When I wrote about brewing my Witbier last month, I received a message from Matt at Oakshire. Matt was getting ready to brew a Wit of similar recipe and wanted to know if I would be up for comparing our brews around the beginning of April. Of course I accepted, and on Saturday I stopped by brewery to sample his brew and drop off a few bottles of my own.
I was surprised by the number of people in the tasting room when I arrived; gloomy weather and a pair of Final Four games weren’t deterring these thirsty visitors. While I waited for Matt to finish a tour, I stepped back outside and snapped a picture of the brewery’s shiny new grain silo.
Back inside, I caught up with Matt and we spent a few minutes talking about our brews. Instead of a normal Wit yeast, Matt fermented Oakshire Vit with Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale; this year’s Cheers to Belgian Beers strain. In fact, Vit was brewed to build up the yeasties in preparation for Oakshire’s CtBB ale. The Farmhouse yeast gave the beer some light fruity esters and a dry finish.
For my Wit, I used Fermentis’ Safbrew T-58; a dry Belgian yeast. And despite my best efforts to stress the yeast with high fermentation temps, I couldn’t get it to produce the peppery phenols I was shooting for. While it is purported that T-58 is Chimay’s strain, in my brew it presented much like a standard Witbier yeast; light spice and not much in the way of esters. Entertainingly, Matt mentioned that the Farmhouse yeast would not have been his first choice for a Wit, but it ended up giving his beer a lot of the characteristics I was attempting to bully out of my strain.
As for spices, both Matt and I used chamomile in addition to the Witbier standards; coriander and orange peel. While only slightly noticeable in either brew, I think the spice lent an extra bit of herbal complexity to both.
The biggest difference I noticed in our Wits was the body. While Matt’s brew was light and crisp, mine was denser and slick on the tongue. If I were to brew my Wit again, I would probably trade out some or all of the rolled oats (currently 10% of the grist) for wheat to curb the oily feel.
The other area where my brew fell a little flat was in head retention. An overly-aggressive pour produced the fizzy head in the picture above, but after a minute or so there was not a trace that it had ever existed. Matt suspected my sanitization procedures may have played a role in the poor retention. We went over my cleaning process which included hand washing the bottles in hot soapy water, rinsing them, running them through the dishwasher (no detergent) on a hot wash/steam dry cycle and bathing them in an iodine solution. I was afraid that I didn’t get all of the dish soap out of the bottles, but Matt thought the iodine solution should have neutralized it. After doing some further reading, perhaps oils from the fresh orange zest were the culprit. Or possibly I had invoked some heavenly wrath, stemmed from early remarks about how great my Wit was going to taste. Damn hubris acting up again…
Anyway, I want to thank Matt for extending me the invitation to compare our Witbiers. His Oakshire Vit was a crisp, summery brew that will probably be long gone before we reach those warm months where I suspect it would find the most appreciation. Less than a dozen kegs were left on Saturday. I wouldn’t be sorry to see this brew step up and fill the hole in the year-round lineup, created by the recently departed Oakshire Wheat.
I also want to mention that Oakshire is currently running an awesome deal on their remaining supply of Ill-Tempered Gnome. While they last, cases are available at the brewery for $30.00, which works out to $2.50 per bomber, or about half of retail.
Cheers!
Kevin