Brewhouse Prairie Wheat to make Belgian Witbier

[kickz28]

Hi!

I'm kind of new to brewing. I've made two brews so far. I like the simplicity of the Brewhouse kits. For this one, I'm planning on modifying it a bit. I want to use the Prairie wheat kit to make a Belgian Witbier.

Here are the details about the kit:
Colour: Straw, golden
Bitterness: 10 IBU
O.G.: 1.045-1.047
Malts: Wheat, Pale
Hops: Perle for bittering and aroma

Anyway, does anyone know if the OG listed on their website is the OG after adding 8L of water, or before ? If it is before, than I don't think I will need to add any water at all. I'm planning on using Belgian Witbier *3944 liquid yeast.

Also, from most reciped I've found, people add the orange peel and coriander during boil time. Since I don't need to boil this kit, can I just add the ingredients in the fermenter ? Otherwise, can I boil the ingredients in some water and add that?

The two other beers that I made were both Festa Brew (brown ale and pale ale), and I thought they were great.

Thanks!

 

[Nateo]

I have no idea what a brewhouse kit is, but I know a bit about Wits. From my experience, a lot of good flavor compounds are fragile, meaning they don't cook well. I always add my spices at flameout, to try to preserve as much of the volatile flavor compounds as possible. Think about apple pie. Apple pie doesn't taste like apples. Do you want it to taste like apple pie, or apples? They're both good, just different.

As long as you have a thorough and healthy fermentation, you should be fine adding coriander and orange peel in primary. Sanitation should only be an issue if your yeast aren't crowding out the other (bad) infections.