm not sparging again so i then topped it up


With the sparge water added, as much as i dare:
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Mash all done and a nice clear pale wort:


Wheelbarrow of spent grains for the compost:


And skip to the end... I got a bit flustered juggling work and brewing activities so forgot to take any more pics. I overshot the volume and ended up with 55L of wort at 1.044. Thats a decent efficiency as i was expecting it to be lower due to no sparge large amount of unmalted wheat.


Yeast trying to escape, and thats with a decent amount of space left in the fermenter:


Pretty pleased with the brew day, i do need to sort out my volumes as with the few larger batches i have done i've always overshot the volume despite keeping back some water to take in account the starter volume.
Next up is IPA, i've not brewed many IPA's so the plan is to do a UK style and US style. One of them will be based on Worthington White Shield recipe from Graham Wheelers book and the other will be based on the American IPA recipe from Greg Hughes with Citra and Simcoe. I have WLP13 which is supposed to be the white shield strain for the UK IPA, but i may even use it for the US one as well or US05 dried yeast.

[Rhodesy]

Looks great, I usually mash full volume but have had decent results sparging the past 2 brews however those have been holiday/weekend brews.

Like you have done here I mostly brew when WFH

[chefgage]

Nice looking pile of ingredients at the beginning with the extra additions of salt, pepper and worcestershire sauce. Do they go in the boil?

[BrewerBen]

They are purely optional though, i'd like to say the drink also on the table was a tasty stout but sadly was tesco's diet cola.

When i used this yeast before i found it appeared to get stuck but when i gave it a stir it came straight back out the air lock so on this beer i've been stirring the yeast head back into the beer every 2 days or so and seems to be doing the trick as its down to 1.013. Hopefully it will drop to 1.010 for a nice 4.5% beer. In hindsight i should have brewed a lager rather than a beer that needs a warm fermentation as the heater is only just managing to maintain 22C. I need to improve the insulation.