Belgian Witbier - Critiques and Comments please?!

[fattox]

Hey guys, I'm working on the final stages of putting together a witbier for a local comp, and was wanting a bit of advice. At the moment, it's about a 12.5 litre batch (was 14, but I've since found my efficiency and scaled the recipe for what I have on hand)

1.25kg each pils and wheat
350g flaked oats
33g hallertauer hersbrucker @ 15 to go
300g orange blossom honey @ high krausen

yeast used is Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit (hoegaarden yeast)

What I was debating was maybe dropping the OB honey down a bit (mainly used to add floral/citrus flavour over coriander as I don't really trust coriander seeds I can get locally), and pumping in some zest at the end of the boil - I was thinking of the zest of ~2 decent sized navel oranges, a small lemon, and maybe half a red grapefruit or so, similar to something I read on another thread.

Can anyone sort of give any advice with this one? I was also thinking about using ~300g honey in the boil, just plain old normal honey but I wasn't sure whether this would dry it out too much.

Target stats are OG1050, 12.6 IBU, 7.2EBC colour, and 5.4% ABV with a mild citrus and floral flavour. Current brewhouse efficiency is approx. 62% using BIAB.

Thanks

 

[verysupple]

That might be a bit too much zest. I add the zest of 3 good size navel or valencia oranges to the boil at 5 min for a 23 L batch and it's just nice - just a nice background note and not too overpowering.

 

[fattox]

Ah yep. I might dial it down to 1/3 of what you're using considering the orange blossom during ferm. Planning on going in at high krausen so it should dry it out and leave a residualish floral orange taste

 

[yum beer]

don't expect too much from the honey in the way of flavour.
IMO better to leave it out, yes it will dry the beer out and wont give any of the flavours you are after. Taste the honey, it won't taste of orange. Stick with oranges for orange flavour.

 

[fcmcg]

Is throw in some black pepper if you aren't happy with the local coriander seed ...
Or try grains of paradise , if you can get it !