I brewed what has turned out to be a pretty decent Belgian Witbier, but I did it with dark wheat and used Carafa II in the recipe as well. Other than that, nothing crazy, a little bit of coriander, anise, and licorice root. The recipe is more or less from Randy Mosher’s Mastering Homebrew book. I can’t seem to find a BJCP category this beer fits into. Should I just enter it into 26L Experimental Beer? Any help is greatly appreciated.
If the comp is still using the 2008 guidelines, I would go with Belgian Specialty.
Otherwise, I concur with Experimental Beer. I thought about “Alternative Fermentables”, but the intention behind that style is for nontraditional fermentables such as sorghum.
HTH-
I had my very first one of those back in 2008 at the Vermont Brewers Festival in Burlington. I thought it was a unique take on the style and enjoyed some of the different spicing utilized (IIRC they had star anise, citrus peel, and some coriander).
I don’t have any specific input on the category, but that sounds like a Wit that I might actually be interested in trying. It sounds like the Witbier equivalent of a Dunkelweizen.
Thanks to the input. There is no Belgian specialty category this year, so that won’t work. I am also thinking that it might work nicely in the winter seasonal category. I guess that was really my intention. I wanted something that would be great to drink on freezing cold days but not knock me over with a 8% ABV. This came out about 5.75%, so it fits the bill perfectly.
I’ll look up my complete recipe and post it if anyone is curious.
Sam
I have had a couple iterations of these in the past. They are either brewed as a fairly typical wit along with a debittered/dehusked roast malt (or sinamar ala black IPA ;)) or have some extra specialty malts in there (ie crystal) to beef up the body a tad along with some sweetness and light roast.