Rose Water Wit

A Belgian style White ale brewed with rose water. Belgian style White beer is a refreshing summer beer that is perfect in the kitchen for cooking with and outside to drink by the grill. Traditionally brewed with a large proportion of Wheat in the grist bill and spiced with Orange peel and Coriander. The twist for this batch will the be the addition of rose water.

To make the rose water I steeped roses in warm water overnight.  This "rose water" was then used as the strike water. The bouquet of aromatics from the water the next morning was intense and tasted of perfume, grass, and just plain floral. I felt the White beer style would complement these flavors much the way Hibiscus flowers flavor Dieu du Ciel!'s White beer Rosee de Hibiscus.

Grist bill of N. American two row malt, Wheat Malt, Torrified Wheat, Unmalted Wheat, and Flaked Oats. First wort hopped with locally grown whole leaf Cascade (which are nothing like traditional Cascade) by Chesapeake Hop Co.  Fermented with Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit.

White Beer with Lime

Brewing a collaborative recipe today with my good friend Brent Baughman. He's moving to Portland in a few weeks to continue his brewing adventures and if anyone is looking for a damn good veteran brewer they should hire him. We began taking stock of what was available to brew with. With the yeast selection (chico, lager, hefe, and two wit strains) on hand we decided to brew a Belgian style White beer with fresh Lime peel instead of the traditional curacao orange peel. A small twist on a classic style. We used the zest of three limes and a half cup of lime juice added at the end of boil as well as the ground coriander. Fermented with Wyeast 3463 Forbidden Fruit yeast strain for a classic wit biere flavor profile.

another Tangelo Wit

Brewing the same recipe Tangelo Wit as I did this last Sunday. The only change will be different yeast. Fermentis Safbrew T-58, a very versatile dry yeast. I enjoy both brewing and drinking Belgian whites. Today's beer is brewed with barley, wheat, and oats. Spiced with hops, coriander, lemon peel, and tangelos. Most likely I'll be brewing two batches of my White Heat (a double white with hot peppers) onto the yeast cakes of the two tangelo wits.

Beer Advocate describes Belgian White biere as, "A Belgian Style ale that's very pale and cloudy in appearance due to it being unfiltered and high level of wheat, and sometimes oats, that's used in the mash. Always spiced, generally with coriander, orange peel and other oddball spices and herbs in the back ground. The crispness and slight twang comes from the wheat and the lively carbonation. This is one style that many brewers in the US have taken a liking to and have done a very good job of staying to style. Sometimes served with a lemon, but if you truly want to enjoy the untainted subtleties of this style you'll ask for yours without one. Often referred to as 'white beers' (witbieren) due to the cloudiness/yeast in suspension."

Tangelo Wit

Went to the grocery store the day before the Mid-Atlantic blizzard to get clementines to brew another batch of Clementine Wit. Though when I arrived at the store I noticed a lack of clementines and the only other interesting citrus was tangelo's. Tangelo's are a hybrid of tangerines and/or pomelo and grapefruit. I brewed an Amber Tangerine Wit last October and was pleased with the flavor the tangerines contributed. In short, I'm brewing a Tangelo Wit beer today.

Brewed with barley, wheat, and oats. Spiced with hops, coriander, lemon peel, and tangelo's.

Dark Amber Tangerine Wit

An amber russet colored wit. Brew with 60/40 pale/wheat malt. Speacialty malts are amber, munich, crystal 60 and toasted flaked oats. I toasted flaked oats in the oven to create a full on oatmeal cookie aroma. For spicing I'm using some toasted coriander as well as coriander that has not been toasted, along with a little chamomile. Adding all the spices and five scored tangerines with five minutes left in boil. I've brewed a few diffferent wit style beers that have been pale in color, this one with darker specialty malts has some similarity's to the german weiss being light (a belgian wit in this case) and dunkelweiss darker but with traditional weiss characteristics. Maybe this is a "Dunkel Wit" of sorts. Very bready tasting wort, english muffin, toast, and shortbread flavors. For yeast I'll be blending White Labs Belgian Wit WLP400 and Safbrew T-58 (half packet), I've have had great results with this blend in the past on my clementine wit.

Le Noir Petit Mort

A black white beer. The idea of the beer doesn't make sense, but Quebec brewery's and the Bruery out of Orange County, CA have made sense of what this style can be. To the eye the beer in the glass appears to be a porter or stout, until the aroma surrounds you with the Belgian citrus and coriander. Some confusion and intrigue the first time you try this beer. The taste is dry like the whiter version but with some more body. The dark malts don't overpower this style but play a supporting role to the lead roles of citrus and coriander of the classic white beer. The crystal and dark malts create a chocolate covered orange effect. In this batch we used pale and wheat malt. As well as crystal, aromatic, and dark munich. The color was achieved with debittered belgian black malt and chocolate wheat. Some molasses was added for color and flavor. Lightly hopped to not overtake the spices and malts. A great summer beer that doesn't look like a summer beer. A collaborative recipe between myself and fellow brewer and master mead maker Jon Talkington of Brimming Horn Meadery. We used lots of spices and added more as we tasted the wort during the process. Both being surprised by how much the darker malts masked the normally poignant flavor of white beer, citrus and coriander. Cooled to 70 degrees in thirty five minutes and pitched Fermentis Safbrew T-58 dry yeast.

'My Darling Clementine' Wit

Last year I brewed a Wit beer with coriander, lemon, and whole kumquats. The grocery store was out of kumquats. So there I stand, wondering if I should still try and brew a wit today. The store had all the usual citrus fruits on hand. I didn't want any of that. Thankfully I stumbled on boxes of clementines. Never used that in brewing I thought. Using a variety of grains today. Pale malt, wheat malt, flaked oats and wheat, and some Belgian aromatic for some color and english muffin flavor. Mashed in at one hundred fifty two degrees, and rested forty five minutes. Of course some coriander was thrown into the kettle.

Of course a little something from wikipedia for a brief word about ingredients and style history. "Witbier, White beer, (French: bière blanche), or simply Witte is a barley/wheat, top-fermented beer brewed mainly in Belgium, although there are also examples in the Netherlands and elsewhere. It gets its name due to suspended yeast and wheat proteins which cause the beer to look hazy, or white, when cold. It is a descendant from those Medieval beers which were not brewed with hops, but instead flavoured and preserved with a blend of spices and other plants referred to as gruit. It therefore still uses gruit, although nowadays the gruit consists mainly of coriander, orange, bitter orange, and hops. The taste is therefore only slightly hoppish, and is very refreshing in summer. The beers have a somewhat sour taste due to the presence of lactic acid. The suspended yeast in the beer causes some continuing fermentation in the bottle. Witbier differs from other varieties of wheat beer in the use of gruit herbs. French laws (the territory

was French in the 14th century) prohibited the use of hops in gruit. Witbier can be made with raw wheat, in addition to wheat malt. Coriander grows wild over a wide area of the Near East and southern Europe, which forced Zohary and Hopf to admit that "it is hard to define exactly where this plant is wild and where it only recently established itself." Fifteen desiccated mericarps were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B level of the Nahal Hemel Cave in Israel, which may be the oldest archaeological find of coriander. About half a litre of coriander mericarps were recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamun, and because this plant does not grow wild in Egypt, Zohary and Hopf interpret this find as proof that coriander was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians. The Bible mentions coriander in Exodus 16:31: "And the house of Israel began to call its name Manna: and it was round like coriander seed, and its taste was like that of flat cakes made with honey." Coriander seems to have been cultivated in Greece since at least the second millennium BC.

One of the Linear B tablets recovered from Pylos refers to the species as being cultivated for the manufacture of perfumes, and it appears that it was used in two forms: as a spice for its seeds and as a herb for the flavor of its leaves. This appears to be confirmed by archaeological evidence from the same period: the large quantities of the species retrieved from an Early Bronze Age layer at Sitagroi in Macedonia could point to cultivation of the species at that time. Coriander seed and leaf was very widely used in medieval cuisine. Even today, coriander seed is an important ingredient in many sausage products. Coriander was brought to the British colonies in North America in 1670 and was one of the first spices cultivated by early settlers."

As a side note to today's brew day. My friend and I built the tiered system you are looking at to the left this afternoon. Got started brewing very late. Running off at nine in the evening, nice night though. The setup is working well so far. Planning on putting burners on each stand, as well as heat/wind shields around the stands. Now just need another kettle and I can start heat up while running off. Producing faster start to finish brew day's. In the end really it equals more brewing, and isn't that what we all want. This beer turned out very well and needs to be brewed again.