Dark Wit help

[porterguy]

I'm trying to make a dark wit beer. I do mostly clone recipes, so I'm ;looking for some feedback/assistance. My grain bill currently looks like this:

3 lb. Pilsen
3 lb. Wheat
.75 lb. Munich
.50 lb. Chocolate Wheat
.50 lb. flaked wheat (was planning on more, but only had 1/2 lb. on hand)
.50 lb. Crystal 40
.25 lb. Special B

Hops 1 oz. Hallertau
.50 oz. coriander (or seeds of paradise?)
.50 oz. dried orange peel

Yeast- Nottingham or ?

Thanks!

 

[goovaerl92]

So assuming that you are an extract brewer, I would change this recipe only slightly. When I design recipes for myself as well as for customers, I prefer to keep the grain bill as simple as possible. The more grains you have in your beer, the less you can actually taste. So my revision would look like this:

3# Pilsner
3#Wheat
0.5# Flaked Wheat
0.5# Chocolate Wheat malt
0.5# Special B

1oz Hallertauer @ 60
0.25oz Hallertauer @ 30
0.5oz Hallertauer @ 5

0.5oz Coriander @ 5
0.5oz Dried orange peel @ 5

Because this is still a wit beer, I would opt for a wit yeast such as WLP400 or Wyeast 3944. The Nottingham will be far too clean and you would end up with a beer that does not taste like a wit beer. In the end, this recipe will give you a beer that clocks in at 4.3%, 26.2 SRM and 14 IBU's

Hope this helps! Cheers!

 

[afr0byte]

So assuming that you are an extract brewer, I would change this recipe only slightly. When I design recipes for myself as well as for customers, I prefer to keep the grain bill as simple as possible. The more grains you have in your beer, the less you can actually taste. So my revision would look like this:

3# Pilsner
3#Wheat
0.5# Flaked Wheat
0.5# Chocolate Wheat malt
0.5# Special B

1oz Hallertauer @ 60
0.25oz Hallertauer @ 30
0.5oz Hallertauer @ 5

0.5oz Coriander @ 5
0.5oz Dried orange peel @ 5

Because this is still a wit beer, I would opt for a wit yeast such as WLP400 or Wyeast 3944. The Nottingham will be far too clean and you would end up with a beer that does not taste like a wit beer. In the end, this recipe will give you a beer that clocks in at 4.3%, 26.2 SRM and 14 IBU's

Hope this helps! Cheers!

Why are you assuming they're an extract brewer?

 

[Talgrath]

So assuming that you are an extract brewer, I would change this recipe only slightly. When I design recipes for myself as well as for customers, I prefer to keep the grain bill as simple as possible. The more grains you have in your beer, the less you can actually taste. So my revision would look like this:

3# Pilsner
3#Wheat
0.5# Flaked Wheat
0.5# Chocolate Wheat malt
0.5# Special B

1oz Hallertauer @ 60
0.25oz Hallertauer @ 30
0.5oz Hallertauer @ 5

0.5oz Coriander @ 5
0.5oz Dried orange peel @ 5

Because this is still a wit beer, I would opt for a wit yeast such as WLP400 or Wyeast 3944. The Nottingham will be far too clean and you would end up with a beer that does not taste like a wit beer. In the end, this recipe will give you a beer that clocks in at 4.3%, 26.2 SRM and 14 IBU's

Hope this helps! Cheers!

What makes you think he's an extract brewer? That looks like an all grain malt bill to me...

 

[Talgrath]

I'd still stick with a Wit yeast, using Nottingham yeast is going to make the beer taste more like a brown ale or a porter. I don't have my beer calculation software with me at the moment, if you're looking for a dark brown or black color you might not have enough dark grain in the recipe to really get the color you want, other than that it looks pretty tasty to me.

 

[porterguy]

I'm going with the 3944 yeast. But what can I add to darken it without seriously changing the flavor profile? More black wheat? Some debittered Belgian?

 

[snowveil]

I'm going with the 3944 yeast. But what can I add to darken it without seriously changing the flavor profile? More black wheat? Some debittered Belgian?

if you're looking for a lot of color contribution without much flavor added, you could go for Briess Blackprinz malt. A little goes a long way. Or you could go the classic Black IPA route and go with Carafa III. A few ounces of either should darken your beer considerably.

*edit* I forgot to mention, consider a late mash addition of the dark malts. They tend to be less aggressive this way. I typically add dark malts in my stouts (and schwartzbier that's fermenting now) in the last 10 minutes of the mash.

 

[Talgrath]

I'm going with the 3944 yeast. But what can I add to darken it without seriously changing the flavor profile? More black wheat? Some debittered Belgian?

Well, I tend to be of the mind that if a beer is dark it should taste like it...but that's me. First, I would run your recipe through a recipe calculator to see approximately what color it should turn out if you're looking for a particularly dark color; that just doesn't look like enough dark malts to make a particularly dark beer as it stands but I'm not somewhere that I can run the calculations right now. As snowveil mentioned above Carafa in the last bit of the mash should make for a dark color addition; alternatively, you could increase the chocolate wheat and/or chocolate malt if you don't want grain added just for a color.

 

[IslandLizard]

You could add another .5 pound of Chocolate wheat. It still won't be opaque black, more like a very deep mahogany when viewed against light, but it appears black otherwise.

I would not mash but just steep the dark grains at 150F and add the steeping and sparging liquors at the end of the boil to prevent the cooked coffee flavor and unwanted astringency.