I am not huge on fruit beer but I do like it during the warm summer months. Some people will tell you they are girly drinks then you find them in the bathroom chugging down smirnoff ice...The key with fruit beer is to have a fruit presence but know that you are still drinking manly beer. I have never been able to produce a great fruit beer. I have made a few decent cherry wheat's but they usually end up too dry and can have some funky off flavors. I attribute it to the fact that I bottle condition all my beer, when you add fruit to the secondary the yeast eats through all that new sugar and really drys out the beer. If I kegged my beer then I could kill off the yeast with some sorbate or whatever, condition the beer with fruit, then transfer to a keg and introduce store bought CO2. If you people would like to support me so that I can afford a kegging system along with a home built kegorator CLICK ON THE ADS and browse around, you might just find something you like too!
I haven't brewed for while so I knew I needed to get something goin on this long holiday weekend. I thought about what I wanted to make and nothing was appealing to me. Then as I was taking a leak I see this month's Zymurgy on my magazine pile and think a fruited wheat beer would be good for this warm weather that is upon us. They had some crazy recipes in there for passion fruit mango wheat beer but I decided I wanted to go real simple with this.
I have herd great things about 21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon Wheat and I love watermelon in the summer so I thought why not. Like I said though I wanted to make this real simple. I decided not even to bother with real fruit, I bought some watermelon extract from the homebrew store and will just add when I bottle...
I think this should be great for a quick turnaround and also good info to get on this blog. There isn't that much info out there about beers just using extract flavoring and I intend to at least let people know how the watermelon stuff works. One of the best fruit beer I have had was a raspberry wheat down in Tucson, Arizona. I contacted the brewer about it and he told me all they use is raspberry extract, so extract must be decent.
Ok on with the show:
5 gallons
Simple 60/40 (almost) grain bill
5.5 lbs Rahr Pale Malt
4.0 lbs Rahr White Wheat Malt
Mash around 153 for 60 minutes
.3 oz GR Magnum 12AA @ 60 min
Wyeast 1007 German Ale fermented at 62 degrees
After fermenting skip 2ndary fermentation (wheat beer should be cloudy anyway) add priming sugar and 4 oz Watermelon extract to bottling bucket...mix, bottle, store, enjoy.
OG: 1.052 FG: 1.012 IBU: 16 SRM 3.6 Alc by vol: 5.27%
If you want to try an extract go with 5.5 lbs wheat DME...that is usually a mix of 60/40 towards the wheat direction but it won't make a huge difference.
Hopefully the end product will turn into a refreshing wheat beer with a presence of watermelon.
I will update as the progress goes along.
That sounds AMAZING! I would buy this in a store. I don't make beer .. and before you try to convince me to I CANNOT stand the smell of the process, it makes me ill.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the best beer I've EVER had was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (city of breweries), it was a Leinenkugel's (sp?) Raspberry Wheat, made with POUNDS of raspberries (I don't remember how many the waiter said, but it was a ridiculous amount.) Sooo good.
It was a really refreshing beer. And really easy to make...looks like you need to find yourself a brewer to make this recipe!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete