Brewday 22/03/08 - Witbier

[mysterio]

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)

[ECR]

Hope it goes well

[prodigal2]

Looks great there Mysterio

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

[mysterio]

Just for a nice thick mouthfeel P2, think Hoegaarden.

[oblivious]

oats where supposed to be common with wits,


Looks very interesting, hope it goes well

[subsub]

think Hoegaarden.

Mmmmm sounds great myst good luck

[Horden Hillbilly]

Have a good brewday mysterio, enjoy it!

[delboy]

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

[johnh]

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.

[mysterio]

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: