Thoughts on this Pale Witbier recipe?

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cjp87

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Hi all, I'm relatively new to homebrewing, with two all-grain batches under my belt (first one had all sorts of disasters, but turned out pleasantly decent, second one failed to bottle condition, so I spun them around a few times and am letting them sit for a few more weeks). I'm getting ready for my third batch, and I'm thinking about trying a pale witbier, similar to Boulevard's collaboration White IPA, but maybe a little more wit and a little less India. So here's what I've pieced together on Brewer's Friend:

Batch Size: 2.5g
Boil Size: 4.5g (is this enough?)

3 lbs. Belgian Wheat
2 lbs. Belgian Pilsner
1 lb. Belgian Pale

.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet @ 60 min
.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet @ 10 min
.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet, Hop Stand @ 200º
(Optional) 1.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet, Dry Hopping 10 days, end of fermentation

Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit

Mash @ ~155º for 1 hour
Batch Sparge
Ferment at 74º (primary only)

Calculated Information:
SRM: 4.4
IBU: 41.83
ABV: 6.15%
Original Gravity: 1.063
Final Gravity: 1.016

How does this look to you guys? Any recommendations for modifying it? I'd like to keep the Mosaic hops because they're a really interesting newer variety to me (just had a Prairie Artisan Ales Funky Gold Mosaic, and it was excellent), but do the hop proportions or times, or the grain bill, need refining? And would the dry hopping we worthwhile? Mosaic has been described as citra on steroids, so there are lots of fruit flavors to be found there.

Speaking of, one thing I noticed in my earlier brews is that despite a relatively high hop content based on the calculator, there wasn't a ton of hop characteristics in the first two batches. The second I'll chalk up to still being green, but the first had plenty of time to age, and it only got bitterness, despite hopping at 60/20/10/Hop Stand with Galaxy and Pilgrim hops. If I'm building this around Mosaic hops, I'd like to get the characteristics of it into the beer.

Thanks for any input!

Edit: Oh, and I would add coriander and possibly orange peel to the wort at the end of boiling.
 
Part of what makes a witbier is that it's "wit", white. It has to have flaked grain to give it the protein to make it cloudy. So maybe swap a pound of wheat for flaked wheat.

Getting 2.5 gallons from a 4.5 gallon boil - that's going to be a long boil. Which is not a problem, if you have the time.

Mosaic is excellent. You hopping schedule looks good. Don't overdo the coriander, but, in my opinion, you can't have too much orange peel (you can mix bitter and sweet).

Post your result.
 
Batch Size: 2.5g
Boil Size: 4.5g (is this enough?)

3 lbs. Belgian Wheat
2 lbs. Belgian Pilsner
1 lb. Belgian Pale

.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet @ 60 min
.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet @ 10 min
.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet, Hop Stand @ 200º
(Optional) 1.25oz Mosaic Hops pellet, Dry Hopping 10 days, end of fermentation

Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit

Mash @ ~155º for 1 hour
Batch Sparge
Ferment at 74º (primary only)

Calculated Information:
SRM: 4.4
IBU: 41.83
ABV: 6.15%
Original Gravity: 1.063
Final Gravity: 1.016


Speaking of, one thing I noticed in my earlier brews is that despite a relatively high hop content based on the calculator, there wasn't a ton of hop characteristics in the first two batches. The second I'll chalk up to still being green, but the first had plenty of time to age, and it only got bitterness, despite hopping at 60/20/10/Hop Stand with Galaxy and Pilgrim hops .


First, I'd say you might use a brewing calculator to figure out your boil size. You can use the standard settings and then adjust once you've brewed a few batches and get a sense if your boil-off rate and mash/kettle loss.

Then, based on your hop concerns I would look at how long you are conditioning. You said it had plenty of time to age. If you are talking 3-4 weeks, you might be loosing a good amount of flavor to time. You can also move some of your 10 minute addition to whirlpool to boost the flavor. 41 ibus is pretty intense for a wit. You might want to focus more on flavor additions for a delicate beer like this.

Lastly, for newer brewers I would recommend focusing on a classic style. A lot of people charge into their first few batches with vanilla bourbon maple porters and other crazy hybrids. You'll learn much more if you start with a simple recipe and tweak it as you go. In this case I would either try out a wit or an IPA. There a ton of info out there on both styles. White IPA is relatively uncharted water.
 
Thanks for the comments, guys. I adjusted the recipe a bit, replacing one pound of wheat with one pound of flaked wheat as suggested (didn't realize that flaked wheat would give it the wit characteristic as opposed to Belgian Wheat), and I moved half the 60 minute hops to whirlpool, which dropped the IBUs to 33.7. I think that should still be enough to give it that pale kick, but maybe pull it back down from the lower end of traditional IPA bitterness.

I wasn't sure about the boil size, but I know that my first two batches ended up with too little beer in the end. My first batch (aka the disaster batch, thanks to a broken thermometer and grossly underestimated grain absorption) ended up with only one gallon. The second one we aimed for about a 3.5-4 gallon boil, and ended up with about 2 gallons, but we also let that boil for 80 minutes instead of just an hour, so that may have contributed. Maybe I'll aim for just a 4 gallon boil and watch the volume as it goes.

The first one did bottle condition for about 3 weeks, the second one for 2 (when I tried it first). The second was pretty hard to get a read on though, since it still had all the priming sugar in it. I'll test a bottle of this batch at 2 weeks.

As for going with standard/simple styles, that makes a lot of sense. I actually wanted to move to just doing simple single-hop pales/IPAs after this wit for awhile, trying different hops and refining the process. This just sounded like a really nice beer to have in the dead of Oklahoma summer!
 
As for going with standard/simple styles, that makes a lot of sense. I actually wanted to move to just doing simple single-hop pales/IPAs after this wit for awhile, trying different hops and refining the process. This just sounded like a really nice beer to have in the dead of Oklahoma summer!

Yeah, and my comments weren't meant to dissuade you from experimenting. That's half the fun of homebrewing. It's just important to remember that by limiting your variables you can learn a lot more about ingredients and process. In any case, I hope this one turns out great; Mosaic is a tasty hop!
 
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