Witbier Blue Balls Belgian Wit (Blue Moon Clone)

Was the fermentation very low with this recipe? I brewed one about 5 days ago and it is very slow... Thanks!

 

Bought this recipe kit from brewmasters. This will be the second time brewing. Planning on making tomorrow. I have a few questions. It says to strain the wheat grains out and add the extracts and you know the rest. I really don't know the rest. I am beginning to think this may be a partial mash recipe. and I maybe in over my head. Can anyone give me specific directions. I promise to toast you with the very first beer if you do.


3.00 lb Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)
2.00 lb Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)

1.49 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (60 min)

0.75 oz Coriander Seed (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
0.75 oz Orange Peel, Bitter (Boil 10.0 min) Misc

1 Pkgs Belgian Witbier (Wyeast #3944 or White Labs WLP400) Definitely want a Belgian Wit yeast though.

Mash your flaked wheat at 155 degrees for 60-75 minutes (the longer will up the efficiency and ABV%)

Strain the wheat grains out and bring wort to boil, add extracts and you know the rest...

 

Yes this is a partial mash.


Put the flaked wheat in a mash tun of some kind - often a keg or cooler with a filter and a spout on it. you will want some rice hulls in there too to avoid a stuck mash (happened to me first time I made it). I think a pound should do but I am certain others will correct me. Add water heated to the specified temperature and keep at that temp for the time specified. (I stick my cooler in my oven on low.)

At the end of that time, drain the tun into your brew kettle. Boil that puppy for 60 minutes. Add the hops at the times specified (10 minutes means when 10 minutes are left on the clock.) at the end of the boil, chill to room temp, transfer to primary, pitch yeast, and ferment just like an extract.

Edit: if you don't have a mash tun yet, you can try partial-mash-in-a-bag - put the flaked wheat in a muslin bag, heat water to mash temp in your kettle, keep it that warm for the duration of mash, and when mashing is done pull the bag out , squeeze it to get the runoff into the kettle, raise to a boil, and proceed as in the paragraph above. No need for rice hulls, you will just have a large bag of oatmeal looking glorp to throw away. I don't do this because I have a mini masher, but it may work easier for you.

 

Thanks your direction are great. I really appreciable the help.

Kathy

 

No problem. This was the second batch I ever tried too and I didn't know about the rice hull truck; wound up with a stuck mash (filter completely jammed with glorp) and that freaked me out so much I burned the LME. things went downhill from there.


Edit: Not this recipe, but this is my mini mash tun:

 

FYI, I put 3lbs of rice hulls into a 10G batch to prevent clogging.

 

FYI, I used only .5lbs of hulls in a 8.5 gal batch with ~7.5 lbs of flaked wheat. Not only did I not get a stuck mash, my efficiency was well over what BierMuncher called for. He said it wouldn't convert well, but that's news to me -- mine was 10pts over! The mash seemed very thick, but it sure converted just fine. Of course mileage may vary.

I also used 1oz coriander freshly ground (not crushed) @10mins, and 1.25oz navel orange peel @ 7 mins. Overall, I think I should've added orange at 10mins as well, and upped the coriander a bit. A great beer regardless.

 

3lbs of rice hulls for 10 gallons is a lot. I think I used 1 lb for the 10 gallon batch I did a few months back.

 

Has anyone added any fruit to this recipe? Was thinking of splitting of 1G and adding blueberries and 1G and adding strawberries.

Still haven't decided on the yeast yet...is it REALLY that huge of a difference? I prefer Blue Moon to Hoegarden so I'm thinking of S-04 or 3942.

 

I might brew this again with blood oranges this time, and actually incorporate the fruit into a 2ndary.

 

S-04 is an English Yeast. The yeast in a Wit is EVERYTHING. Do not use an English yeast. Sheesh!

 

I've read that this yeast gets you closer to a "blue moon" clone with this recipe?

 

This is one of the places I've read about using S-04 as I'd like this to be as close to Blue Moon as possible so SWMBO enjoys it!!

 

cbehr, The difference between S-04 and 3942 is night and day. Both will yield excellent beers with this recipe. I will say again, I think this thread needs to drop the "Blue Moon Clone" from the title since the original recipe posted (although delicious) is not at all like a Blue Moon. Here are my results from using each yeast with this recipe:

S-04: Sweeter, soft fruit + citrus flavors, coriander snap, malty, soft hop bitterness

3942: Dry, light, soft citrus flavors, stronger Belgian spice presence, coriander snap, soft hop bitterness

If you are looking for a Blue Moon clone recipe, read this thread:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/blue-moon-clone-65328/

This turned out much closer to Blue Moon for me.

 

I actually just finished up the 75 page thread...what a read!! What version did you wind up going with, Wayne's original?

 

Holy cow. Do you do this for every thread? I usually read the first 3 and last 3 pages.

 

For real. Recently someone claimed to have read the whole Apfelwein thread. All it is is 150 pages of people saying "I'm going to make this" and then 3 weeks later "I made this and liked it"

 

I dont' always but the oldes thread was 5+ years ago...so I had a feeling the recipe changed a bit over the years. I skimmed certain sections and just read what the key contributors said

 

I used Nilo's recipe #4. It turned out pretty close to Blue Moon. I made a couple subs that probably pushed it in the wrong direction though. I'm planning to try it again some time this year once I get my BIAB set up complete.

 

I would up going with #6...a bit modified with this recipe...probably should have just kept it simple but oh well.

#5 2-row
#3.5 White wheat malt
#1.5 Flaked wheat
#1 Crystal 10L
#.5 Carapils
#.5-1 Flaked oats, haven't decided yet.

Gonna give the S-04 a shot.

 

3 weeks and 3 days in primary @ 70 and still bubbling away. OG was high. Would you:
A. Keg it
B. take gravity and see
C. Wait till weekend and keg

 

Take the gravity an wait a few days, if it remains the same your at your FG. I'd be patient and give in a few days or a week. What yeast did you use?

 

9.1 lbs CMC Pale
9.0 lbs Flaked Wheat
1.0 lbs Flaked Oats
1.0 lbs Rice Hulls

1.75oz US Goldings @ 60min
1.15oz Crushed Coriander @5min (was suppose to be more but i dropped the bowl)
.75 Sweet Peel @ 5min
.75 Bitter peel @ 5min

5 Gallons with WL 400
5 Gallons with WL East Coast

1.049 OG

 

Long time lurker, first post. I made this recipe for my first AG batch following the original instructions except I used 5lb of flaked wheat and 5lb of pale ale malt (I bought 5lb of each and was worried about efficiency for my first batch, so I used it all).

Everything went perfect, I hit all my mash temps and volumes, 154 for the mash and 168 sparge.

I measured a pre-boil gravity of 1.034 for 6.5 gallons. After my boil I ended up with just over 5 gallons, but ended up with a gravity of 1.050! Does this make sense? I calculated my brewhouse efficiency to be 65% (brewersfriend.com) which is lower than the recipe calls (75%) for but I ended up with a much higher OG than the recipe calls for?

I checked my final gravity reading several times, so my pre-boil gravity reading must have been erroneous right? I corrected my readings for temp, and took them at 70*

 

An easy way to calculate the gravity points is to take the reading 1.034 and consider it 34 gravity points per gallon. So when you measure 1.034 for 6.5 gallons then you would have 34 gravity points/gallon multiplied by 6.5 gallons equaling 221 total gravity points. Now those gravity points won't go up or down as they are just a total of all the sugars in the liquid. When you reduce the 6.5 gallons down to 5 gallons from boiling off 1.5 gallons of water you still have 221 total gravity points but now only 5 gallons. Take 221 divided by 5 gallons and you get 44.2 or a gravity reading of 1.044.

So your pre-boil gravity reading of 1.034 seems too low if you are sure that the FG reading is the accurate one. So if you have a gravity reading of 1.050 for 5 gallons then your pre-boil gravity reading with 6.5 gallons should've been 1.038-1.039 (250 points divided by 6.5 gallons). Does that make sense? I hope so! Welcome aboard!

 

Can I use rahr red wheat malt for this?

 

Bottled this last night. I used WLP 410 instead of WLP 400. I tasted the sample at room temp and it was very good, but with a bit more banana flavor than I had planned. I think it will still be very good! I will brew this again, for sure.

 

Yes. Remember the rollers need to be set narrower for this smaller, harder kernel. Rahr Red Wheat is an excellent wheat malt for this recipe.

 

Did everyone do a full boil on this recipe? I don't have a wort chiller, so I do partial boils. Any modification to the original recipe if I do the partial?

I'm thinking of using Safbrew WB-06 too.

 

I'm not necessarily trying to clone blue moon but simply want a ballpark representation of the style. My LHBS doesn't have bitter orange peel specially dried and packaged for brewing, so would using fresh orange peels in 10ish minutes of the boil be an acceptable substitute?

 

Just completed cooking 2.5 gal batch using Fuggles and Nottingham. Will attempt to remember to update results.

 

I'm somewhat new to home brewing, but planned to try brewing this recipe today. Before getting started I want make sure that it has enough extract. It looks like the grains will be steeped, rather than mashed. Since the steeping won't cause them to convert as there is nothing in the recipe to release the enzymes, will 4 pounds of extract be enough? Assuming I'm correct that the grains are steeped, rather than mashed, should I plan to abide by the 1.25-1.5 quarts of water rule of thumb used for mashing, or does the water volume for this type of steeping matter?

 

4 lbs of DME will get you a low gravity beer. So if that;s what you're looking for, look no further. The few times I made this with extract I kicked it up a bit and added up to a pound of honey to help dry it out since extract brewers are unable to control the fermentability of wort without remashing the extract. This is what my recipe looked like. The steeping grains, hops, and spices are the same as the original:

2 lbs Wheat DME
3.3 lbs Light LME
0.75 lbs Clover Honey @15 min

You don't need to worry about the 1.25-1.5 qts/lb water rule when steeping your grains. Hope this helps!

 

Thanks! I ended up mashing the flaked wheat with two pounds of two-row and at 5.5 gal the OG was spot on with the specs found here: http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/recipe/86dde777/

I realized after the fact that I may get less of the characteristic witbier haze, but I suppose my tastebuds don't care about how hazy the beer is.

 

I Just finished reading all 48 pages, and I learned a ton! I am making a blue moon clone on Saturday, so all the information in this thread was extremely informative.

 

on my 'to do' list

 

Well, it's getting to be that time of year, and SWMBO has already been requesting this for months now. I'll be brewing a 10 gallon batch this weekend.

 

I had to read that 3 times but then it hit me! CHEERS for that one sippin...

 

What makes the Pale Malt Crisp different from UK 2-Row?

 

Here is my "good ole faithful" Blue Moon Clone

5.5lb Extra Pale
4.5lb White Wheat
.5lb flaked oats
1oz Hersbrecker hops-60 minutes
1oz Saaz 10 minutes
1oz Sweet orange peel 10 minutes
1oz coriander(crushed) 10 minutes
yeast nutrient 10 minutes

Protien rest at 120 for 15 minutes
then 148-152 mash for 45 minutes
OG 1.055
Wyeth Belgian Wit. yeast

The only advice i for this is to use a blowoff tube for the fermenter..
The Wit yeast is crazy active!!

Enjoy!!!!