Playing Catch-up 2: Der Belgian Wit

For my second brew, I wanted something appropriate for the summer and able to handle the increased temperature in the condo (no A/C in western parts of San Diego) . So on the weekend of June 17th, I went back to American Home Brewing Supply looking for a Wheat beer kit of some sort. After talking with the owner for a bit (who is very friendly and helpful) he told me the lack of Wheat beer kits is due to the fact that they are easy to make, and the kits usually turn out badly. He helped me out and I got setup to do a Belgian Wit (much like Blue Moon by Coors).

Ingredients:
Dry Wheat Extract: 6 lbs
Flaked Wheat: 1 lbs
Kent Golding Hops: 1 oz (20 min)
Saaz Hops: 1 oz (5 min)
White Labs Belgian Wit Yeast
Table Sugar: 3/4 cup (carbonation)

Start by boiling the 1.5ish gal. of water and adding the Flaked Wheat in a steeping bag (this will give the beer the cloudiness that is characteristic of wheat beers). Then remove the bag and add the 6 lbs of malt extract to the boiling wort. Once well dissolved, add the Kent Golding hops for a 20 min boil, then the Saaz Hops for the last 5 min. Cool quickly, and add to fermentor along with enought water to get up to 5 gal. Pitch the yeast when the wort is down to about 70° F.
I fermented this for about 3 weeks, used the table sugar as priming sugar (was a little iffy about this, but I didn't have any standard dextrose) and bottled.
Two weeks later I had a delicious wheat beer perfect for summer!


Cheers!