Witbier BrunchMaster 2000 - Belgian Wit - Gold Medal 2018 NHC

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BeatnikTom

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
46
Reaction score
21
Location
Portland
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit
Yeast Starter
Yes
Batch Size (Gallons)
5.5
Original Gravity
1.050
Boiling Time (Minutes)
60
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
10days from 64 F, free rise to 78 F
This is a super thick, super orangey, single hop/hop-bursted Amarillo Wit.

6 lbs Flaked Wheat
4 lbs Briess 2-Row Brewer's Malt
.25 lbs Flaked Oats
Add rice hulls if you're not smart enough to be BIAB'ing. :)

.65oz 9%AA Amarillo @ 20 min
.5 oz 9%AA Amarillo @ 15 min
1 oz 9% AA Amarillo @ 0 min

.1 oz coriander @ 5 min
.1 oz bitter orange peel @ 5 min

CaCl forward water
Mash @ 152 F for 90 min
Boil for 60 min

Chill quickly (hop bursted) to 64 and pitch Wyeast 3944.
Let free rise to 78 F over the next week and half.
Keg, highly carbonate and drink fresh on your patio in the sun with brunch.

F@$k mimosas.

Enjoy.

-TK
 
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Cool idea to go with Amarillo. I've used Cascade, and Mandarina Bavaria, both quite good. How is the aroma balanced between fruity hop aromatics, coriander and yeast/phenolic (spicy) character? I only have whole leaf Amarillo (was sent to me by mistake), but I'm going to try your recipe with Imperial's Whiteout (Hoegaarden/Celis strain).

Any idea of what your targeted water profile was?
 
Hey thanks, but I actually got the idea for Amarillo from one of my customers when I was working at a homebrew shop. I've adjusted the recipe over the years. I've brewed it about 20 times, it's a house beer during the summer.

The aroma is hop dominant. Orangey from the hops. I keep the coriander and orange peel very low amounts and add at 5 min, let the Amarillo do the heavy lifting.

Someday I'll experiment with the new Idaho 7 on this.

Basically, it's a milkshake-like malty forward, hop flavor and aroma wit. So I start with RO water and build back with 3:1 Calcium Chloride to Calcium Sulfate. I don't have the exact numbers on me, I usually just ballpark it with tsp measurements ala Gordon Strong. 1.5 tsp CACl to .5 tsp Gypsum for all liquor for 5g batch. Whatever that comes out to.

One big caution:
Be careful not to make it too bitter by not chilling quickly. All those finishing hops will make it a White IPA quickly if you're not on it. My beersmith Tinseth model calculation on this is 17 IBU.

Enjoy and let me know how yours turns out!

-TK
 
Congrats on the gold BTW that's very impressive. I'm curious which LHBS you worked at? I've been going to Steinbarts for some time, I still go there on my Portland trips since they stock mecca grade.

I had to modify your recipe a bit to fit my stock on hand - I only have 1 oz of Amarillo, so I upped coriander and bitter orange to .25oz each, and have Cascade as a 45 min addition, and kept Amarillo to 5 min / flameout. I'd try to get some more Amarillo, but I'm just due east of you by Mt Hood and we have 22" of snow... 84 is closed. I'm sure mine won't have the hoppy pop yours does, but some additional orange from the Amarillo will be nice!

Anyway I attempted this last night, everything was going great in the mash (cooler MLT), hit temp and pH right to the hundredth. I used 10oz of rice hulls for a 5.5gal batch, but when it came time to lauter, it just wouldn't unstuck for more than 30 seconds. After 3 hours of troubleshooting all the stuck sparge tricks and only getting about 2 gallons of runoff, I was out of time and patience, and had to dump 8 gallons of beautiful mashy wort. If I had more time I would have strained it through a bag into my HLT and re-lautered it. That's my first botched brewday in years, I can't even remember the last time. My chickens are happy about that this morning though.

So.... I will try again today, but I'm lowering the flaked wheat to 20%, malted wheat to 30%. I considered doing a step mash of 20@133 -> 40@154 -> 15@170, but I've done witbiers with less flaked wheat and despite being a bit "sticky", they've lautered out fine. Will update when I have some... positive news.
 
Oh man, there's nothing worse than a stuck mash. That's a bummer. I have done this recipe in a normal mash tun, but I think I used about a pound of rice hulls.

I used to work at Eagle Rock HBS in LA. Last time I was at Steinbart's, I did see Amarillo whole flower in the 1 lb sacks. When the snow clears enough, you could grab that.

The changes that you're thinking about making, make sense, but are the whole premise of the what makes the beer recipe unique. Amarillo single-hop with ridiculous amount of flaked wheat and almost no coriander and orange peel. You'll basically have a traditional wit with some american hops when you're done. I think the cascade *might* make it weird with pine stuff in it. But maybe it will make it amazing. You could end up with more of a White IPA style beer.

The other thing about this beer is that I skip all the cereal mashing and protein rest non-sense. (IMHO) Been there, done that, and figured out that with Briess 2-row and flaked wheat I got just as good (or better) of a beer for a fraction of the work. If you do do a protein rest, make it shorter or you might get a thin beer from breaking down the proteins too much. Lots of variables to work with here and I've played with almost all of them.

The ease of how this is made is kinda the weird part of this recipe, too. But some people love complexity so if that makes you happy, go for it. I'm not sure what your mash tun is like, but you could just buy a BrewBag (not those mesh things at the HBS) and lift it out, BIAB style. I haven't used my 3 vessel HERMS system in years. Super easy, less mess and zero chance of stuck sparge. Unhappy chickens!

Anyway, it's your beer and I'm interested to see how any changes you make turn out.

Sorry about the stuck mash, that's the worst! Oh wait, the keg that unloads a full keg all over your garage while you sleep is worse, but only just barely.
 
Thanks for the recipe Tom. I made a few changes when I brewed this today. I swapped flaked rye for the oats.

Hop-wise, I used Amarillo but I went with a hop hash instead since I have it and halved the contributions since the AA were 21% on the hash; it calculates out to 23 IBUs since I used the same addition times.

For spices, I added 0.1oz of black peppercorns with the orange peel and coriander. Additionally, at flameout, I drew off 1 gallon of wort and steeped 2oz of hibiscus flowers with the proportional amount of hops. The remaining wort received only the Amarillo hop hash at flameout.

As for the yeast, the majority of the wort was dosed with WLP550 since I have it, pitched at 75F. The 1 gallon with hibiscus was dosed with 0.8g of Imperial Loki flakes and pitched at 105F. Both fermenters are heat wrapped to encourage ester production but they will go where they want as I don't have temperature control.

My water profile is Ca 70ppm, SO4 29ppm, Cl 81ppm, which I achieved with 2g CaCl and 0.7g CaSO4. I'll try to remember to give an update in about a month when this finishes bottle conditioning.
 
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So my tasting notes for the standard (no hibiscus) version of my rendition of this wit are as follows:

Pours 1.5 fingers of creamy foam that doesn't go away, very light yellow color, very hazy. Aroma is bready yeast with a little clove perhaps. Flavor is similar to aroma in that it is a bready yeast but more muted and with a nondescript fruity tang - slight orange but not sour - and then finishing with a subdued spice flavor that makes me think of coriander. Body is medium and carbonation is only slightly sharp. Overall, the beer is pretty good - exceptional body and head retention - though the flavors are a little less potent than I was expecting in that the orange is not as pronounced as I wanted. For an easy drinking wit I would give this 4 out 5 stars.​

For a future iteration of this, I would increase the orange characteristic in the aroma/flavor by making a tincture with orange peel and adding after primary fermentation is complete.
 
One big caution:
Be careful not to make it too bitter by not chilling quickly. All those finishing hops will make it a White IPA quickly if you're not on it. My beersmith Tinseth model calculation on this is 17 IBU.

-TK

Approaching my brew day and thinking of doing this! What do you mean by "chill quickly"? I brew 2.5 gallon batches and usually chill by ice bath. Do you suggest adding the last hops even later in the chilling process, and if so do you have a ball-park temp?
 
Just kegged this baby last night and burst carbed it at 30psi for 24hrs.... just had my first taste and while it’s not fully carbed yet, it is AMAZING! Going to lower it down to about 18psi for a day or two to get it to the point I want.

Anyways, aroma is quite “yeasty” like the person above me noted but it’s a very pleasant smell, with a bit of citrus. Taste is also equally as amazing with a sweet yeast/orange flavor and that orange tartness on the way down. It’s amazing! Definitely will be a house beer.

Here’s a picture of it a day after burst carbing:

F0325931-8764-433A-A147-1A83952BB80E.jpeg
 
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"Chill Quickly" means having a very efficient chilling system that goes full throttle immediately on flame-out. For a reference point, I use a 50ft immersion chiller, already setup, ready to turn on 60-65 degree ground water immediately, with a March pump circulating the wort across it. It's very fast.

Because the recipe is hop-bursted, there is a ton of hops added at the end of the boil and even the 20min hops are still isomerizing while it's chilling. So my beer and someone else's beer is gonna have different IBU levels. That's how homebrewing is. My advice is to get someone into the ballpark of where the recipe is intended to land. Adjust IBU according to your system by taste/preference. So if you're ice batch chilling, that's the opposite of quick, so I'd redesign the recipe to have 60 min hops contribute a small predictable bitterness level (maybe 10 IBU) then see how it lands with your chill with a 15 and 0 min addition. Or even consider adding 1/2 of the 0 min hops at flameout and 1/2 of the 0 min hops about 10 min into your chill.

Looks great. After it carbs up all the way it should pour with a giant fluffy head! Did you otherwise follow the recipe as is? If so, you're the first person to brew my recipe!
 
"Chill Quickly" means having a very efficient chilling system that goes full throttle immediately on flame-out. For a reference point, I use a 50ft immersion chiller, already setup, ready to turn on 60-65 degree ground water immediately, with a March pump circulating the wort across it. It's very fast.

Because the recipe is hop-bursted, there is a ton of hops added at the end of the boil and even the 20min hops are still isomerizing while it's chilling. So my beer and someone else's beer is gonna have different IBU levels. That's how homebrewing is. My advice is to get someone into the ballpark of where the recipe is intended to land. Adjust IBU according to your system by taste/preference. So if you're ice batch chilling, that's the opposite of quick, so I'd redesign the recipe to have 60 min hops contribute a small predictable bitterness level (maybe 10 IBU) then see how it lands with your chill with a 15 and 0 min addition. Or even consider adding 1/2 of the 0 min hops at flameout and 1/2 of the 0 min hops about 10 min into your chill.

Looks great. After it carbs up all the way it should pour with a giant fluffy head! Did you otherwise follow the recipe as is? If so, you're the first person to brew my recipe!

Sorry for the late reply but since this comment I've brewed this recipe about 5 times! It's a house staple. This time I'm experimenting with a 60min mash just to see if any difference comes about of it.

Anyways, great recipe!
 
I plan to brew this on Saturday. For you guys that have done this, did you utilize a single infusion mash or did you do a protein rest at 122?

I keep reading horror stories of low diastatic power and 30 min protein rests followed by 90 minute mashes.. I intend on doing the 90 min sach rest as the recipe states.
 
This whole recipe is a debunking of wit myths and a massive simplification of the process. I spent years experimenting with all of the variables including protein rests. Forget everything you know about wit and just try to brew the recipe as is. It works!

A protein rest is unnecessary for many reasons. Just use a good brewer's 2-row. I've had trouble with one maltster, but never had a problem with Briess. If you're super worried about it, sub in a pound or two of 6-row for the 2-row, should increase your diastatic power but might give you some color you don't want in a white beer. Or you can go 50/50 and your beer just won't be quite as thick.
 
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As for a water profile, I'm trying to get the heavy cacl, and here is what I've got worked up, let me know if this is near what you did...
20200415_140526.jpg
 
Yup, Yellow Malty in Bru'n Water should be good to go. High chloride, low sulphate will keep it malty, the hops are all about the aroma and flavor.
 
So my tasting notes for the standard (no hibiscus) version of my rendition of this wit are as follows:

Pours 1.5 fingers of creamy foam that doesn't go away, very light yellow color, very hazy. Aroma is bready yeast with a little clove perhaps. Flavor is similar to aroma in that it is a bready yeast but more muted and with a nondescript fruity tang - slight orange but not sour - and then finishing with a subdued spice flavor that makes me think of coriander. Body is medium and carbonation is only slightly sharp. Overall, the beer is pretty good - exceptional body and head retention - though the flavors are a little less potent than I was expecting in that the orange is not as pronounced as I wanted. For an easy drinking wit I would give this 4 out 5 stars.​

For a future iteration of this, I would increase the orange characteristic in the aroma/flavor by making a tincture with orange peel and adding after primary fermentation is complete.
This implies you made a hibiscus version too? Or not yet?
 
How bad does your efficiency suffer when brewing this? I set mine about 12 points lower and the weird part was that I made up for it and came close to hitting my original efficiency. Also, how long do you sparge for? I went real slow (about 90 minutes) and added 2 extra gallons to my sparge (I'm going to cut that down to 1 next time). I also ended up just shy of 1.051, I should hit 5.0%. lesson learned here, pay attention to what the yeast pack says.. make sure to give 30% headspace or you're going to have a mess!! I just hope I didn't lose too much yeast!!
 
Do you think I can swap out the flaked wheat for malted wheat? Because that is what I have on hand. Thanks,

Honestly, I'm all for doing whatever the f*** you want but, if you use Wheat Malt you'd be going outside of the BJCP Guidelines for the style.

Here's what they say a Belgian Wit is made up of:
"Characteristic Ingredients: About 50% unmalted wheat and 50% pale barley malt (usually Pils malt) constitute the grist. In some versions, up to 5-10% raw oats may be used."

I'd also suggest using rice hulls even with a BIAB system (like I use). At least with my first couple brews of this, my bag got super gummed up with the oats and now that I use about half an ounce of rice hulls, my draining/mash efficiency has gotten much better. I'm used to just pulling the grain bag with my pulley system and lightly squeezing to get to my pre-boil gravity (if I haven't already, and if I've already met my pre-boil volume according to BeerSmith), but my first few times brewing this recipe I've missed both my pre-boil gravity and volume if I don't squeeze the living hell out of the bag. Plus I've found that squeezing the living hell out of my bag causes the beer to be much more hazy (much more than it needs to be for the style), and "bitter" compared to lightly squeezing with the rice hulls.

Just my 2 cents!

Love this recipe, and will always be a summer staple.

PS. If using BIAB I usually pull out the bag partially to bring it off the bottom and heat up my water to 170 degrees before I pull out my grains instead of sparging. I've found it to help me get more consistent with BeerSmith on my gravities.
 
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This implies you made a hibiscus version too? Or not yet?
Yes, I made an hibiscus variant by drawing off 1 gallon of the wort at flameout and steeped 2oz of hibiscus for 10 minutes. The color was really eye-catching, a vibrant magenta, and the hibiscus added a nice tart note to the flavor without impacting the aroma. Given that I used a different yeast with the hibiscus - Imperial Loki vs WLP550 - it was lacking the witbier phenol character and came out to more of an IPA style. Even still, I much preferred the hibiscus variant.

After brewing quite a few more Belgian style beers over the last year, I would recommend using Wyeast 3463 for this.
 
I can't wait to try this.i hope the 1 pound of flaked oats (oops, dumped the wrong "flaked" bag) doesn't screw with the flavor too much.
 
Just took a gravity reading and a taste, wow it tastes great!! The additional oats are definitely noticable, but I can see beyond them. Also, I didn't read the yeast package and over filled the carboy.. a week post pitch I'm only down to 1.030.. I hope this thing finishes.. (hungover brew day was terrible) should I let it ride or repitch?
 
Honestly, I'm all for doing whatever the f*** you want but, if you use Wheat Malt you'd be going outside of the BJCP Guidelines for the style.

Here's what they say a Belgian Wit is made up of:
"Characteristic Ingredients: About 50% unmalted wheat and 50% pale barley malt (usually Pils malt) constitute the grist. In some versions, up to 5-10% raw oats may be used."

I'd also suggest using rice hulls even with a BIAB system (like I use). At least with my first couple brews of this, my bag got super gummed up with the oats and now that I use about half an ounce of rice hulls, my draining/mash efficiency has gotten much better. I'm used to just pulling the grain bag with my pulley system and lightly squeezing to get to my pre-boil gravity (if I haven't already, and if I've already met my pre-boil volume according to BeerSmith), but my first few times brewing this recipe I've missed both my pre-boil gravity and volume if I don't squeeze the living hell out of the bag. Plus I've found that squeezing the living hell out of my bag causes the beer to be much more hazy (much more than it needs to be for the style), and "bitter" compared to lightly squeezing with the rice hulls.

Just my 2 cents!

Love this recipe, and will always be a summer staple.

PS. If using BIAB I usually pull out the bag partially to bring it off the bottom and heat up my water to 170 degrees before I pull out my grains instead of sparging. I've found it to help me get more consistent with BeerSmith on my gravities.
Yeah, Im not to worried about the BJCP, I only worry about that when I plan to submit the beer for comps. You say you used a half ounce of rice hulls, is a typo? Half a pound perhaps. I have found with conditioning the barley before milling I have not required hulls when using about 50/50 split barley to wheat, either malted or flaked. :mug:
 
Yeah, Im not to worried about the BJCP, I only worry about that when I plan to submit the beer for comps. You say you used a half ounce of rice hulls, is a typo? Half a pound perhaps. I have found with conditioning the barley before milling I have not required hulls when using about 50/50 split barley to wheat, either malted or flaked. :mug:

Yes sorry! Excuse my typo! ahaha
 
Hello, Beatnik, how do you use your orange peel?
Do you do it directly in the boil 5 min before finishing?
Or do you prepare it in vodka or some other way?
What is the pH of the water you use?

Thank you very much for the recipe and congratulations on the gold
 
@BeatnikTom, did you ever notice the orange being rather subdued as fermentation finished? I feel like it's going to need some zest added to the keg... My gravity reading today was 1.013 and it which is 5 points lower than it was Friday but it is getting really light.. I'm hoping it's about done as I feel like there will be nothing left...
 
[QUOTE = "Logotipo de Jordan, publicación: 8871378, miembro: 264492"]
¡Necesito la cuenta del grano% s para esta receta! [USUARIO = 36584] @BeatnikTom [/ USUARIO]
[/CITAR]


Estos son los porcentajes según las cantidades suministradas.

6 libras de trigo en hojuelas (58.5%)
4 libras de malta de cerveza de 2 hileras Briess (39%)
.25 libras de avena en hojuelas (2.45%)

.65oz 9% AA Amarillo @ 20 min (30.25%)
.5 oz 9% AA Amarillo @ 15 min (23.25%)
1 oz 9% AA Amarillo @ 0 min (46.5%)
 
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Be careful when dumping the flaked oats and flaked wheat, they look exactly alike and if you dump 1 pound of flaked oats (my local shop had them in bags that looked alike) it will definitely mess with the recipe! And of course I didn't think to add more hops and orange peel at the time.. I'm kegging this up tonight,hope it turned out ok
 
Going to have to give this one a shot in the future. I brewed a Wit recently from a pretty traditional recipe and it’s missing bitterness something awful. I kept to about 13 IBU total with no aroma additions. I made up for it with 0.5oz of bitter orange peel and a full oz of crushed coriander, but combined with the CaCl forward water, it’s just missing some bite.
 
Hello, Beatnik, how do you use your orange peel?
Do you do it directly in the boil 5 min before finishing?
Or do you prepare it in vodka or some other way?
What is the pH of the water you use?

Thank you very much for the recipe and congratulations on the gold
Hey thanks.

I use very little (see recipe), I put the coriander and peel in a mortal and pestal and I give it about 30 seconds of "smushing" to release the aromas a little bit right before I throw it in the boil. The recipe actually keeps these elements to just a "hint" (I personally think most wits have too much coriander and it's boiled too long as well) - the idea with this recipe is to let the hops (Amarillo) do the heavy "citrus lifting".

I'm not sure what my water PH is, I use BruNWater yellow malty profile and adjust all of my beers mashes with acid if needed.
 
@BeatnikTom, did you ever notice the orange being rather subdued as fermentation finished? I feel like it's going to need some zest added to the keg... My gravity reading today was 1.013 and it which is 5 points lower than it was Friday but it is getting really light.. I'm hoping it's about done as I feel like there will be nothing left...
I'd adjust the next batch to use fresher Amarillo, add more at 0 min, or make your chilling system work faster. You'll get more and better orange flavor and aroma from the Amarillo that way.

Side note: I don't know what your fermenter equipment is like, but I don't recommend mucking around in there taking readings. Just let it ferment. Then let it sit for another week or so.

Personally, I don't let my beers touch air or oxygen anywhere between when the yeast goes in the fermenter and it goes in my drinking glass.

I rarely care about final gravity, I often forget to even take a sample to measure it.
 
I'd adjust the next batch to use fresher Amarillo, add more at 0 min, or make your chilling system work faster. You'll get more and better orange flavor and aroma from the Amarillo that way.

Side note: I don't know what your fermenter equipment is like, but I don't recommend mucking around in there taking readings. Just let it ferment. Then let it sit for another week or so.

Personally, I don't let my beers touch air or oxygen anywhere between when the yeast goes in the fermenter and it goes in my drinking glass.

I rarely care about final gravity, I often forget to even take a sample to measure it.
i forgot to reply to this, but i was using a ss brewbuck when i took those samples, so no O2 intrusion.

ill have to brew this again, now that i have a counterflow.. although, i still like to whirlpool for a few minutes to knock the trube down.
 
Just checking, the coriander seeds and orange peel are really 0.1oz/3grams each? seems like very little....
 
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