Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

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Razzerman

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by Razzerman » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:03 pm

Hey again,

My second attempt has been fermenting away fairly vigourously all week (still going now, 1 bubble every 20secs or so), so not going to try bottling yet. Tapped a bit off to have a taste / look. SG is 1.010; very cloudy / opaque; very pale in colur. Tastes...well, hard to describe ;) not right, that's a starter. Has a noticeable after taste. Harsh / astringent - not very pleasant. Very similar taste with the first attempt that went wrong. At least I've got some consistency ;)

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

dave-o

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by dave-o » Fri Mar 25, 2011 5:37 pm

Strange... What's your water treatment? There's nothing in the recipe that would give astringency.

Razzerman

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by Razzerman » Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:09 pm

Ayup dave-o,

Yeah, being a sad git I've checked the water report - here's a bit of it:

"HATFIELD 2004 (3804203) WATER SUPPLY ZONE.
COMMENTARY ON WATER QUALITY
The water supplied to the zone is classified as being hard water, which is borehole derived. As we have a grid system in place whereby we can
move water around the Yorkshire region as required, occasionally the hardness of your water may vary.
No fluoride is added to the water. Any fluoride that is there is naturally occurring.
Samples taken in the period showed that the water complied in all respects with the prescribed standards."

I filter all the water I use for brewing through two water filters too.

I'm using a grain bag (might upgrade to a large piece of muslin as per your suggestion) - what should I be doing with the 'first runnings'?

Thanks,

Ray

dave-o

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by dave-o » Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:46 pm

Razzerman wrote:I'm using a grain bag (might upgrade to a large piece of muslin as per your suggestion)
Voile, not muslin.

Razzerman wrote:what should I be doing with the 'first runnings'?
How do you mean?

Razzerman

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by Razzerman » Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:30 pm

Oops - yeah, voile - that's the stuff.

Well, I've been putting the first couple of litres back into the mash, mainly because the colour was very milky - bit like Robinsons barley water. Do I need to bother doing this?

Side story - I bottled about 6l from my first attempt (which I thought was total disaster), just for posterity. Anyhow, tried some last night (about 5 weeks old) and the colour and head formation are bang on. Looks really good. Tastes a little all over the place, but at least it's drinkable. I use the wife as a taste tester, and she was surprised how much it had changed. Guess I need more patience.

The second batch has been fermenting for 11 days now - I'm going to transfer to another FV and leave it till Friday to bottle. Looking forward to seeing how this un turns out.

Cheers,

Ray

P.S. I've done a 'Stoegaarden' logo, if you're interested. I'll post it up tomorrow sometime.

stee41

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by stee41 » Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:48 pm

after a recipe like this for the Mrs, but would it work with strawberries?

:D

dave-o

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by dave-o » Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:06 am

Razzerman wrote:P.S. I've done a 'Stoegaarden' logo, if you're interested. I'll post it up tomorrow sometime.
Sure. Is yours also brewed in a garden in 'stow then?
stee41 wrote:after a recipe like this for the Mrs, but would it work with strawberries?

It could do, but fruit beers are a little of a headache. You need a hell of a lot of fruit to get any noticable fruit flavour - perhaps 2-4 kilos in a 5 gallon brew. You'd brew the beer as normal, under-gravity (unless you want a killer - the fruit will be boosting the gravity a lot) and under batch size (you'll be adding lots of volume with fruit and boil water. After the fermentation has died down, add the fruit to a large pan, add a litre or so of water and simmer it down to mush. Cool this and add it to the fermenter. Be prepared for the fermentation to go crazy and there to be lots of gunk on the bottom of the FV.

The easier way would be to buy strawberry syrup (perhaps that French stuff i can never remember the name of) and use that instead, although that does kind of go against the concept of all-grain (i.e. this procedure is more like extract brewing).

Razzerman

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by Razzerman » Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:15 am

Nah, but I've been messing with the hoegaarden logo for my signature.

Not sure how to submit the piccy though :(

Here goes nowt

[img]stoe.jpg[/img]

stee41

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by stee41 » Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:35 am

Thanks for that Dave-o seems a bit of a fart on then dont it! oh well, she will have to buy her own! bhahahaha! :twisted:

boingy

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by boingy » Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:50 am

I've never brewed with strawberries but we have been know to purée fresh strawberries for use in cocktails (Strawberry Daiquiri anyone?). It's surprising how much strawberry flavour you lose just in puréeing them. I think they are just a difficult fruit.

Raspberries are easier to get flavour from and Dave mentioning fruit syrups brought to mind this thread about a cheap raspberry drink:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=37444

Might be worth an experiment...

dave-o

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by dave-o » Thu Mar 31, 2011 11:19 am

Razzerman wrote: Image

Upload it to a free image hosting site like tinypic, copy the URL and use that in place of the stoe.jpg in the image tag that you've used.
stee41 wrote:Thanks for that Dave-o seems a bit of a fart on then dont it! oh well, she will have to buy her own! bhahahaha! :twisted:
Honestly i think the route of least hassle is just to brew a nice Wit and then add a shot of this (or similar) to your wife's glass - this gives you control of how much strawberry flavour you're using and saves you potentially messing up a whole batch! It's not like this is a bad thing to do anyway. Many bars in germany offer you a shot of fruit syrup in a weissbier.

Image

Razzerman

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by Razzerman » Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:31 pm

Thanks dave-o - got my sig sorted at least ;)

Hope this one works...

Image

hank

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by hank » Thu Mar 31, 2011 11:52 pm

I used this recipe for my first ever AG brew, I did use slightly less oats and curacao orange peel instead though.
I think I will call my version Gaardenhoe as just about everything that could have gone wrong with it did. I mashed in with too much water, I then started heating my sparge water only to run out of gas, so I had to rush out and get some more. Eventually I got back and started sparging, at this point it had been mashing for about 2 hours at 50c, the mash was a bit mushy by then and it was a real slow run off and I decided to stop and boil what I had after many attempts to get it to run faster. Anyway in the end post boil I had 20L @ 1050 which I was chuffed about considering how bad it went. It was however alot darker than I expected. I pitched my yeast and let it ferment for 11 days and now I have transferred it to a secondary, I have tasted it and took a reading which came out at 1012. It tasted great and randomly it has become alot lighter post fermentation :D

It just goes to show that you can make mistakes and still get a good beer out of it. I will see what it is like in a few weeks!

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BeerBarron
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Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by BeerBarron » Sat Apr 02, 2011 10:44 am

hi guys, been lurking on the forum for a while and have just started into the dark side of all grain.

I had a go at this recipe last night (ag #3) and ended up with 20l @ 1060. can i add some cooled boiled water to the fv to get the desired gravity to 1041 and around the 23l mark. Also, when i aerate and throw the yeast on do i put the oranges back in? Also found that its fairly dark in colour, will this lighten over time?

Hope this turns out well as its one to keep the missus happy so i can justify ordering some cornies :D

got to run to maplins for a few bits to get the fermenting fridge sorted :D

cheers for the help

tom
"The only dangerous amount of alcohol is none"

drinking: hoegaarden-ish
Conditioning: 4 shades of stout
next up: lager,pale ale

hank

Re: Cheap'n'Easy Light Wit (Hoegaarden-ish)

Post by hank » Sat Apr 02, 2011 9:58 pm

BeerBarron wrote:hi guys, been lurking on the forum for a while and have just started into the dark side of all grain.

I had a go at this recipe last night (ag #3) and ended up with 20l @ 1060. can i add some cooled boiled water to the fv to get the desired gravity to 1041 and around the 23l mark. Also, when i aerate and throw the yeast on do i put the oranges back in? Also found that its fairly dark in colour, will this lighten over time?

Hope this turns out well as its one to keep the missus happy so i can justify ordering some cornies :D

got to run to maplins for a few bits to get the fermenting fridge sorted :D

cheers for the help

tom
Yes topping up the FV with cooled boiled water should be fine.
I didn't put any oranges in the FV for mine but it seems others have.
My beer was really quite dark as well and it does seem to have got lighter now the yeast has done its work.
I bottled & barrelled mine tonight and it has now reach a FG of 1010 making it 5.2% ABV

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