I’m having a go with another Belgian Witbier. This time I’m reducing the grain bill, and excluding honey from the recipe.
The resulting Witbier will obviously be less alcoholic, and a more traditional drink.
The flavourings, hop additions and yeast are otherwise all identical to my other recent Belgian Witbier recipe.
This recipe is borrowed from BYO, although I made a few small changes.
My supplier was out of rice hulls, so I omitted them, and I chose to use Extra Pale Maris Otter instead of the more traditional Pilsner malt.
Belgian Witbier Ingredients
2.5kg torrified wheat
2.5kg Extra pale maris otter
0.5 kg flaked oats
113g munich malt
I wanted to add 227g rice hulls, but these were out of stock at the time.
Hops: 56.50 g East Kent Goldings and 37g Saaz
Yeast: 1 x Fermentis Safale K-97 Yeast 11g
For flavourings, I’m using 15g bitter orange peel, 4g black peppercorns, 15g coriander seeds, and three chamomile tea bags, in a hop bag.
I’m using the Brew-in-a-bag method, as usual.
So, again, I’ve gone for a one hour of mashing the grains, followed by a one hour boil. Hops are added all at once for the full hour, while the orange peel etc is added in the last 10 minutes.
I left the the wort to cool overnight, and on transfer to the fermentor was left with 17.25 litres of wort. I opted to top this up to the 22 L mark, and added 400g of DME, the hydrometer read giving me an OG of 1.060
I added the rehydrated yeast, and noticed the first airlock activity within the first 4.5 hours.
I’ll be bottling around the 3rd of August, and after a couple of weeks we’ll be able to compare this beer with my other Belgian Witbier, and decide which recipe I’ll go with in the future…
Belgian Witbier – Brew Day 17th July 2020
