Belgium Wit Beer

Ok started a Belgium Wit Beer last Thursday night. I had purchased some wheat extract from morebeer.com along with sterling hops and a hop sack and Belgium yeast. Ordered Saaz hops from mrbeer.com

mixed it all up putting in the zest from 1 naval orange 1/2 oz of the sterling hops and about 1/3 oz of coriander that I crushed in the mini food processor. boiled that with the 4 lbs of wheat extract. After 45 minutes I added 1/2 oz of Saaz hops to finish. Left those in there for about 7 or soo minutes and the took the hop sack out of the boiler. Poured the wort into the fermenter and added the yeast when the temp looked in the acceptable range. Friday afternoon the yeast activity seemed to be dismal so I added a pack of dry ale yeast that I had. By Friday night there was some activity going on in the fermenter. A very thick foam remained on the top of the wort until around Thursday evening when it dissipated a little. I bottled it on Saturday evening.

SG = 1.012
OG = 1.062

If the starting gravity of the wort is 1.062, and after fermentation, the gravity is 1.012. Subtracting the second from the first gives us the weight of CO2 that left the vessel. That is equal to 0.05 kg/L. Then you multiply by 1.05 to get the weight of the alcohol in the container. That is 0.0525 kg/L. Now that you know both the mass of the solution (1.012 kg/L) and the mass of the alcohol (0.0525 kg/L) you can calculate the percentage of alcohol by mass by dividing the two. This gives 0.0525/ 1.012, which equals 0.0519, or 5.19 percent.

So at this point when bottled the Wit Beer is 5.19 percent alcohol by mass /0.79 = 6.57 % alcohol by volume.

The smell was not quite as I expected on the beer as I was bottling. I think maybe I should add the orange zest and coriander with the saaz hops at the end of the boiling process. I think I might try this procedure change on the next batch. I should have enough supplies to make 4 batches.