New Brews from Old Roots

I'm planning two new beers for the coming weeks. First off is a Belgian Wit beer - brewed with a 50:50 mix of wheat malt and pale - with coriander and orange peel for flavour. I was thinking of using raw wheat, but my Belgian brewing bible, Belgian Ale - Pierre Rajotte, has two recipes - one with raw wheat and the other with wheat malt - so I'm going with the latter as its a little less scary (although probably less authentic). Wheat is hard stuff to mash with - you can get all sorts of problems with poor draining of the mash.
Beer 2 is going to be a shot at a wheat-based alt in Westphalian style. Again , nearly 50% wheat, but this time aiming at a German altbier style, and using some of the German ale yeast from my current altbier batch.

Pierre's book has some interesting background on Belgian wit brweing - including a complex account of how they used to brew. They had a really complex step mash a bit like the German decoction mash, but far more complicated, where you started with a cold mash and gradually heated it by taking some of the liquid, boiling it and re-adding it. It took all day to do apparently (maybe this fact led to its demise, and the temporary loss of the whole style). They used a system of lowered basket contraptions called stuykmandens to help extract the liquid from the sticky mash. I do wonder what kind of taste they got - and whether you could replicate the whole mash at home? Could be interesting. I found this like that might give some clues... Turbid Mashing.

The Westphalian version of altbier also interested me. The link I posted earlier to Old German Ale Styles contains a reference to the beers of Munster, in Westphalia - mentioning "As early as the 16th century Munster was a renowned brewing center. The main product of the town's breweries was Keut, a beer brewed from wheat, barley and hops. During the 1500's it had Gradually pushed out the older Grutbier. In 1591 the town boasted 56 Keut brewers, who exported as far as Emden and Osnabrück Ravensberg." A combination of wheat, barley and hops - This sounds very like my Wesphalian altbier recipe, suggesting to me that maybe modern Altbier and Kolsch are actually multiple separate survivors of the earlier pre-lager traditions. I'd love to know more.