BREWING: A Winter Wit Beer for NYE
To wit, ’tis wit wort!
We brewed up a winter wit beer recipe to celebrate New Year’s Eve at home, and usher out the old year while welcoming in the new.
This homebrewed wit bier was a partial decoction BIAB (brew-in-a-bag) mash recipe with cracked wheat and steel cut oats for body and a foamy head, and a light Czech pils malt (aka, clean out the leftovers and odds and ends of malt in the brew bin before New Year’s) with Bavarian wheat and Munich dry malt extract (DME) for the grain bill. We spiced it with a good dose of mandarin peel, orange zest, and Indian coriander.
We’re pitching this on some healthy yeast slurry from the dunkel rye I racked earlier tonight, but you could use any spicy wheat ale yeast you like to get the flavor notes just right.
And what a better way to ring in the New Year than by brewing up a fresh batch of winter wit beer to get the next round of good cheers for the budding year bubbling away to keep those bottles popping!
New Year's Eve Winter Wit Beer
A mini-decoction BIAB partial mash homebrewing recipe to clean out the odds and ends in the brew grain bin at the end of the year... feel free to substitute similar malts if you don't have these on hand. Use the freshest hops, dried oranges and zest that you can, and fruity, elongated Indian coriander if you can get it.
Ingredients
Adjunct Grain Bill for wheat mash:
- 8 oz cracked wheat
- 8 oz instant steel cut oats
- 8 oz Czech pils malt (crushed)
Grain Bill for main mash:
- 16 oz Czech pils malt (crushed)
- 16 oz Kolsh malt (crushed)
- 12 oz German pils malt (crushed)
- 2 oz Carafoam malt (crushed)
Malt Extract
- 21 oz Munich Dry Malt Extract 1#5oz
- 16 oz Bavarian Wheat Dry Malt Extract
Hops
- ¾ oz UK First Gold (pellet, 7.7 AA) 60 minutes (full boil addition)
- ¼ oz UK First Gold (pellet, 7.7 AA) 5 minutes (from end of boil)
Flavoring
- ¾ oz whole coriander seeds 5 minutes (from end of boil)
- ¼ oz dried mandarin orange peel 5 minutes (from end of boil)
- 1.5 whole zest from 1.5 fresh oranges 5 minutes (from end of boil)
Yeast
- 8 oz Dunkel Rye Yeast Cake (Safale 06) approx, can sub any spicy wit yeast
Instructions
BIAB Decoction Mini-Mash:
- Combine ingredients for wheat mash and mash into a small 1 gal brew pot mostly filled with 120° F water (leave room for a boil and the volume of the grain). Combine the rest of the grain bill in a nylon brew bag, and mash into your main brew kettle at 150° F (volume depend on your kettle- I shoot for about a 7 gallon total grain + liquid volume in ours, minus the mini mash). Hold the main mash for 60 minutes at 145-150°F.
- Hold the smaller wheat mash at 120° for 15 minutes, stirring frequently, and then gradually bring the temp up to 150° F and hold for 15 minutes. You can use a burner to raise the temp, while also ladling in hot wort from the main mash to gently raise the temp. Be careful not to scorch the bottom of the pot!
- Add the boiled wheat mash to the main mash brew bag and stir carefully. This should bring the temp up to 155 and do a brief rest, then raise the wort temperature to 170 and mash out.
- Hoist the brew bag full of grain from the pot. I use a clean oven rack as a "lid" to rest the bag above the pot to drain, and press out any remaining liquid. You can also put it in a colander inside another large pot, and if you have room in your boil kettle, pour some hot water over the top to sparge out some of the remaining sugars and add this liquid back to the wort. Make sure to leave plenty of room for the boil.
Boil:
- Add the dry malt extract to the wort and bring the kettle to a boil. Watch carefully for boil-over!
- Add the main hop additions (stirring and watching for the boil surge that will happen when you add the hops) and set a timer for 55 minutes. Keep watching and stirring that pot occasionally.
- While the wort is boiling, measure out your flavoring ingredients, clean and sanitize your fermentation vessel (and chiller, if you have one), and zest the oranges.
- If you have an immersion chiller, add it to the brew pot during the last 10 minutes of the boil (so it is fully sanitized before you cool the wort). I like to put our stainless brew spoon in at the same time so I can stir our wort as it cools (we are still using an ice bath for chilling, and this helps the wort cool faster and more evenly).
- Add the flavor hops, coriander, and orange peel/zest when the 55 minute time goes off, and set the timer for 5 more minutes.
- Cool your wort using a chiller, or put a clean lid on the kettle and put it in an ice bath (or a nearby snowbank- it's winter, right? You might have one on your porch). You can also top-up with cold pre-boiled water if you need to make up wort volume- you may want to check your gravity first- my volume was low for this 5 gallon target batch, but the SG was spot on so I didn't top up.
Fermentation:
- When the temp is below 80°F, rack or pour the cooled wort through a sanitized strainer (if you didn't bag your hop and flavoring additions) into your fermentation vessel. Try to leave most of the trub (protein gunk & sediment) in the bottom of the brew pot and aerate the wort letting it splash as it goes into the bucket or carboy.
- Check and record your wort original gravity (if you didn't already) and pitch your yeast (or yeast cake). Seal your fermentation vessel and put on a blow-off tube or airlocks on.
- Keep between 55-80° until fermentation is complete (warmer temps will ferment faster and add more spicy esters to the beer, cooler fermentation will be slower but cleaner with less yeast character).
- Keg or rack into bottling bucket with priming sugar of your choice (I used about 4 oz dextrose dissolved in 8 oz boiled water) and force carbonate or bottle condition for about 2 weeks. Chill and enjoy!
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