# AG Hoegaarden Clone



## seehuusen (5/11/14)

Hey guys,

I've wanted to do one of these for a while, but with all the other styles I've wanted to do, the wish list keeps getting longer and longer  LOL

Finally it has come time to plan the brew out for it, and I had a read on a couple of forums and a chat to HBHB over the phone.
He added a couple of interesting twists in as ideas, and as a result, this is the recipe I've come up with - Thanks Martin, appreciate your time and input 

I'm keen to hear what you think of it, and any tweaks you can suggest.
Also, I decided to make my version slightly less alcoholic, if you want to hit the original 4.9%, just up the grain bill accordingly.

Cheers
Martin



*Bosco Wit - Hoegaarden Clone*
Belgian Wit Ale
_Recipe by Bosco Brew House_






Original Gravity (OG): 1.044 (°P): 11.0
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (°P): 2.8
Alcohol (ABV): 4.32 %
Colour (SRM): 4.7 (EBC): 9.3
Bitterness (IBU): 18.6 (Average)

45.16% Heidelberg Malt (Best Malz) (Pilsner Styled Malt)
30.11% Wheat Malt (Barrett Burston) aka White Wheat Malt
19.35% Flaked Wheat (Blue Lake Milling)
5.38% Flaked Oats (Blue Lake Milling)

2.2 g/L Tettnanger (2.1% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
2.2 g/L Lubelski (2.9% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil)

0.1 g/L Chamomile Fresh Flower - Dried @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
0.5 g/L Corriander Seed @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
0.5 g/L Curacau Bitter Orange - Dried @ 5 Minutes (Boil)


MASH:
56 mash in - 20min
65.6 - 60min
rest at 72C - 10min


Fermented at 19°C with Wyeast 3944 - Belgian Witbier

_EDIT: Cleaned up the recipe look_


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## TidalPete (5/11/14)

Consider mashing equal proportions of BB Wheat & BL Flaked wheat & increase the Flaked Oats to around 9%-10% otherwise it's similar to the Hoegaarden lookalike (not clone  ) that's on tap at Sharkbait Manor ATVM.
Same yeast but Hallertauer instead of Tettnang & 5.4% ABV.


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

Thanks Pete  That is a good drop that, so good I think I got too small a glass as a taster last time  haha


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## beercus (5/11/14)

Here is one i did recently. I'm happy with it, just undercarbed... And a little off white...

I have not done a side by side comparison as of yet.

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/82373-help-with-witbier/


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

for my benefit, I'm curious, what would upping the flaked wheat and lowering the wheat malt do to the beer?

Thanks Beercus, I'll have a look at your recipe


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## TidalPete (5/11/14)

Flaked contains more starch and more proteins than malted wheat. It adds more mouthfeel and has a different taste. Most noticeable when used in larger amounts.

I ran short of flaked last time around so just used raw wheat from the health food shop. It's a little different from the one you sampled that time. 
Ran it through the mill twice to maximise the starch haze.
Have always used equal proportions of malted & flaked in my Wits. I like the result so I keep on doing it.

Don’t forget the rice gulls!


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

Thanks for the explanation Pete, informative as always :beerbang:
I did wonder how it would go with raw wheat from a health food shop, did the flavor become more "morning serial like"?


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## tazman1967 (5/11/14)

A tip for the Coriander..

I use the Indian Coriander seeds from the Indian Spice Shop, I think it imparts a slight "citrus" taste..
Also, give them a quick toast in a hot pan to bring out the flavour, this also burns off a little of the outer shell, which i think give a "vegetable" taste.


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

ah yeah thanks, I didn't add that in the recipe, I'll be toasting them in a pan and chucking them straight from pan into pot (at 5 mins)
It helps bring out the oils in the seed, imparting more flavor. Another way to get the same result would be to roast them in the oven.


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## TidalPete (5/11/14)

seehuusen said:


> I did wonder how it would go with raw wheat from a health food shop, did the flavor become more "morning serial like"?


Sharper aftertaste with perhaps a little more "bite" to the fore & a more drier mouthfeel TTBOMM but hard to tell if that was from the raw wheat as it was my first Wit in a ss fermenter & only kegged about a week ago.
Also remember that my palate isn't a world-beater at picking up little nuances like that. 

I'm just back from the beach & saw lots of rice gulls heading for Moffats so get down there ASAP.


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

What? LOL, you've either had too many or talking a language I don't know hahaha 
I was down at the happy valley beach, saw no rice and only one gull hahaha
Also, enlighten a new player, what is TTBOMM?


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## Blind Dog (5/11/14)

To the best of my memory


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## seehuusen (5/11/14)

Ah, thanks bd. All these "young" kids and their acronyms


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## mr_wibble (6/11/14)

I made a chamomile wheat beer, 20 litre batch with 25 grams of dried flower heads (note: heads *only*, not chamomile tea, which is (all?) leaves).
These went in at flameout.

This gave quite a significant floral, honey-like aroma. I really like it, but I must admit to finding it perhaps just a little surprising to see it in your Hoegaarden recipe.
It is a while since I had a Hoegaarden though ... and really, I don't think a bit of chamomile could hurt a wheat beer.


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## seehuusen (6/11/14)

It is only 2 or 3 grams in a 23l batch, something to linger in the background.
Definitely don't use tea, it'd make a chamomile tea beer lol

It was a hint from Martin/HBHB, who also said that it was often used in Belgium beers, but often omitted or forgotten in home brew recipes.

I'll be getting these from the local organic store, for any who's wondering where they can get them from


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## HBHB (6/11/14)

seehuusen said:


> It is only 2 or 3 grams in a 23l batch, something to linger in the background.
> Definitely don't use tea, it'd make a chamomile tea beer lol
> 
> It was a hint from Martin/HBHB, who also said that it was often used in Belgium beers, but often omitted or forgotten in home brew recipes.
> ...


Not quite. That was the Lubelski.

The Chamomile flowers is what is used in very small amounts in the Ho' - one of those things where a little goes a long way (JMHO).


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## Steve (6/11/14)

seehuusen said:


> What? LOL, you've either had too many or talking a language I don't know hahaha
> I was down at the happy valley beach, saw no rice and only one gull hahaha
> Also, enlighten a new player, what is TTBOMM?


 Rice gulls is an old joke on AHB.......it confuses lots of people so don't feel left out.
Cheers
Steve
P.S. Your recipe is sounding like a good one.


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## ro_arnold (10/11/14)

Howdy,

I planning on brewing one of these on G20 day. I've been looking at using the byo.com recipe. Anyone tried this one before? Any thoughts? 

Cheers,

Rohan

*HOEGAARDEN WIT*
_5 Gallons; OG = 1.048; FG = 1.011; IBU = 16_
*Ingredients:*

2 lbs. pale malt
2 lbs. malted wheat
1 lb. flaked wheat
1 lb. flaked oats
2 lbs. unhopped wheat dry malt extract (DME)
3 AAU East Kent Goldings hops (0.75 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
2 AAU Saaz hops (0.5 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
1/8 oz. lightly crushed coriander seed
1/4 oz. dried Curacao orange peel, shredded
1 cup unhopped light dry malt extract to prime
*Step by Step:*
Heat 9 quarts water to 163° F. Crush whole grains and add, with flaked grains as well, to liquor. Hold mash at 152° F for 90 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 12 quarts water at 170° F. Add DME, stir well, bring to a boil. Add East Kent Goldings hops, boil 45 minutes. Add Saaz hops, boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat, remove hops if possible. Add coriander and orange peel, steep 30 minutes.
Pour into fermenter along with enough pre-boiled and chilled water to make up 5.25 gallons. Cool to 70° F, pitch yeast. Ferment at 65° F for two weeks, rack to secondary and condition cooler (45° F) for three to four weeks. Prime with DME, bottle and age three to four weeks at 45° to 50° F. Serve at 40° F in a heavy glass tumbler.
*All-grain option:*
Replace the dried malt extract with another 1.5 lbs. each of pale malt and malted wheat. Increase mash water to 12 quarts and sparge water to 15 quarts. Mash time and temperatures will be the same. Proceed as above from boiling.
*All-extract option:*
Omit pale and wheat malts. Steep flaked wheat and oats in 3 gallons at 150° F for 30 minutes. Remove grains. Increase DME to 5 lbs., proceed as above from boiling.


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## seehuusen (8/10/15)

Well, bit of a grave dig, but i searched near and far, even tried growing chamomile flowers - a whole packet of seeds produced nothing what so ever... even gave it to my very much green-thumbed wife...

A few days ago, i came across the wyeast wit smack pack i bought a year ago and thought, what the heck, ill chuck it on the stir-plate in a 2l starter and see if it fires up.
Sure enough, 48h in and there was great activity.

So, i brewed up a batch of wort, minus the chamomile.
I decided to change the mash schedule to a double infusion mash, 50c/15mins, 66.7c/45mins and 75.6c/mashout.
Hit all my numbers bang on.
Oh yeah, just because id been out pinching the neighbors limes the other day, i zested one and added that in with the other 5min additions.

Will try to remember to report back, maybe even bring a bottle over to Pete


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## MHB (8/10/15)

I have brewed the recipe in "Brew Classic European Beers at Home" Wheeler, and its very close to the original, especially if you use the right yeast.
There is no Chamomile in the above recipe, the amount of Curacao Orange and Coriander (Indian) is startling small (7g of each/100L). Both are traditionally hung in the kettle in a muslin bag for the whole boil. As a side note avoid getting Coriander into the fermenter, it has some very unpleasant alcohol soluble flavours, they wont extract until there is alcohol so its fine in the kettle.
If you want to enhance the "Whiteness" of the beer add about a heaped teaspoon of plain flour/ 25L of wort to the kettle 5-10 minutes out from the end of the boil, yes a lot of the whiteness is starch haze, and watch you arse kicking off the boil it can be a monster foamer!

The BYO recipe is pretty much what you would expect from an Americanised version of a classic recipe - I think they over complicate it a bit and if there is a hint of a spice, add so much that its like being smacked in the face with it... than add some more, they are using ~7g of Curacao in 20L, Hoegaarden use 1/5th of that.
Never could understand the thinking "I like this beer so I'll make something vaguely like it, and then hide what I like behind a OD of spice" Meh go figure.
Sure if you really like Orange flavoured beer you could add more but I think five times as much and its pretty tenuous calling it a clone.

At about 1/2 adjunct, this beer has probably more adjunct/unmalted ingredient in than any other beer I have personally brewed, you might want to give some serious thought to your mash regime, I think a reasonable Glucanase and Proteinase rest are in order, if you aren't going to step mash, pre-boil your unmalted ingredients, best would be to put the adjunct in a pot with about 3-4X the weight of adjunct in tap water, include some of the malt (10% of the weight of adjunct) and heat slowly to a simmer, boil for 10-15 minutes, allow to cool to mashing temperature then mash the porridge and remaining grain in together.

After a couple of attempts the best version I came up with was this one, I switched out the Flaked Oat for Malted Oat, just to reduce the overall adjunct load and because I was getting a lot of gels from the Oats which my Braumeister just loved, it also makes lautering a bitch, or for a complex step mash and very long slow mash day (and part of the night)
It is still in BrewBuilder Mark




Oops, that should be Bitter Orange not sweet - will fix it
M


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## Topher (8/10/15)

Im so brewing this! A good fresh belgiun wheat is almost as good as a fresh good Bavarian wheat!


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## RelaxedBrewer (8/10/15)

I can recommend adding a Beta-Gluecanase rest at 40C to stop the unmated wheat and oat making glue. I found I can just use flour for the wheat when adding this rest.

Love a good Wit beer and so does the misses, so it is a regular at my house.


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## Topher (8/10/15)

Ok. Last time i tried a low temp rest with a weizen I made some crap that caked the element in my urn. It was .5cm thick and black and the burnt taste ruined the beer. 
I now only mash in at higher temps. Any solition?


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## Brewman_ (8/10/15)

Hi Topher,
If your brewing in an urn with exposed element, a couple of things you could try..

A stainless strainer bowl that fits over the element. Or if you use a bag partially elevate the bag.

This is the beer I want to do for Bitter and Twisted, well the second one after the hop hog clone.


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## beercus (9/10/15)

I made a clone back in Nov last year. I posted it here then (see page 1)

It was not great at the start. I have just recently chilled a couple of bottles and it has aged magnificently. A year in the bottle and now it is smooth with just enough spice, great carb and perfect head....

I'm glad now i chucked it in the cupboard and forgot about it, as this will go down very well in the hot weather and the Missus is a fan too.

"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet."

Beercus


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## seamad (9/10/15)

Topher said:


> Ok. Last time i tried a low temp rest with a weizen I made some crap that caked the element in my urn. It was .5cm thick and black and the burnt taste ruined the beer.
> I now only mash in at higher temps. Any solition?


When I BIABed in a crown concealed element urn I made a long handled scrubbing brush, before starting the boil depower and give the element a good scrub to remove the soft stuff before it burns on, may pay to repeat just when you get to the boil. Made a wit on Monday, have left my RIMS tube to soak in PBW as element has a lot of black on it, just checked it this morning and 80% fallen off, just recharged it to finish off.
You'll get lower eff with raw wheat as well, I've found running the wheat through the mill 3X helps, plus doughing in @ 40 and ramping up to sacc temp over an hour helps.


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## seehuusen (9/10/15)

Mhb, i totally agree with the over complication done by many a home brewer and especially the addition of too much of everything.

Im a massive fan of Hoegaarden, since before i got into hoppy craft beers, this has held the number 1 spot of beers for me for a long long time. Trust me, the recipe will be thoroughly scrutinized 

I like your simplified recipe, probably closer to what would be done on a commercial scale.
The chamomile addition I've read about as traditional on multiple occasions and is only there to create that little extra, which you can't put your finger on, but adds another dimension (note its a very small addition). Im happy to hear that you dont add any. 

Looking at your recipe, Im glad i choose to do a stepped mash for this one, it did seem necessary for the amount of adjuncts  FYI, my colour and haze is spot on.

Cheers,
Martin


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## MHB (9/10/15)

The book "Brew Classic European Beers at Home" is co-authored by Graham Wheeler and Rodger Protz, both of then are well enough known in the industry to get very good access to breweries - and good quality information from the brewers to.
I find the recipes reliable and very close to the original, given that they were written when the list of ingredients available to home brewers was a bit scant, so sometimes a bit of juggling is in order.
Most commercial beers (outside the US anyway) tend to be very simple, the classic being Budejovice (the real Budweiser) 1 malt 1 hop 1 hop addition and a shed load of good brewing. I aspire to being able to brew that well!
Mark


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## seamad (11/10/15)

Was going to top crop the first batch I pitched on Friday with Forbidden Fruit. After 24 hours had a nice krausen, thought I'd leave it another 24 hours...went down this morning and nothing on top, checked gravity and it's down from 1050 to 1014, bloody Belgian yeasts.


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## pist (12/10/15)

seehuusen said:


> Mhb, i totally agree with the over complication done by many a home brewer and especially the addition of too much of everything.
> 
> Im a massive fan of Hoegaarden, since before i got into hoppy craft beers, this has held the number 1 spot of beers for me for a long long time. Trust me, the recipe will be thoroughly scrutinized
> 
> ...


The step mashing is non negotiable. First and last one i did, i did a single step infusion mash, mostly out of laziness. Turned out horrible. Hardly any body, tasted watery. Next time ill be step mashing


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## seehuusen (12/10/15)

I figured the same from the ingredients, that's why I did the step mash. Thanks for confirming that :beerbang:



pist said:


> The step mashing is non negotiable. First and last one i did, i did a single step infusion mash, mostly out of laziness. Turned out horrible. Hardly any body, tasted watery. Next time ill be step mashing


The wort has dropped 20 points already, and is tasting amazing IMO.
You know, when you drink the entire gravity sample and go, yum h34r:


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## MHB (12/10/15)

And people laugh at me for using a 250mL measuring cylinder, it has to be that big to hold the thermometer and the hydrometer ... right?


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## pajs (13/10/15)

Made one of these last night. Good smells this morning when pitching the yeast, but it so wanted to stick and burn in the pot as I ramped up for the step mashing. First time I've had to scrub out my BIAB pot before the start of the boil. My first Belgian wheat beer, so keen to see how it turns out.


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## Doctormcbrewdle (6/1/18)

I'm curious, has anyone tried a 'wheat' beer with plain pilsner base malt, wit yeast and same ibu? I'm strongly considering trying this for my next batch instead of the wheat additions but everything else to tradition. I searched around for answers but couldn't find a definite to what wheat malt really tastes like and if it differs that much from pale barley malt.

I've made one belgian before which was a pre packaged kit which used 70% wheat malt and 30% pale. It's actually the only ag batch I've tipped before it tasted so weak. Like water almost. Is this the wheat? Seems far too much concentration looking around at other recipes


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## Matplat (8/1/18)

An all barley grist with a weizen yeast is called a Dampfbier.... have a google of that.


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## breakbeer (9/1/18)

This recipe is delicious, I make it often & have a keg of it right now.
I've also done it with WLP300 Hefeweizen yeast

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/beer-recipe-of-the-week-hoegaarden-white/


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## Doctormcbrewdle (9/1/18)

You've twisted my arm. I'm a lover of fine Hoegaarden and won't spend time and effort on a halfass brew. Thing is, I don't have flaked wheat and can't get it for under $28 freight for 1kg.. I see a local organic shop has raw wheat though, can I mill and mash that instead!?


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## breakbeer (10/1/18)

Doctormcbrewdle said:


> You've twisted my arm. I'm a lover of fine Hoegaarden and won't spend time and effort on a halfass brew. Thing is, I don't have flaked wheat and can't get it for under $28 freight for 1kg.. I see a local organic shop has raw wheat though, can I mill and mash that instead!?



To be honest, I just used what I had in hand which was Wheat Malt

I used Target (FWH) instead of Nugget, added .25kg of acidulated malt & this for the dried orange peel..


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## Doctormcbrewdle (10/1/18)

Thanks for sharing man.

I ended up buying the raw wheat grain and have done a little reading. People say they either cereal mash (no thanks) step mash (mmmm. Pass) or just add it to a standard mash with at least 50% malted barley which apparently provides ability to convert the wheat and most get great conversion

Come to think about it more though, think I'll do the step mash, just in case. It's only another hour in the tun


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