Dim Wit Summer Strong Ale
 

This has been in primary for 5 days and its still bubbling strong at 70 degrees. I'm not sure what I did in BeerSmith but it whacked my numbers up real bad, if anyone has any input as to my estimated FG, SRM or IBUs I'd appreciate it. I used inverted sugar that I made and it came out amber, and Beer Smith basically told me the brew would be black, which it's not. It's a nice orangish color probably around a 7 or so? I was shooting for a ABV around 9 or so.

3 lbs Extra light DME
2 lbs Wheat DME
1 lbs Belgium Pilsner
1 lbs Vienna Malt
1 lbs Flaked Wheat
1 lbs Torrified Wheat
1 lbs White Wheat
2 oz Amarillo 9.3% (1oz 60 min, .5 oz 45 min, .5 oz 15 min)
1 oz Amarillo 8.2% (.5 oz 5 min) .5 oz for dryhopping
1 large Pummelo grapefruit zest
1oz sweet orange dried zest
1.5 Tbls crushed coriander
2.5 lbs amber colored homemade invert sugar candi
1 Whirlfloc tablet
2 tsp yeast nutrient
Wyeast 3944

Mashed all grains in about 1.5 gal of water at 122 for 20 minutes

Turned heat up to 150 for 60 minutes and rinsed with about 1 quart of water at 160 degrees

Added additional water to make about a 4 gal boil, added about 1/2lb of wheat DME and started the boil.

Hop schedule listed above.

15 minutes remaining added 3lb of light DME, yeast nutrient, whirlfloc

10 minutes remaining added 1lb of wheat DME

5 minutes remaining added 1.5 Tbl coriander, 2.5 lb candi sugar, 1oz orange peel, pummelo zest

Couldn't get it cooled down enough, so i put a cap on it for overnight and pitched the yeast the next night. I did shake the crap out of it every few hours to try to aerate as much as possible. The plan is to ferment for 3 weeks and then check the citrus level and hops level to determine if I'll get more grapefruit zest or dry hop.

So far it smells pretty good bubbling in the fermenter box.

--Update: 11 Days in Primary and still bubbling a little bit, banana smell is much lighter.

--Further Update: About 4 weeks in primary and I just added zest and juice from a medium size grapefruit soaked in a little Absolut Mandarin to sanitize, still in primary. Gravity was 1.022 and that puts it at around 9% ABV. The taste was reallly good, maybe a little heavy on the orange peel from kettle (1oz). I'll let it sit in primary for another week in case I get a little more fermentation. The color came out very light, not like BeerSmith Calculated. A little heat and sweet from ABV but hopefully high carb will help that.

Turned out really good, but definitely don't want to have too many of these. The combination of Amarillo, fruit zests, and grain bill made for a strong Wit type beer with a little kick. I screwed up the carbonation on it after tapping the keg, but other than that I'm pretty pleased with it. Maybe a little too sweet of a finish and could have had a lighter body, but with 9.5% ABV, that might be hard to do?

This sounds like a great beer. I know it's been quite some time, but any suggestions if I were to brew this? Thanks for the recipe!

It turned out really well, but it did have a little sweetness to it, but maybe you could dry it out by adding a flaked rice or sugar or just lowering the ABV. If I wouldn't have screwed up the tap situation (forgot it and had to pour out of pitchers from siphon hose, and lost some major carbonation due to this) I think the higher carbonation would have balanced the sweetness. People really liked it, but it had a creeper buzz and before I knew it people were tripping over bean bag boards and throwing bacci balls like shot-puts.
Hope it turns out well if you try it.