Dry hopping a Belgian Wit?

Last year my buddy and I brewed a Hoegaarden-like recipe from Jamil's July/Aug. 2007 BYO style profile (chamomile, coriander and orange added) , and it was pretty good. The nose was lightly citrusy and had the characteristic "wheatiness". My buddy wants to do it again and to dry hop it this time. It is of out of style to do so "BJCP guidelines hints at low hop flavor and aroma" , but, hell that is kind of what homebrewing is all about-doing things your way. The recipe call for Hallertau in one addition at 60 minutes. I guess if I were to dry hop I would use a small quantitiy of a hallertau or another noble hop like this. Possibly omitting or lessening the spices may help avoid aroma clashes? Anyway, input about this would be great.

Some tettnager might be a better choice.

Thats whats great about homebrewing. You can experiment.

I want to revive this question. I did not add orange or coriander and was considering racking onto fruit or dry hopping in a secondary.

Would dry hopping a Belgian Wit with cascade or centennial be crazy?

WickedLB said:

I want to revive this question. I did not add orange or coriander and was considering racking onto fruit or dry hopping in a secondary.

Would dry hopping a Belgian Wit with cascade or centennial be crazy?

Click to expand...

DH with with cascade would loan a bit of citrusy aroma, which may be what you're after. You could add a bit of allspice or a tad of lemon zest (very small qty) to give it complexity. It shouldn't be a bad beer by any means, just not to BJCP style guidelines.

I'm with you though- homebrewing isn't just about replicating style guidelines; it's about brewing what YOU want to drink.

We're all a little crazy here. If you wanna do it... DO IT!

I have a 1/2 oz of Citra or a 1/2 oz of Cascade on hand that both seem appropriate for the overall taste of the beer (light citrus which will not overwhelm).

Any advice from the peanut gallery on what you would choose for a Belgian Wit? Does a week seem like a reasonable amount of time?

WickedLB said:

I have a 1/2 oz of Citra or a 1/2 oz of Cascade on hand that both seem appropriate for the overall taste of the beer (light citrus which will not overwhelm).

Any advice from the peanut gallery on what you would choose for a Belgian Wit? Does a week seem like a reasonable amount of time?

Click to expand...

Well, since this is purely a matter of preference now, and not style guidelines, I would throw in the .5 oz of Cascade for 5-7 days tops. You don't want grassy flavor from keeping it in too long, but the subtle citrus character might be welcomed. I'm not sure how prevalent it would be with just a half ounce though. You could do 1 oz for 3 days even.

Regardless, do what you want, and let us know how it turns out.

I think my next belgian wit with wlp400 will be dry hopped. I will do lemon zest instead of orange zest and do a small dry hop. I'm intrigued by this as well.

I used wlp400. I just brewed at the end of last week so I am least another week from dry hopping.

Today I sampled and it had already dropped from 1.046 down to 1.012. My tasting impression of the sample was that it was very Hoegaarden like, even without any added fruit or spice. I will report back on my hop choice and results once I make that call.

I have cascade and citra on hand in plentiful amounts. You let me know what you use so I can decide on what I'll use.

I had a wit dry hopped with a generous portion of Amarillo. The apricot and orange notes were very nice in the wit. I might do it if I get around to brewing a wit this summer.

My wit was down to 1.007 today so I threw in 1/2 oz of citra. I only want to add a subtle note from the hops so I plan on bottling wednesday, thurdsay or friday. That should be short enough to draw out the aroma w/o getting a grassy flavor. I'll report on flavor when I bottle. Right now the wit is dry, slightly tart and lemony.

how did the dry hop with citra ever turn out?

overhopped weizens are freaking amazing.

I'm going to bottle tomorrow and report back. The aroma is nice right now so I am optimistic.

It is very early, but upon bottling I wished I had used more than 1/2 oz of Citra (maybe 1 to 1 1/2 oz). The aroma was nice,but a bit deeper in the background than I would have preferred. This particular wit is overall very light so once carbonation sets in it may be perfect. Also, 5 Days was good for not getting grassy notes, but highlighted the citrus notes from the hops.

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to hearing how this one ages.

Beerrific said:

I had a wit dry hopped with a generous portion of Amarillo. The apricot and orange notes were very nice in the wit. I might do it if I get around to brewing a wit this summer.

Click to expand...

Any updates on this? If you did, I'd be curious what you did and how it came out. Here's why. I did a Wit from a kit in a box last month and dry-hopped for 5 days in the secondary with 1 oz Amarillo. At bottling, the sample tasted hella lemony with a strong grassy finish. At two weeks it was as if I dusted the whole house with Lemon Pledge and dry-hopped with the rag I used and some old lawn clippings. At four weeks it was still virtually undrinkable. Even my "Mikey" (we all know one, as in "Give it to Mikey, he'll drink anything) could barely finish his 1/2 pint sampler at brew day for the do-over batch. I got no apricot and no orange, just lemony [gr]ass.

As a noob, I understand I could have botched the batch elsewhere (particularly during the partial mash) but I'm leaning on blaming the hops. It could be the brew is fine and we're just not used to hoppy beers, but something ain't right. Until I figure out what it was, I'm disinclined to dryhop for a while.

Thanks,
Wolfbayte

Wolfbayte said:

Any updates on this? If you did, I'd be curious what you did and how it came out. Here's why. I did a Wit from a kit in a box last month and dry-hopped for 5 days in the secondary with 1 oz Amarillo. At bottling, the sample tasted hella lemony with a strong grassy finish. At two weeks it was as if I dusted the whole house with Lemon Pledge and dry-hopped with the rag I used and some old lawn clippings. At four weeks it was still virtually undrinkable. Even my "Mikey" (we all know one, as in "Give it to Mikey, he'll drink anything) could barely finish his 1/2 pint sampler at brew day for the do-over batch. I got no apricot and no orange, just lemony [gr]ass.

As a noob, I understand I could have botched the batch elsewhere (particularly during the partial mash) but I'm leaning on blaming the hops. It could be the brew is fine and we're just not used to hoppy beers, but something ain't right. Until I figure out what it was, I'm disinclined to dryhop for a while.

Thanks,
Wolfbayte

Click to expand...

I actually ended up doing this with a saison, but it would be equally good in a wit.

Interesting experience. While dry hopping is rumored to cause grassy flavors, those flavors at 5 days seems unlikely to me. I would not say I get any lemon-like flavors from Amarillo...just soft citrus and peachy stone fruit notes.

What temp did you dry hop? Maybe just review your dry hopping process (but really, what can you do wrong). Maybe chalk it up to crappy hops? Where did you get them?

Beerrific said:

I actually ended up doing this with a saison, but it would be equally good in a wit.

Interesting experience. While dry hopping is rumored to cause grassy flavors, those flavors at 5 days seems unlikely to me. I would not say I get any lemon-like flavors from Amarillo...just soft citrus and peachy stone fruit notes.

What temp did you dry hop? Maybe just review your dry hopping process (but really, what can you do wrong). Maybe chalk it up to crappy hops? Where did you get them?

Click to expand...

Temp was 70 in a wet T-Shirt (sounds sexier than a ghetto swamp cooler) cuz we're in Phoenix and I cool the house to 82. Maybe it was bad hops. I got the hops from the LHBS and kept them in the fridge for the two weeks between purcahse and racking into <2>. Also, it could be other issues overpowering the Amarillo flavors which should have been awesome:

1. Rather than lightly "crack" the corriander, my buddy pulverized it with a mallet before we made a "tea bag" with a coffee filter and staples. That may account for the extra Lemon Pledgeness.
2. We didn't pour in the hop pellets loose, but put in a nylon bag which floated on top because my shot glass didn't fit down neck of carboy and I didn't have a clean SS bolt to sink it. Perhaps the floating hops oxidized a bit giving it more grass and less peach.

But it's Homebrew, so we've got replacements going as we speak. Stay tuned. Thanks for your help. Maybe I won't give up on Amarillo yet.

1. Primary - Replacement Wit - no dry hop
2. secondary - Nada
3. Bottle Conditioning - All Extract Hef @ 1 day
4. Bottle Conditioning - Wit + Amarillo + ??? = "WTF" @ 5 weeks

I'm doing a kinda odd wit. Sweet orange peel instead of bitter, fermentation with WLP400 and Brett Lambicus, and dry hopping with Saaz. Hallertau as the bittering hop, Saaz at 15-5-0 in the boil. Orange peel and lightly crushed coriander at 15 and as a "dry spice"

Going to be very strange!

taylja06 said:

I'm doing a kinda odd wit. Sweet orange peel instead of bitter, fermentation with WLP400 and Brett Lambicus, and dry hopping with Saaz. Hallertau as the bittering hop, Saaz at 15-5-0 in the boil. Orange peel and lightly crushed coriander at 15 and as a "dry spice"

Going to be very strange!

Click to expand...

That is indeed going to be a unique beer! I admire your creativity. Please post results. BTW, nice resurrection of this thread

Glad to see this resurrected. A local Chicago brewery (Revolution) makes a Belgian pale ale that is AWSOME. I would love to clone it but am not yet knowledgeable enough to attempt so I was going to brew a simple wit and dryhop. Please post any results.

Have this Belgian Wit in Secondary and planning to dry hop 2.5 gallons of the 5g batch.

4.75 lbs 2 row
3.0 lbs white wheat
2.5lbs Flaked wheat
.5 oz cascade at 30 & .5 oz at 5 min
.5oz coriander and orange peel 15 min
Wyeast 3944 Belgian wit ale
OG 1.055

Based on reading some prior messages, it looks like 3-5 days is right for dry hop timing, and those that did .5 oz in a 5g batch were underwhelmed.

Thinking right now is to do 1 oz of something for 4 days. Recommendations on what to use or is cascade the easy default. More of a hophead than a wit drinker, so trying to make a fun flavor profile for a typical wit.

I got a wit in primary right now. lightly bittered, 1/2 oz coriander, appreciable hop bomb at 10 minutes til flame out.

I have leftover hops, 2 oz centennial and 1 oz chinook, that was was planning on throwing in to it as dry hops. was gonna go centennial for 3 days, then chinook for 3 days, then another centennial for 3 more days before i bottle it.

right now though, my problem is the temperature dropped and i think it may have stalled the fermentation. it was chugging along nicely at 80 degrees. i got a blow out, cleaned it up, and then the temp dropped down to 70. moved it upstairs but now that the heatwave is passed, I'm worried that the mild temperatures won't be helping me finish this at all...

aaaaaaand, this is almost the best beer i've ever made!

a friend of mine poured his out with a nice fat head, drank a mouthful of only foam, and immediately exclaimed that I need to mass produce it.

so, IMHO, go ahead and dry hop your belgian wit!

Glad to see all this information out there. I'm going to be brewing a Wit this weekend, and while I want to stick to what's known for my first real take at the style I can't help but veer off and experiment a little bit.

Going fairly traditional on malts
50% Belgian Pils
22.5% Flaked Wheat
22.5% White Wheat
5% Flaked Oats

My LHBS was out of WLP400/410, but I'll have to improvise. I got SafBrew T-58 after reading people have decent results for wit; I'm pitching this into half my wort and doing WLP500/530 blend (from old NHC Gold recipe) for the second half.

Spicing is also looking pretty standard- 0.5 oz coriander, 0.5 oz orange peel per 5 gal, with a small amount of a mystery spice if anything catches my eye at the local Indian market.

I'd like to try a new take on the hop bill, so I picked up some Opal and Pacific Jade, since both should add a little black pepper/clove and a little orange/lemon citrus. I was considering doing late additions, but maybe it'd be better to do a single 60 minute dosage for bittering, then save the 2 oz to dry hop my 10 gallons after primary.

Either way, I'll report back with how it goes!

I have done a Belgian Wit that I loved what the dry hop did for me at the brewery I work for. No big name brewery but the beer was well received.

One thing I think does awesome to transition from standard to awesome is Lemon Grass. It just adds another level to the spice flavor. I also tend to add Chamomile into it.

usbeertraders said:

I have done a Belgian Wit that I loved what the dry hop did for me at the brewery I work for. No big name brewery but the beer was well received.

One thing I think does awesome to transition from standard to awesome is Lemon Grass. It just adds another level to the spice flavor. I also tend to add Chamomile into it.

Click to expand...

Uh, sounds interesting!! How much lemon grass pr. 5 gl.? Boil or dry hop?

BR Folke

I tried a pilsener dryhopped with mittelfruh and I def want to try a little dryhop of those in a wit or hefeweizen, f the categories!