Brew #2: Bailee's Witbier, June 13, 2014

Brew #2 was a Witbier extract kit from my local homebrew shop, Bailee's Homebrew.  If you're in the York, PA area, you should check them out. Again, I tried to brew this as precisely to the recipe as possible, figuring I certainly did not know enough to start messing with a recipe.  Bailee's instructions were concise but clear.  What I'm not crazy about is that they don't list what is in the specialty grains. This makes it more difficult to learn how you produced the flavors of the finished product and use that knowledge to apply that to future brews.

Recipe
Batch Size: 5 gal
Boil Size: 3 gal
Target OG: 1.044-1.050
Target FG: 1.010-1.016
Style: Witbier
Recipe Type: Extract with specialty grains
Boil Time: 60 minutes

Water:
Acadia bottled spring water

Specialty Grains:
??? A mystery - Bailee's doesn't share what is in their specialty grain bags.

Fermentables:
3.3 lbs Wheat LME
3 lbs Wheat DME

Hops:
1oz Liberty (pellets) @ 60 min.
1oz Tettnang (pellets) @ 10 min.

Other:
Spice Pack (again, contents are a mystery but it involved bitter orange peels) @ 15 min.

Yeast:
Safbrew WB-06 dry yeast.  My notes are bad, so I don't know if I re-hydrated or not.

Brewing Notes
6/13/2014 - Brew Day:

• Sanitized (star san) my cold side equipment in the fermenting bucket.  Equipment was the same as Brew #1: Auto siphon, tubing, 1pc airlock, bucket lid, and hydrometer.  I set these on a clean dish towel on the counter to dry during the brew
• Heated 3 gal water to 150-160 F in 5 gallon economy stainless kettle on the stovetop.
• Added mystery specialty grains in a muslin bag when the water temperature reached 110F and allowed the temperature to rise the rest of the way to 150-160F.  I held the temperature here for an additional 25 minutes before removing the bag.
• Removed the grain bag and held it above the kettle to drain.  When I got bored of that, I set them in a cereal bowl, which I periodically dumped into the kettle during the boil.
• Brought to boil
• Removed kettle from the burner. On my electric stovetop, this means pick it up and move it off the burner.
• Added 3.3 lbs wheat DME and 3 lbs wheat LME and stirred well
• Return the kettle to the burner and bring back to boil
• Set timer for 60 minutes and added hops and mystery spice pack per the recipe schedule
• At 0 minutes, moved the kettle to the ice bath in my sink to chill.  This time I had planned ahead and collected some extra ice from my ice maker.  Chilled to 72F.  Ice baths take a long time.
• Took an OG reading of 1.050, corrected to 1.052
• Presumably pitched yeast, though I never wrote that down, and installed the lid and airlock.
• Put the bucket in my now dedicated beer corner of the dining room

6/13 - 6/21/2014 - Primary Fermentation:
Saw airlock activity on 6/14 and 6/15, but by 6/16 the levels in the airlock had equalized.  I left this alone until 6/19 when I attempted to "rouse" the yeast by swirling the bucket around.  The airlock bubbled once every 30 seconds for a little while and then quit again.  I suspect this bucket just didn't seal well at all because this was the same thing I saw on Brew #1. Racked to 5 gal glass carboy on 6/21 because I didn't trust that the bucket seal was keeping the atmosphere out.  Measured gravity of 1.013 at this time.

6/21-6/25/2014 - Secondary Fermentation:
This was a bit of a joke of a secondary fermentation (4 days?), but I wanted to get the beer out of the leaky bucket. Saw some airlock activity and little bits of foam on the top.

6/25/2014 - Bottling:
Because it worked well for my first brew, I prepped my bottles the same way, hand washing 54 bottles in oxyclean and sanitizing in the dishwasher (no soap).  On bottling day, I sanitized everything else that might touch the beer with star san in the bottling bucket and let it dry completely on a clean towel on the kitchen counter.  I boiled the whole 5oz package of corn sugar in 1 c of water, cooled that in a mini ice bath, and added that to the bottling bucket.  I siphoned the beer on top of that to mix.  Final Gravity was 1.012, which i calculated to mean 4.2% abv. After the gravity reading, I pulled all of the bottles out of the dishwasher.  I filled while Lauren capped with the wing capper.  Yield was 51 12oz bottles.

7/4/2014 - First Taste:
This time I only waited 9 days, but with the full shot of priming sugar and the rising basement temperature, this beer was carbonated. My tasting notes are extremely brief: "Tasty, less orange-y than Shock Top."  As this one aged in the bottle, the carbonation/head got out of control again.