After a bit of a brewing hiatus I am at it again. This time I am trying out a clone recipe for Blanche de Chambly. It is a belgian witbier and will be an excellent summer brew. Here is the recipe that is provided by
byo.com:
Blanche de Chambly clone
5 Gallon, partial mash
OG 1049
Grain Bill:3 lbs. Belgian pilsner malt
0.5 lb. flaked wheat
0.5 lb. flaked oats
3 lbs. unhopped wheat dry malt extract
1 oz. Saaz hop pellets, for 40 min.
0.5 oz. cracked coriander seed
0.25 oz. dried bitter orange peel
0.125 oz. grated dried ginger
recultured Blanche de Chambly yeast (or Wyeast 3944 or 3942)
7/8 cup corn sugar for priming
Directions:Mash pilsner malt, flaked wheat, and flaked oats in 2 gals. of water at 150̊ F for 60 minutes. Sparge with 10 qts. water at 168̊ F. To kettle add extract. Boil 10 minutes. Add hop pellets and boil another 30 minutes. Reduce heat to simmer, steep (in a fine mesh bag or muslin hop bag) coriander, orange peel, and ginger for 10 minutes. If desired, other spices could be added, such as cumin, cardamom, black pepper, and paradise seeds. Remove from heat and chill, removing spice bag. Top off in fermenter to 5.25 gals. and cool to 75̊ F. Pitch yeast. Ferment for eight to 10 days at 65̊ F or so. Rack to secondary and condition for three weeks at 60̊ F. Prime with corn sugar, bottle, and age four weeks.
Above is a photo of all the fermentables. In the large bags there is 3lbs of pilsner malt & 3lbs of wheat dry malt extract. In front there is 1/2lb flaked oats on the left & on the right is 1/2lb of torrified wheat that I substituted for flaked wheat. In the middle is the yeast I used, it is safbrew wb-06. It is a dry yeast for use with wheat beers. Ultimately I should have used the true belgian yeast but I cheaped out.
Here is a shot of the remaining ingredient, all the flavoring additives. Starting clockwise from the back corner, bitter orange peel, saaz hops, coriander seeds & dried ginger. There is an ounce of each so only partial amounts were used except for the hops.
Brew day photos to follow in a day or two.
Here is the wort after a 10min boil and after the only hop addition. It was boiled for an addition 30mins after that. The white foam is hot break which occurs after the wort has come to a full boil.
After the boil I tossed in the coriander, ginger & bitter orange peel and let it steep for 10mins. The pot then went into an ice bath to cool to pitching temperature of 24c(75f).
With the wort cooled I took a gravity sample to test the sugar levels. It came out at 1.052, with the recipe projecting 1.049 it was within range.
Here it is after pitching the yeast. I separated it between two carboys because I have read wheat beers can have a large krausen which would make it prone to blow offs. In the end it was unnecessary as the krausen only came up about an inch. Better safe then sorry I guess. At first the beer seemed quite dark for a witbier. It has since lightened up after settling out.
