Beer Feeds

First, my apologies to those that don’t have a Trader Joe’s near by. Now on to business.

I was at TJ’s picking up fixins for the upcoming turkey day meal and did my usual pass down the beer aisle. I ran into a guy grabbing two bottles of Trader Joe’s 2006 Vintage Ale. He had this crazed look in his eyes and told me “man this is some good stuff”. Seeing that it was contract brewed by Unibroue, was packaged in a nice Belgian bottle with cork, and came in at just $4.99 for a 750 mL bottle I couldn’t hold back. I cleaned them out of the last four bottles on the shelf.

I immediately put a bottle in the freezer when I got home and was enjoying a glass shortly thereafter. Man, this is a good beer. Highly, highly recommended. Strong malt backbone with plum, light banana, a hint of cloves, and overall a very well balanced profile (especially given that it comes in at 9% ABV).

I plan to stop by again tomorrow to see if I can grab a case.

Dave.

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I brewed this last week:

6.75 lbs Pale Malt
3.25 lbs Munich
1 lb Crystal 60
1 lb Chocolate

Mashed at 154 for 90 min, mash temp dropped to 148 by the end.

1 oz Bullion 60 min
.5 oz Cascade 60 min
.5 oz EK Goldings 15 min
.5 oz EK Goldings 3 min

Irish Moss and yeast nutrients were added with 15 minutes left. I also used fermcap in the boil.

OG was 1.052 in 5 gallons.

I pitched 11 grams Safale 04 at 66* after oxygenating with pure O2 and fermented at 66-68* ambient. After 8 hours (may have been sooner, but I didn’t want to stay up all night) there was decent activity, after 12 it was going like mad. The bubbles stopped completely by the 72 hour mark.

The SG was 1.022 so I swirled it a couple of times a day for a few days, but it’s still 1.022 after 1 week, and I’ve racked it into the secondary.

The attenuation is supposed to be between 70 and 75%, which should leave me with an FG of 1.016 to 1.013.

What should I do to get this to finish off a little more?

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I want to solder a piece of 1/2″ OD stainless tubing to the inside of a 1/2″ MNPT stainless steel hex coupling. The tubing is a nice slip fit inside the coupling. Do I use regular silver solder and flux that is used for copper fittings or do I need something special?

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I’m pretty sure we haven’t had any discussions on this category in the past, so I figured it would be time to venture into this new ground for the SOTW and discuss the Belgian and French styles, we’ll get started with Witbier. I’m a big Saison fan, and we have discussed that category in the past so we won’t go back there this time. These are some interesting categories and I have a lot to learn here.

I’ll get us started with links to category 16a of the BJCP guidelines.

So, what are your Witbier experiences? Recipes, yeast, ingredients, comercial examples, spill all you know about Witbier.

Thanks for posting in the SOTW.

PS. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future SOTW’s. Thanks.

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