Brew using honeydew melon

jjsscram · 07-15-2005, 12:53 AM

I have been toy with the idea of make a honeydew brew from the local melons. Was think of useing belgein peliser, malted wheat and carpils as my malts, not sure of the ratios yet. With a small amout a saaz hops. Was thinking about 15 to 20 bittering units. Also not sure on how much melon to use. Any input on the idea would be apprecated.

thanks

Dienekles · 07-15-2005, 03:20 AM

If your using cara-pils you may need more IBU's to balance out the sweetness.. unless your going for a really sweet beer. Honeydew and cara-pils. The only thing that immediately enters my mind when I hear melon is how much water they contain. This may or may not water down your beer.

You may want to consider juicing some melons, letting major particles settle out, then boiling down the liquid to concentrate the flavors. The only problem with this idea is that you may lose some flavor when you cook this liquid down. You may want to consider combining several different mild melons to create a good melony syrup. Hope I helped!

Good luck! Let us know how it turned out!

SwAMi75 · 07-16-2005, 04:47 PM

Here's a guy (on a different forum) who did a watermelon ale.

Sounds pretty wierd to me, but I'm sure you could do the same with whater kind of melon you'd like.

jjsscram · 07-16-2005, 09:00 PM

thanks for the link sam that gives me some more ideas.

SwAMi75 · 07-16-2005, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjsscram

thanks for the link sam that gives me some more ideas.

No prob....I think he took a lot of unneccessary steps, so you could probably simplify things a bit. But what do I know, he said it came out good!

jjsscram · 07-17-2005, 03:52 AM

Ya I think it can be simplefied a bit hehe. Thinking of 6 lb belgian pilsener, 6 lb malted wheat 1 lb carpils for the malt cool to 80 pour of the top of 10 lbs of honeydew. Use a califorian ale yeast and .5 oz saaz 60 min and .5 oz 10 mins.

hops I am still a thinking about a bit.

jjsscram · 07-23-2005, 08:33 PM

Got all the stuff to do the honeydew today. For the yeast would you use califorian, or a trappist?

Sir Sudster · 07-23-2005, 09:49 PM

Here are my thoughts on this. If you go with any of those two yeast you've mentioned they will finish out clean and complete. I am thinking here that you really want the honeydew to shine through. I have been using Wyeast 1968 in my ESB's because they give up a little faster and leave the beer a bit sweet. I am not talking "soda pop" sweet but the after taste will finish cleaner and the bitter is the first and not the last taste. It also has a citrus smell and faint citrus taste. I think it would lend well to the melon tone you are looking for. In one of my ESB's the smell was of green apples.. not the taste just the aroma. The cascades help a bit with this but the yeast also contributed. If it were me I would use Centennial 1/2 oz /5gal @60 min
1 oz Cascade at 15 min and 1 oz Cascade at 5 min. Cascade will lend a spicy citrusy taste and aroma.

Taste is quite subjective....I am making some assumptions here on what your ultimate goal is .

Rookie · 07-24-2005, 01:29 AM

If honeydew is like other melon it is pretty subtle and you will need a LOT. Reducing it will cause haze problems from the pectin in the fruit, if you are going for hefeweizen type beer that would not be a problem. If I were brewing this I would go real easy on the hops (under 20 IBUs) so as not to overwhelm the honeydew.

jjsscram · 07-24-2005, 06:27 AM

Going for 12 to 13 IBUs, and about 2 lbs of melon to gallon of wort.