I did a Raspberry Ale for the holidays. I wanted something that would be very "accessible" for people who thought that my typical amber or darker ales were "too strong." It came out great. I wanted to be able to taste the raspberry and not overwhelm it with hops, and have a nice light color. Here is the recipe:
Coopers Very Light LME - one can.
Rice Solids - I forget the exact amount - I will try to remember to look it up and edit here - Two pounds, if I recall correctly.
No steeping grains.
A very light hop load - like one ounce of a 3.6% acid, half at the start of the boil, half in the last five minutes.
Nottingham dry yeast.
Five ounces of Raspberry extract.
3/4 cup of priming sugar.
I boiled it all up for the usual hour. The rice solids look a bit odd as the boil gets going but press on. I let it sit in my primary for two weeks and went straight to bottle. I put the priming sugar and the raspberry extract in the primer (boiled with maybe a quart of water for about fifteen minutes).
I will do this again next year (this was a holiday beer) but I will use a secondary for sure. Using rice solids defintely produces a much lighter and less compacted sediment at the bottom of the bottles than you usually get with barley malt. Pouring, even now, requires careful decanting. I figure the use of a secondary, maybe for two or three weeks, should help this. my raspberry ale is VERY pale in color - commercial beer pale, which is what I was going for.
I will likely use something like a couple of jars of Polaner All Fruit instead of fruit extract. I am not unhappy with how it came out with extract but I read here about some folks that went that way with good results. I am leery of using fresh fruit because of the sanitation issues.
