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There is a first time for everything and this is my first attempt at brewing a Belgian Witbier style. Despite it’s light, very pale color, this is a beer chalk with flavor. Yet, it’s effervescent and light on the palette. It’s a favorite style of mine, the best known example being Hoegaarden (pronounced who-garden). A popular commercial example that’s starting to make its way into more and more bars is Blue Moon’s (Coors) Witbier.

I picked up an extract beer kit from the More Beer! store in Los Altos, this being the last of the beer kits I’ve purchase from them. I was a bit nervous about brewing this beer. One reason is that it’s a lighter colored and light bodied beer. Typically, the lighter the beer, the more difficult it is to brew because there’s no place to hide your defects in technique or sanitation. The main reason though is because this was a mini-mash kit. Basically, a mini-mash is a scaled down version of an all-grain brewing technique. With all-grain, the homebrewer extracts all of the sugars he/she will need from the grain directly without the use of malt extracts. I have always thought about going all-grain but hesitated because everything I’ve read about the process makes me believe it’s long and complicated. After going through the process, I can say it is longer but not as complicated as I believed it would be.

Here is my ingredient list:

Malt:

• 6 lbs ultralight liquid malt extract

Grain:

• 2.5 lbs 2-row malted barley
• 1.5 lbs flaked wheat
• 1 lbs flaked oats

Hops:

• 1 oz Santium (4.6) - Bittering
• 1 oz Sterling (5.0) - Finishing

Yeast:

• White Labs WLP400 Belgian Wit

Adjuncts:

• Zest from 1 orange, 2 tangerines, 2 grapefruit (star ruby), 1 big grapefruit (red pummelo)
• 1 oz coriander seed - ground
• 1 oz bitter orange peel

Original Gravity: 1.052

Final Gravity: 1.012

ABV: 5.25%

Tasting Notes:

• Wort - Strong citrus characteristics. Sweet malt aromas. Honey notes. Tastes sweet with bitter orange peel flavors. Very reminiscent of Fruit Loops in both aroma and flavor.
• Primary - Very cloudy, gold with white bubbles. Yeast is “mit hefe” or in suspension. Fruity (Fruit Loops) characteristics with sweet aromas. Sweet, slight citrus fruit notes with grainy/bready finish. Light body, moderately low bitterness.

After going through the mini-mash process, I was excited to see my wort was the correct, pale color most witbiers are supposed to be. At this point, I was confident I would do a decent job with this beer. I was feeling pretty good until I added in my liquid malt extract. The package I had said “ultralight malt” but when I poured it out, it was this rich, toffee/caramel colored liquid extract. After mixing the extract into the wort thoroughly, I noticed the color of the beer was off. It ended up several shades darker than the style parameters. I was pissed.

As far as I’m aware of, the More Beer! kits all primarily use liquid malt extract. I have bought three kits from them, all using liquid malt extract and with the exception of my altbier, the rest of my beers ended up darker than what they were supposed to be. In addition, liquid malt extract has this very distinct flavor to it that ends up in your final product. With the exception of my altbier, I have been decidedly unsatisfied with the quality of the More Beer! beer kits. As a result, I plan on visiting my original homebrew store from now on. Rich, the owner, uses dry malt extract (DME) exclusively. I’ve never had a problem with the beer kits from his store that was the result of the ingredients. It’s usually operator error. In addition, he has 30 years experience in the beer industry. It’s not that I don’t like the people or the stores of More Beer!, I just don’t like the use of liquid malt extract in their beer kits. Plus, Rich’s shop is much closer to my place than the More Beer! shop is.

I just tapped this beer last night and I think I have the beer carbonated to the correct level. The next couple of days are going to be pretty busy so I’ll get to review my altbier, kölsch and witbier next week. These, by the way, were made from the beer kits I purchased from More Beer!. It’ll be interesting to see how they’ve stacked up.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 12:55 am and is filed under Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.