Review - The Home Brew Company - Wit or Wit Out You

[nigel_c]

A few months back the good folk at The Home Brew Company announced they would be raffling off some of their 3Kg kits for some lucks home brewers to review. As you can expect the sign up list was long. I was lucky enough to get the Wit or Wit Out You kit to review.

https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/wit-or-wit-out-you-40-pints-30-kg-p-2514.html

I started out brewing kits and after 4 or 5 i jumped straight to all grain so I was looking forward to seeing how the quality has come along since I last brewed a batch.
First up I was presently surprised to see that the kit required no addition of extra DME or sugars.
The instructions were very easy to follow and from the freshness of the ingredients I knew this was going to be a tasty brew.

I managed to get the kit done during an all grain brew day when the mash was doing it thing.
I let the tins sit in some hot water for a good 15 mins when I sterilized a fermenter which made pouring a hell of a lot easier. The one thing I remembered from kit brewing. The bucket was topped up and the dry  T-58 yeast was pitched.
For me this was just as much a learning exercise and the kits as I have only ever used liquid yeast for witbier. The fermenter sat at 20c and fermentation kicked off very quickly and quite violently.
10 days later there was an addition of orange and coriander which smelt fantastic.
I racked to keg shortly after and waited for my kegerator to free up a space.
About a week later it was on gas and pouring the next weekend.





As you can see it pours a nice hazy light amber with a dense thick white head.   
It has a good bread / malt / wheat taste and enough body to allow the coriander and orange to show just the right amount in the background without overpowering each other. There is a slight sourness / phenols in the  background from the T-58. That bit of tartness really add the drinking of the beer. 
A VERY EASY DRINKING BEER.

In the past I may have been a bit of a snob when it came to beers not brewed with all grain but I'm gonna have to look at them differently from now on. I produced a very good beer that I don't think I'd be able to pick out from an all grain batch. The ease of the kit and the quality of the instructions and ingredients make this a no brainer for anyone with limited time looking to produce high quality beer.
A big thanks to the good  folks at The Home Brew Company.

[nigel_c]

I brought this along to the North County Brewers meet up last night and it went down well.

[Simon_]

This was lovely. The coriander and orange flavours were perfect. Distinct but subtle. No muddled flavours. Nicely tart.

This'd make me reconsider kits

[molc]

Yeah, it compared quite well with the all grain wits we made over the summer as well. Great example of how well a well brewed kit can come out.