Tart Raspberry wheat

Hi Everyone,

Looking for some direction on a Raspberry wheat that is just finishing up in secondary. I used the American Wheat Kit from NB followed the directions except i added 3.3 lbs of raspberries to the secondary last Friday. I sampled it yesterday and I’m quite impressed with the flavor, nice body and definitely a hint of raspberry but not overpowering. The raspberries have given the kit a tartness, which I happen to like, but a totally different taste from using raspberry extract which turns out to be sweeter. Problem is I brewed the kit for my wife so she would have something else to drink that isn’t bitter, so I’m wondering if I leave it as is, or if I should add anything to it before kegging to sweeten it up a bit to offset the tart.

I'd just leave it as is. Since you brewed this for your wife, I assume she likes raspberries (and their tartness). Keep it simple.

Makes sense, i had tried a few commercial raspberry wheats and they are all somewhat sweet and not tart hence my concern. That being said it does taste good to me :|


Thanks

The issue with HB and fruit is that we as HB'ers don't kill the yeast or remove it before we add the fruit. If you so choose, and have a keg system, you can use bentonite to kill the yeast then add the fruit and then carb via the keg, this will mimic the sweetness you are looking for. The other way is to brew a larger beer with more complex sugars that will end up sweet in the end. I highly recommend using honey malt as a steeping grain and then brew as normal, you'll have to experiment a bit to get it right, but if you do a bunch of 1 gal batches you can do it on the cheap pretty easy.

That makes perfect sense! Thanks for the reply I will keep that in mind for the next batch.

Alright so I did almost the same thing as you but with an all grain and I missed my mash a bit and got a lot more hop bitterness to boot so I ended up with a bitter tart raspberry wheat. At 110F today the liter I just drank was great. The wife gave me the "meh" at initial taste test so what I did was go to the store and buy some sweet navel oranges. I squeezed the juice in the glass and poured the pint on top and now this stuff is down right dangerous (hence the 1L glass). Tastes amazing and the keg is disappearing quick. If she balks at it, I would save give the fresh squeezed orange a try and see if that helps a bit. Doesn't take more then a 1/4" of juice to make mine go from good to great. Good luck.

This sounds like a great idea and I will try this tonight! On a side note does anyone else have an issue with fruit beer and foamy head out of the keg?