wit's up??

so a while back it seemed like everyone was starting belgian wits. how'd yours come out? we cracked the first bottle tonight(one week of carb, 2 of primary) and it's GREAT, despite a million problems durring bottling. clean tasting, nice and refresing, i like it a hell of a lot more then blue moon. it will deffinetly be brewed again.

Moon Wit Night

steep: 1lbs wheat
6lbs dry wheat malt extract (1/2 at start, the rest for 15min)
2oz Hallertau
.87oz of corriander (1/2 at 15min, 1/2 at flameout)
around 3oz of orange peel (1/2 at 15min, 1/2 at flameout)
wyeast 3944 w/starter

og was 1.050
fg was 1.011

Glad it turned out well. I'll be picking up the ingredients for a wit tomorrow or Friday. I've made this recipe before, but I may change it a little to use all DME instead of the 3.3 # of LME. Not quite sure at the moment.

That's a lot of orange peel! We used .75 oz in our last one, and that seemed nice and orangey. We dumped the whole oz in the next batch we made (while drinking the first batch, hence the lack of measurement) and I'm worrying that might be a bit much. Did you use dried peel or fresh? Either way, I guess if it tastes good and gets the job done then it's a success!

mike

I brewed a Belgian Wit using a Midwest recipe kit a couple of months ago. I'd have to say that I was disappointed. Too dark, and just sort of funky. Drinkable, but funky. The dried orange peel and coriander were o.k. And I used Wyeast Belgian 3944, so that should have been all good. Might have something to do with the fact that the Midwest recipe kit used LME rather than DME.

Maybe mine is closer to a true Belgian Wit, and I'm too used to Blue Moon, but it definitely didn't turn out like I thought it would. I won't brew it again, at least not from the Midwest recipe.

Could I do a wit off a european ale cake? I believe wyeast 1338. It's in primary right now, and I'd love to do a quick wit off this cake.

it was fresh orange peel, ate that sucker while boiling. i figured the fresh wouldn't be as strong and wanted the citrus to really stand out, which it does. i'm not sure if it'll fade or grow stronger with aging, we'll see if it lasts that long.

mountainrev, it could definetly be the LME. all the kits i've used with LME all came out roughly the same color. my stout shouldn't be brown!!! i started using light DME and steeping more grains and the results seem better to me. you should look into the late extract additions, it can really help with keeping the color much lighter, but it effects hop utilization. maybe try a different wheat yeast too?


not sure about the 1338, but i'm assuming it'd make good beer.

mountainrev said:

I brewed a Belgian Wit using a Midwest recipe kit a couple of months ago. I'd have to say that I was disappointed. Too dark, and just sort of funky. Drinkable, but funky. The dried orange peel and coriander were o.k. And I used Wyeast Belgian 3944, so that should have been all good. Might have something to do with the fact that the Midwest recipe kit used LME rather than DME.

Maybe mine is closer to a true Belgian Wit, and I'm too used to Blue Moon, but it definitely didn't turn out like I thought it would. I won't brew it again, at least not from the Midwest recipe.

Click to expand...

Check out my recipe for Blue Balls Belgian Wit below. There is an extract version included (post #5) and it uses dry DME. I'm pretty sure people have made it (1,530 hits) but haven't had any feedback yet.

BierMuncher said:

Check out my recipe for Blue Balls Belgian Wit below. There is an extract version included (post #5) and it uses dry DME. I'm pretty sure people have made it (1,530 hits) but haven't had any feedback yet.

Click to expand...

Well my variation of this recipe has been in the bottles for almost a week. I'll give you some feedback next week.
I ended up using malted wheat instead of flaked wheat and added 1/2# of flaked Oats because I had them. I'm not sure how my spices will turn out, I couldn't measure sub oz weights and my coriander was uncrushed so I tried putting it in a small food processor. Still the initial tasting was promising.

Craig