Best age for belgian wit

[Muss]

Hi
What's the best age for Belgian wits?
The reason I ask is I made an extract wit beer with Safale k-97 yeast and it tasted like bananas (unexpected but a plesant suprise anyway) after a few weeks. After a few more weeks the fruity taste mallowed out and it doesn't really have much of a flavour anymore.
Should my mates and I have drunk them all early or will they circle around and taste better again in 6 months or so?

The second batch still tastes young but I'm worried if I let them age they won't taste good either.

 

[MikeRLynch]

We had a belgian that tasted like bannana-beer and smelled like bubblegum after two weeks or so. After another week the bubble gum was gone, and the bannana receeded, allowing some the subtler clove-spice esters to come out. After that we drank it all, so I have no idea how long it would go for I have heard that weizens are supposed to be drunk relatively fresh, and since this is similar I would assume the same rule applies. Maybe if you let it sit for a while and get old it'll taste like blue moon lol

mike

 

[DeathBrewer]

i'd say wit's are in their prime at 6-8 weeks. you don't want to keep them for more than a few months.

 

[Muss]

Cheers, I'd better hurry up and drink them then!
I like having an excuse for excessive drinking.

 

[pa-in-utah]

I have a belgian WIT that has been bottled for about 2 months. After approx 5-6 weeks in the bottle, the orange flavor started to come through. I have about 18 of them left. They are really good so I am hesitant to drink them.......

 

[PaulsBrew]

Muss,
Last June you posted that you had used the Safale K-97 yeast. I’m interested on what you think of it now. Do you still use it? Over a week ago I used the Safale K-97 yeast for my Hefeweizen. My fermentation is looking great, yet I was wonder how this yeast worked for your beer when you finally drank it.

Paul

 

[PaulsBrew]

Muss,

Last June you posted that you had used the Safale K-97 yeast. I’m interested on what you think of it now. Do you still use it? Over a week ago I used the Safale K-97 yeast for my Hefeweizen. My fermentation is looking great, yet I was wonder how this yeast worked for your beer when you finally drank it.

Paul

 

[PaulsBrew]

Sorry about the double posted, it was not intened to post twice.

Paul

 

[Bob]

Belgian Witbier is a direct throwback to the past. It's just about the only beer which we can with confidence state that it's pretty much the same today as it was in 1475 A.D.

It's a bucolic, farmhouse type of beer, where you take a little bit of everything and make a beer. This beer was traditionally made as refreshment for farm workers to drink during their daily toil. Thus, it's a fairly weak "kitchen sink" sort of beer - you don't waste your best ingredients or your best beer on something farmhands are drinking because it's hot and they're thirsty at 9:45 AM.

You must also keep in mind that the style was fully developed when drinking plain old water was considered unhealthy, so beer was many things to people.

In the first place, it's safe to drink it because it's boiled.

In the second, it's nutritious because of all the grain and yeast in it.

I could go on, but don't want to belabor the point, which is that Wit is meant to be drunk young and rather weak. Historically, carbonation is optional! I've made wit that could be drunk for breakfast and taste like something appropriate to have for breakfast, like a flavor admixture of oatmeal and the orange juice you drink along with it. I made it on a Sunday, kegged it on Thursday - yes, while it was still gently fermenting - and we were drinking it on Friday night. Was it carbonated? Yes, a bit. Carbonation changed over the course of the weekend. It was tasty - much more than I expected - light, and very well-received.

I make mine with a rather wierd mash of wheat (malted and unmalted), oats and barley (malted and unmalted); low hops levels, using aged hops; a mix of spices, including the de rigeur coriander and bitter orange peel, but also including anise, black pepper, paradise seed, and cardamom; and a mix of yeasts.

In my world, wit is best consumed as soon as it's finished fermenting and/or carbonated, should I choose to carbonate it. But your mileage may vary; I recognize that my method is somewhat removed from the BJCP standard, but I prefer the historical method to the modern impulse to overthink everything and I don't compete with this beer.

So my advice is to keep making the recipe and keep drinking the beer. Start taking detailed tasting notes. Eventually, you'll arrive at a conclusion of when it's best to drink your Witbier. It takes some experience and - gosh, can you stand it? - drinking of homebrew.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[Muss]

Muss,

Last June you posted that you had used the Safale K-97 yeast. I’m interested on what you think of it now. Do you still use it? Over a week ago I used the Safale K-97 yeast for my Hefeweizen. My fermentation is looking great, yet I was wonder how this yeast worked for your beer when you finally drank it.

Paul

Hi Paul
I thought it was a good yeast for witbeer, I purchased the Wyeast Forbidden Fruit yeast which is supposed to be the Hoegaarden strain and another witbeer, but ruined it because I added way too much corriander, possibly got it infected and to top it off I don't thinik I rinsed the chlorine based sanitiser out well enough so it turned out to be a horrible beer.
I'm keen to try it again and really compare the difference between Safale K-97 and Wyeast Forbidden Fruit by making an AG batch and fermenting half with each type. I am hoping that K-97 tastes close enough for me because it's many times cheaper than Wyeast in NZ.

The K97 beer tasted like bananas for the first few weeks, which was actually quirte nice, then after that it didn't taste much like anything at all. After 3 months it started to taste and smell like baked beans and has gotten worse ever since.

I made it from a wheat beer kit (50/50 pilsner malt and wheat malt, plus a kg of dried wheat malt, 15g corriander and a few tbsp's or orange zest.