Being from PA, there are some great craft brewers in that state that I fell in love with. One of them being Victory, based out of Downington. Many moons ago, I attended my first microbrew festival in State College, my friends and I couldn't get over one of Victory's beers called Whirlwind. It was so refreshing, sweet, and light. We wore out our welcome at their booth. I actually was doing a little bit of brewing back then so I knew enough to ask some recipe questions, of which I have saved a napkin with these items written on them. I always wanted to try to clone this beer, so this wit was my attempt.THE RECIPE:
OG 1.054
FG 1.018
ABV 4.69%
IBU 15.1
6# Wheat Dry Malt Extract
3/4# Pilsner 2 Row
3/4# Flaked Wheat
1 oz Tettnang
1 oz Tettnang
1 oz Sweet Orange Peel
1 oz Bitter Orange Peel
Wyeast 3944 - Belgian Witbier liquid yeast
7/28 BREWDAY:
Pretty straight forward extract brew. Steeped the pils/flaked wheat at 160F for 15 min. At boil I added 3# of the wheat DME, and 1 oz Tett. With 10 minutes left I added the other 3# of wheat DME, 1 oz Tett, and 1 oz of each bitter & sweet orange peel.
8/11: So this thing fermented like crazy! I made the mistake of putting it into my 5 gal. carboy, should've used the 6... even w/ the 6 I think this thing would have run off the same way. Anyways... the krausen blew out the blow off tube a couple of times... and even after 2 WEEKS!!! it was still bubbling every 7 or 8 seconds. A friend told me to still rack it to primary after a week no matter what. I shall listen next time.
8/12 RACKED & BOTTLED: (skipped secondary, was getting anxious). G was around 1025/1030... not great after all that freaky fermenting that happened. Tasted kinda blah.
8/18 TASTING: This was the night of the 1st beer tasting... I opened a bottle ahead of time to see if was worthy of sharing, eventhough it had only been bottle the Wednesday before, so 6 days. Holy shit! So freakin awesome!!! Sweet aroma, sweet taste, color was beautiful... not as white as whirlwind but very nice. A little longer in the bottle and this thing will be phenomenol!!! I had everyone try it at the tasting and they all liked it. A friend, and more experienced brewer, thinks I could have improved it by fermenting at a lower temp. But what a great first attempt!
8/26: Found 3 bottles w/ bottoms broken out and beer drained. Taste is still pretty stellar. Overcarbonation sucks though.
8/30: FG: 1.018 not too shabby.
