Summer Time

Im sure this should be put into the recipie category but Im still new to brewing so hopefully if I put it here the awnser will automaticaly be dumbed down for me .

I want to surprise my girlfriend with a clone of her favorite beer. Which is Leinenkugel's Summer Shanty. Its weiss beer with Lemonade but I have no clue as how to make it. Is the lemonade added after the normal beer is made? Is it somehow added to the Secondary or in the bottles?

Can anyone point me in the right direction to a recipe? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I guess question two would be what exactly is a weiss beer. Isnt that just a wheat beer?

BigErn said:

I guess question two would be what exactly is a weiss beer. Isnt that just a wheat beer?

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It's a German wheat: http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/Category15.php#style15A

I usually have my Hefe on tap in the summer months, pretty simple recipe and quite quaffable, to make it a shandy I just add a shot or so of Simply lemonade to the glass and pour the Hefe onto it to mix. good for sitting around the pool on a hot day!

Im looking to get everything into the bottle. Ive done the shot of lemonade into the glass before I drank it trick. What im looking for is the ability to get that lemonade flavor into the beer itself.

I have a couple options that Ive been thinking about. One would be to make the beer and then throw some lemonade concentrate into secondary or put some cut up lemons in there as well. Would the sugar in the concentrate start up fermentation again. If so would that take away from the overall lemon flavor. Then other option was to actually put the concentrate or lemon juice into the bottle before I fill them. But again how would that effect carbonation. What would lemon juice do to the Yeast?

If you add lemonade concentrate it would more than likely ferment and cause issues. You would have to kill all of the yeast before adding it for flavoring. I have read other posts about Leinies Summer Shandy and they all say to add Kool Aid Lemonade or Countrytime Lemonade to the secondary. I have not tried it so I am not certain on the amount necessary to give the perfect lemon flavor without being too strong so you might have to experiment.

I may have to try that... But doesnt both of those contain sugar? Perhaps If I use those as my Priming sugar? Or would that be a horrible idea not knowing the exact sugar content in them.

Ok so heres my idea... I found something similar to what Im trying to make by FSR402.

6# Wheat DME (60/40 of wheat and pils)
1 oz. Cascade hops at 4.5% for 60 minuts of boil
at 15 minutes left of the boil add the zest (the outer part of the peals) of 4 large orange and lemons

1 packet of Nottingham dry yeast.

But to bring out the lemonade flavor I will be adding 1 cup of countrytime lemonade mix to the secondary.

Does that sound good?

I brew all grain so I don't really know what it would take doing it another method. If you are making a 5 gallon batch, 1 cup is probably about right for some lemon flavor. You might want to rack to a few secondary vessels (if you have some) and experiment using various amounts of lemon flavoring. That way you won't ruin a whole batch if it doesn't turn out right!

You will have to let us know how it turns out!

Im hopeing that this turns out like this... http://www.ithacabeer.com/beers.php#6

So I may split it up and leave half without the countrytime.

If you want to emulate beer from the link, you might try zesting a lemon and adding 1 oz of the lemon zest during the last 5 minutes of the boil. It's a Wit, and you'll want to include other spices, too.

I haven't had the Leinenkugel's beer you mentioned earlier, though.

Well the Ithica beer is one of my favorites. But the Leinenkugel is to keep SWMBO happy.

Ok I would like to add some corriander to this also... does anyone have any experience with that. How much should I add and when. Should it be at the 15 minute mark with the orange and lemon zest

Typically you would add .5 to 1 oz of coriander with the citrus peel during the last 5 minutes of the boil.

You should use whole seeds and lightly crush them. You could put them in a plastic bag and roll over them with a soup can. I use a coffee grinder, but maybe just for a second.
You don't want powder.

By the way, I've had nice success with Wyeast 3944 for Wit yeast. I recommend it.

Get a dram of lemonade flavor from a cake shop (used for candy and frosting flavoring) and add it in with the priming sugar just before bottling. A friend and I split a batch this way, it turned out awesome, we both wished we had the entire batch.

BigErn, Is there any word as to how your beer is coming along? What method did you decide to go with? I sure do like my summer shandy and I would love to hear how this goes.

BigErn said:

I may have to try that... But doesnt both of those contain sugar? Perhaps If I use those as my Priming sugar? Or would that be a horrible idea not knowing the exact sugar content in them.

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Kool-aid packets do not contain (signficant) sugar. The *tubs* of Kool-aid do.

Well its been 3 weeks in the bottle. This is deffinately not Summer Shandy but it is a good summertime beer.

Couple notes:

This is a basic wheat beer. I went a little heavy on the Wheat (added some extract out of fear when I shouldnt have).

I racked to secondary onto 3 cut up frozen lemons. I cut them up very small and it helped out tremendously getting them out of the carboy. This gave the beer a good lemon smell and soured it (not infected) but didnt leave a lemon taste to speak of... Maybe a lemon and a half next time two at most.

The change to a higher alpha hops was a good plus. Maybe even more next time. Citra hops from NB are 11.1% which I may try.

And for the lemonade... Crystal lite worked wonderful... It would have been even better had I not gone heavy on the Wheat extract.

SO plans for next time: Use less Wheat and make it an even lighter beer, Use coriander and lemon zest only... orange is usless here, Higher alpha Hops to help balance sourness a little, secondary on less lemons(could even phase this out all together), Crystal light lemonade to achieve desired lemonade flavoring.