UPDATE: Belgian Witbier bottle conditioning

I finally got around to bottling the Belgian Witbier, which had been sitting neglected in a corner of my room for five and half weeks. Because I am not one to rack to a secondary fermenter, unless necessary for processes like dry-hopping, I was a little worried that this batch may have picked up some unfavorable flavors from sitting on the yeast cake for so long. Generally, from what I have read, it is fine to ferment in the same vessel for up to four weeks, but after four weeks you risk adding some funk to your beer.

Like I said, I got a little worried that the witbier was going to taste and/or smell like farts, so I did some snooping around a few different forums. Sure enough there was plenty of people saying never let a beer sit in primary longer than two weeks, while others swear their best beers sat for six weeks (for whatever reasons). I chose to believe the latter... 

When I opened the lid of the bucket for the first time since January 11, the smell was way better than expected. To be honest, I had kind of forgot about this beer, but after smelling and tasting it, I feel like this could be one of my best ones yet. It definitely had a prominent grapefruit smell from adding the zest in at flame-out. And the flavor was sweet with oranges with earthy and floral undertones from the chamomile and coriander. The color was the best part. It was a very pale yellow with a lot of haze, which made it appear almost white. Usually brewers are doing everything they can to make as clear of a beer as possible (one of the reasons people vouch for racking to secondary), but witbiers are supposed to be cloudy and appear white, which is why the are often times referred to as "white ales.". But I digress...

Come bottling day I slaved away cleaning bottles in my bathroom and was ready to actually start the bottling process. I boiled two cups of water and added 4.7 oz of priming sugar (dextrose) for two minutes. The sugar water cooled for a bit on the stove while I did some cleaning and sanitizing, and then I put the water into the bottling bucket. Right after I got the siphon all ready, I looked into the bottling bucket and thought to myself, "Hm...Looks like there is some water on the bottom from the sanitizer." Naturally, I dumped it out, and immediately after realized what I had done...

Luckily cane sugar, which is sold at grocery stores, can be used as a substitute for the dextrose (aka corn sugar) from homebrew stores. I ended up getting highly refined baker's cane sugar because it supposedly adds the least amount of flavors. Depending on the beer and what flavors you are going for, honeys, brown sugar, and dry malt extract are just a few things that can be used as priming sugars. The brown sugar is intriguing...

Despite the sugar fiasco, things seem to have gone well. I am curious to see if I can notice the difference in priming sugars, but who knows. The gravity read 1.003, which is lower than expected. This will hopefully turn out as delicious as I wanted it to be.