Recipe Critique - Powder Glade Wit - HELP Please!

DGibb · Dec 21, 2011

Hi, my brother is in town for the holidays, and I want to get a brew going to crack open in February. We made an APA together, and I have since made a Holiday Spiced Brown and a Cyser. I want to try my hand at this, so please help me out with this recipe. According to Hopville, the recipe fits the style, but I made this essentially from scratch. I would love to get some input. I plan on brewing on the 26th, so time is of the essence!

Thanks so much!

The original recipe I came up with is here at Hopville: Powder Glade Wit

The only substitution I have from this is that I plan on using Willamette hops (AA 4.5%) that I got from a Black Friday sale.

Here is the recipe for those who don't want to click through:

3.0 lb Extra Light DME
2.0 lb Flaked Wheat
1.0 lb Wheat DME

0.75 oz Willamette (AA 4.5%, 60 min)
0.50 oz Willamette (AA 4.5%, 20 min)

Spices added to boil at 10 minutes remaining:
0.50 oz Coriander Seed (cracked)
0.50 oz Grains of Paradise (cracked)
0.50 oz Bitter Orange Peel
0.25 oz Sweet Orange Peel

White Labs Belgian Wheat Ale Yeast (WLP400)

Ferment 14 days at 65F
Bottle, condition for 30 days.

BillyBroas · Dec 21, 2011

The flaked wheat needs to be mashed with a base malt to convert the starches. Have you done a partial mash?

DGibb · Dec 22, 2011

Hmm, no, I haven't. I have only done extract + specialty grains. I thought the flaked wheat worked as a specialty grain. Any suggestions for me if I can't do partial mash? I am doing a stove top partial boil.

plumbob · Dec 22, 2011

If you've practiced keeping a steep at a constant temp you can do a partial mash no problem. I would say throw a pound of 6-row pale malt in with your flaked wheat and mash it for an hour at 155 degrees. you need the pale malt to convert the starches in the wheat. Mashing without a base malt won't do anything useful.

Basically heat 3 gal of water to 160, and preheat the oven to its lowest setting. Once you hit about 155 int eh kettle turn off the oven, and once you hit 160 int the kettle add your grain bag. Put the whole kettle in the oven (with the oven OFF but having been preheated) for one hour, stir every 15min.

After an hour pull the grain bag out of the kettle, let it drain for a minute or two and then dip it back in, repeat as many times as you can stand.

Tada! You've got a wort, and should have reasonable efficiency to boot. Just dissolve you LME/DME into the mix prior to the boil and you are off and running.

Welcome to partial mash, you've done everything an all grain brewer does in one form or another, just without all the equipment to go along with it.

BillyBroas · Dec 22, 2011

Good advice from plumbob.

Here is the go-to partial mash guide on HBT if you want more instruction: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

I would make some slight recipe changes. The rule of thumb is to mash a pound of base malt for every pound of adjunct (the flaked wheat). Also, since you're mashing the base malt that will replace some of the sugars that you would get from the DME.

So it would look like this:

2.0 lb Extra Light DME
2.0 lb Pale Malt (mash)
2.0 lb Flaked Wheat (mash)
1.0 lb Wheat DME

Let us know if you still have questions.