Ken's BIAB Witbier

[KenJohnson]

I know, its a challenging first brew. So im sort of ready for it to not be perfect. hell, i'd be happy with something that resembles beer at the end of it!

 

[Nick JD]

If you ferment at 18C and pitch the correct amount and leave out the corriander and bitter orange, you'll get a great Witbier.

If not, you might get a great beer ... but myself and a few experienced brewers I've talked with have made celery soup. I've excelled in taking this one step further in making farty ham and celery soup.

Take heed ... the Wit is a difficult nut to crack!

 

[TidalPete]

ok so going over some other things people have posted. A step mash seems to be the most common with wheat based beers... they all have either an acid rest (about 40C) or a protein rest (about 50C)... followed by rest in the low/mid 60's, then another one in the low 70's, then finally mashout (78C).

seem like a lot of steps, which of course i'm quite happy to do

I like the sounds of this sort of thing:

50C - 20mins
64C - 30mins
72C - 30mins
78C - 10mins

thoughts anyone?

With all that wheat it might be an idea to do a 40 minute Ferulic Acid rest @ 42 deg.
I've had some success with 50% base malt, 5% oats & the remainder split equally between malted & torrified wheat. Mash low at 63-64Deg c.

 

[KenJohnson]

food for thought, thanks guys

I deffinatly dont want celery soup haha, that acid rest idea is interesting, how does it effect the final taste of the beer? I do keep hearing about it, seems pretty common with german wheats

 

[manticle]

Pushes clove in a weizen. Not sure about in a wit.

 

[TidalPete]

Pushes clove in a weizen. Not sure about in a wit.

It's fine combined with a lowish fermentation temp. As long as you want cloves that is?

 

[KenJohnson]

yeah i dont know if i'd be too keen for that sort of flavour. in a wit anyway

I still wouldnt mind starting off with a short protein rest. so like start off at say 55C for 10 mins or so, and then just raise to mash temp carefully. I'd have a cake rack under the bag, it seems quite simple with careful heating and a bit of stirring. just gotta watch the temperature

 

[KenJohnson]

ok, got all my ingredients. So i've just gotta get a new gas cylinder and i'm ready to go. A friend of mine who has done a few witbiers, suggested I use lactic acid to get the PH right. has anyone else got experience with this? I assume you'd just test the ph during the mash, and then just add it in.

 

[Nick JD]

ok, got all my ingredients. So i've just gotta get a new gas cylinder and i'm ready to go. A friend of mine who has done a few witbiers, suggested I use lactic acid to get the PH right. has anyone else got experience with this? I assume you'd just test the ph during the mash, and then just add it in.

The alternative is to use acidulated malt (basically lactic acid riddled malt) - just make sure your mate knows what pH he's aiming for, and the factors that affect the measurement of pH. Sounds like he's onto it though.

pH is a big deal with most pale european beers - Ze Germans are very particular about it.

 

[KenJohnson]

Ok, update time!

So I had an early taste of the wit last night, been about a week in the bottle. I have to say, not bad so far
As for the brewday, well i learnt many lessons that day, but all in all it went fairly smoothly. Here's how it went down...

actual ingredients I ended up using:
2.54 kg german pilsner
2.25 kg home made torrified wheat
500 grams quick oats

30 gm saaz hops
15 gm coriander seeds
safbrew T-58 yeast
one Tbs liquid calcium chloride
about 5ml of lactic acid

 

[KenJohnson]

problems encountered: Well firstly, my wussy gas cooker took ages to get her through the different steps. AGES. also I couldnt get a very good boil going, which I think attributed to the amount of crap left in suspension in the wort. this made is very hard to make accurate gravity readings. also there was a huge layer of crud in the fermenter, so had to siphon into my other fermenter at bottling time.

so i've got some upgrades to do: better/bigger gas cooker, install a tap on my kettle, get a better quality thermometer.

as for the beer, it wasnt half bad considering the aforementioned problems. i THINK its around 4.5 % abv. tastes refreshing, slight banana aroma, VERY slight ham aroma (from coriander, but not as much as i find in actual Hoegaarden!), nice head and lacing, pale straw colour.

so far so good I think

 

[RelaxedBrewer]

Good to hear.

The misses and I like a good Wit beer and I have brewed a few now. I have been working it out slowly.
I am very interested to hearing about yours. I always get a lot of crud in the fermenter, but it is all good. Helps keep the Wit cloudy.
I find the yeast is pretty important to a good wit.

I currently have one in the fermenter at the moment and it should be ready to bottle very soon.
Your recipe looks pretty similar to mine.
I actually used flour for the raw wheat in that batch (first time trying it).

From memory my recipe was
2kg pilsner
2kg flour
500g rolled oats
500g wheat malt

saaz 30g

15 min in boil
10g coriander
zest of 3 oranges

3944 (crop topped from last batch)

I can give you more details if you are interested.

RB

 

[professional_drunk]

I've done a wit recently. I used
50% pilsner
45% burghul
5% oats

single infusion 64c

0.5g p/litre finished volume of toasted coriander
0.5g p/litre finished volume of orange rind

Coriander wasn't enough. I might try 1g p/l next time. I thought the orange was right.

 

[KenJohnson]

wow, just plain old wheat?! how do you use it, just dump in with grains? thats very interesting, and also using burghal. how does it end up tasting in the beer?

My mash temperatures for anyone interested...
protein rest 50-52 C for about half an hour
then up to 65 for 90 minutes
then up to 78 and pulled the bag out.

this all took a lot longer then what i'd hoped, because of my weak arse gas stove. where would i find a decent burner to get the temperature moving faster?

 

[andy@67]

G'day Ken,

Ray's Outdoors or BCF sell appropriate burners you can get a 3 ring burner or the Companion Mega Jet which would do double batches if you wanted. The Mega Jet costs $158 at Ray's with the VIP discount.

Regards,

Andrew.

 

[RelaxedBrewer]

I did a acid rest at ~40 then slowly raised it to 66 over about 30-40min.
Then held the mash at 66 for 1 hr.

The rest at 40 is important to stop the flour making glue (it also add some tartness).

I ended up with a efficiency of ~90 which was much higher then I expected (must have been the flour).
I think I am going to have to try to adjust the volume at bottling time or it is going to be a very strong wit.

RB