Belgian wHeat

This here is one for the ladies. Julie's soccer team, The Heat, is preparing for their first game of the season in early April. What better way to celebrate the their eventual first victory than with a homebrew party? Since the only brew everyone on the team can agree upon is Blue Moon Belgian White, we decided to try brewing a Blue Moon clone. This will be my first wheat beer so I was excited to give it a shot. After searching the Googles for a good clone I found this recipe on Home Brew Talk and decided to give it a shot. We went to the homebrew shop today to pick up ingredients and it was BUMPING! The store has maybe 250 sq. ft. of retail space and it was all occupied with 15+ people. It was a super crappy rainy day outside though so maybe everyone was in a hunker-down-and-homebrew mode. We sure were.

Brew Recipe
Brew Date: 2/23/2013
Style: Belgian Wheat
Batch Volume: 5 gal.
Type: All grain
Boil Time: 60 min.
Color: 3.3 SRM
Target Bitterness: 21.4 IBU
Target OG: 1.049
Target FG: 1.012

Grist
5 lb. Pilsner Malt
3 lb. Flaked Wheat
1 lb. Flaked Oats
0.75 oz. Cascade Leaf Hops (45 min.)
0.75 oz. Cascade Leaf Hops (15 min.)
0.4 oz. Corriander Seed
3 oz. Fresh Chopped Orange Peel
11g. Danstar Munich Wheat Beer Yeast

Protein rest at 131°F for 30 min.
Saccharification rest at 154°F for 30 min.
Mash out at 168°F for 10 min.

Brew Notes

Protein Rest Temp: 134
Mash Temp: 151
Mash Efficiency: 77.2%
Pre-Boil Volume: 4.4 gal.
Preboil OG: 1.057
Volume after Water Addition: 4.85 gal.
Measured OG: 1.051
Measured FG: 1.011
ABV: 5.3%
Calories: 168

Used .030" crush resulting in less efficiency but hopefully less sediment to rack off too. Used hop bag for first hop addition. Should get another hop bag rather than try to put 2nd hop addition in boiling hot hop bag.

Update 3/5/13 - Checked gravity. We're sitting at 1.013. Smells of sulfur still from the Belgian yeast but definitely picking up the same black peppery taste I get from Blue Moon. Hopefully that means we're headed in the right direction.

Update 3/17/13 - Bottled on Julie's birthday. Used only 1/2 cup of priming sugar because of over carbonation problems with recent batches. Will be carbonating in the warmest part of the house. Gravity is now 1.011. The sulfur smell from two weeks ago is gone and it's smoothed out a lot. Looks like it's going to be a good beer to complement orange slices. Yielded 45 bottles.