My first recipe: pineapple wheat

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silentmike

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I have no idea what i am going to do with the pineapple yet (this is kind of a challenge presented to me)

here is my wheat beer recipe (please critique as this is my first one!)

5 gallon batch
target OG - 1.044 - 1.052
50% - White wheat malt (probably 7.5 lbs)
50% - pale 2 row (with math, probably 7.5 lbs)
1 lb - rice hulls


.5 oz - Santiam Hop Pellets (Tettnang) 60 minutes
.5 oz - New Zealand Motueka Hop Pellets (Saaz) 30 minutes
estimated IBUS - 17ish

German Wheat yest

mash schedule (i am not sure here, this would be my 3rd all grain...ill post what we normally do)

strike at 162 degrees, mash at 152-153 for 60 minutes
sparge at 175 degrees

As for the pineapple i am not sure. adding it in the boil will kill the flavor, so i guess it would have to go in secondary, but i dont want to water down the beer too much. maybe add some dried out chunks of pineapple or something.
 
Not that I've ever done this with pineapple, but you could probably do it the same way a lot of us do oranges. Except a pineapple doesn't have a "zest" to include.

check out this thread where a couple of us talk about using blood oranges for ideas
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/all-grain-blood-orange-hefeweizen-395605/

And, you could always get where you want to go with some pineapple vodka or pineapple extract at bottling.
 
i was thinking about making a pineapple syrup with cane sugar and pineapple (taken from a thread about a maple wheat, adding maple syrup to the boil and to bottling) and adding half to the boil and half later...i am kegging this by the way
 
It seems like 15 pounds of malt should get you well above your OG goal. I recently made a wheat beer with 8.5 lbs of grain and got an OG of 1.052 (I tend to get 85% efficiency). I included half pound each of Munich 10L and Caramel 40L to give some color and sweet malt tones. You might want to consider dry hopping with a hop that is citrusy (I used 1 oz. of Centennial in mine).

As an FYI -- my beer ended up having a pronounced tropical fruit aroma. My best guess is that this is how my nose is interpreting the combination of the citrus from the dry hop and the banana/clove flavors from the WB-06 yeast. The aroma would pair well with pineapple flavor.
 
I have a recipe for a beer called Pineapple Express, it's not a wheat beer but it does have 2lbs of wheat in it and uses California Ale yeast and obviously it has pineapple in it. The recipe calls for 20oz of pineapple concentrate in the secondary. Concentrate wouldn't water down your beer nearly as much a straight pineapple juice. That might get the results you're looking for. Let us know how you do it and how it turns out. One of the local breweries here just put out a pineapple wheat and it sounds like a really good beer!
 
Going over OG will change the character of the beer. A higher OG will make the beer stronger in terms of malt flavor and alcohol. Although I can't really provide an estimate of the flavor, the 15 pounds of malt you suggested gives an OG estimate of 1.082 in my BeerSmith (assuming 72% efficiency). That would get you a beer with about 8.5% ABV. Higher gravity in the boil will also affect your hop utilization. The higher the OG, the lower utilization you get from your hops.

The difficulty is that you need to know what kind of efficiency you get to really lock in a recipe. You will hear of people getting efficiencies that range anywhere from 60% to 90%. That is obviously a huge different. I am assuming you are using a mash tun and not doing BIAB (from the use of rice hulls), so I would assume 72% (the BeerSmith default) until you get a better gauge of what your actual efficiency is.

If I were you, I would probably plan for a recipe that involves 9 to 10 pounds of grain. This should get you somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.050 OG and an ABV of around 5%. No matter how you add the pineapple flavor, you are likely to add more alcohol to the final product (pineapple concentrate will have lots of fermentable sugar or dried pineapple you will want to soak in vodka to sanitize). That suggest to me that you want to keep the wheat beer recipe middle of the road.

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the hops you did? I am not really familiar with either of them. I am familiar with the noble hop parents you give us, just interested in what is different about the ones you chose. FYI -- I love the noble hops and use them liberally in my brews, but I am always looking to try new things.
 
rklinck said:
Going over OG will change the character of the beer. A higher OG will make the beer stronger in terms of malt flavor and alcohol. Although I can't really provide an estimate of the flavor, the 15 pounds of malt you suggested gives an OG estimate of 1.082 in my BeerSmith (assuming 72% efficiency). That would get you a beer with about 8.5% ABV. Higher gravity in the boil will also affect your hop utilization. The higher the OG, the lower utilization you get from your hops.

The difficulty is that you need to know what kind of efficiency you get to really lock in a recipe. You will hear of people getting efficiencies that range anywhere from 60% to 90%. That is obviously a huge different. I am assuming you are using a mash tun and not doing BIAB (from the use of rice hulls), so I would assume 72% (the BeerSmith default) until you get a better gauge of what your actual efficiency is.

If I were you, I would probably plan for a recipe that involves 9 to 10 pounds of grain. This should get you somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.050 OG and an ABV of around 5%. No matter how you add the pineapple flavor, you are likely to add more alcohol to the final product (pineapple concentrate will have lots of fermentable sugar or dried pineapple you will want to soak in vodka to sanitize). That suggest to me that you want to keep the wheat beer recipe middle of the road.

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the hops you did? I am not really familiar with either of them. I am familiar with the noble hop parents you give us, just interested in what is different about the ones you chose. FYI -- I love the noble hops and use them liberally in my brews, but I am always looking to try new things.
Click to expand...

Yeah i am using a mash tun, a converted coleman extreme cooler.

so maybe do 5 lbs of each grain?

I chose Saaz because it was described as having a spicy flavor and on norhternbrewer, the New Zealand motueka says that it has tropical citrus notes which i figured would go well with pineapple.

The tettnang was chosen because it was described as being a good choice for wheat beers, and then on northernbrewer, the santiam hops were described as spicy, herbal, and floral so i thought that there would be a good clash there between spicy and citrusy.
 
Interesting thinking on the hops. I love Saaz and the tropical citrus notes sound interesting (especially for a wheat beer). The tropical citrus notes will certainly go well with the pineapple, but keep in mind that you will not get much flavor or aroma from hops that are boiled for 30 minutes or more. You might want to consider dry hopping with some Motueka to really bring out the aroma. If you want flavor from it, add some with 15 minutes in the boil.

If I were you, I would probably go with about 4.5 lbs of each of the grains you have listed and then add just a little bit of caramel malt (40L or lower). If you want to stick with just these two grains, I would use 5 lbs of each.
 
rklinck said:
Interesting thinking on the hops. I love Saaz and the tropical citrus notes sound interesting (especially for a wheat beer). The tropical citrus notes will certainly go well with the pineapple, but keep in mind that you will not get much flavor or aroma from hops that are boiled for 30 minutes or more. You might want to consider dry hopping with some Motueka to really bring out the aroma. If you want flavor from it, add some with 15 minutes in the boil.

If I were you, I would probably go with about 4.5 lbs of each of the grains you have listed and then add just a little bit of caramel malt (40L or lower). If you want to stick with just these two grains, I would use 5 lbs of each.
Click to expand...

thanks so much for your help!!! I think i have decided to add .5 oz of motueka at 10 minutes to get my IBUs down a bit for the style, which will also increase the flavor. I think i will also add the other half ounce to the dry hop in primary.

I am going to try the pineapple syrup in the boil and then maybe add some during secondary, depending on the flavor.
 
I'm wondering if there is any follow up on this.

I am planning a pineapple wheat - 50% wheat, 50% pale malt, amarillo to 20 IBU, - is 20 oz frozen concentrate too much pineapple flavor?

Thanks!
 
Update: I have my pineapple wheat in the keg and nicely carbonated. The pineapple flavor is non existent. I added only like 400 mL of pineapple syrup which obviously wasnt enough. I didnt want to add too much and ruin the beer. This way I can atleast have a decent wheat beer and I add lemon juice to the pint and it is pretty tasty! I would try adding pineapple extract to bottling or kegs.
 
THis is your first beer? Honestly some good advice, Stick with a simple beer with no fruit additions and such and keep it simple
 
No i have many beers under my belt but this is my first completely self designed beer. I did all the research on hop aromas and flavorings and on grains. I used beer smith to get my numbers right.
 
oh ok, rack half onto fruit and leave half normal to compare or blend back if to strong.
I would use fresh pineapple, its going to ferment some more with the sugar in the fruit.

I would go with a different yeast German yeast is very bannana clovey.
More the lines of an american wheat with pineapple.

Not to many pineapple beers around. I did have a pale ale recently that was just fresh pineapple added to it and it was delicous, almost sour/funky qualities which was great
 
silentmike - when you say you added 400ml pineapple syrup - what do you mean? I was planning to add 600ml frozen pieapple juice concentrate for a 5G batch and wanted to somehow relate to your experience. Is your syrup juice concentrate?
 
mot said:
oh ok, rack half onto fruit and leave half normal to compare or blend back if to strong.
I would use fresh pineapple, its going to ferment some more with the sugar in the fruit.

I would go with a different yeast German yeast is very bannana clovey.
More the lines of an american wheat with pineapple.

Not to many pineapple beers around. I did have a pale ale recently that was just fresh pineapple added to it and it was delicous, almost sour/funky qualities which was great
Click to expand...

yeah, just getting in to 10 gallon batches which are the most conducive to splitting them, doing something to one and leaving the other plain.
 
FlyDoctor said:
silentmike - when you say you added 400ml pineapple syrup - what do you mean? I was planning to add 600ml frozen pieapple juice concentrate for a 5G batch and wanted to somehow relate to your experience. Is your syrup juice concentrate?
Click to expand...

I made pineapple syrup, which now that I think about it, i did it wrong! I took like a small bag of cane sugar, water, and pineapple and let it sit and marinade. What i SHOULD have done was mix the water and sugar, heat it up so the sugar dissolves into solution and THEN add the pineapple and let it marinade. But basically I had a 750 mL wine bottle and I added a little over half to primary about 2-3 days after fermentation started. The purpose of this was to allow the yeast to convert the sugars that were most important (maltose and other sugars) first. I will try a 10 gallon batch and try this pineapple syrup a different way this time! I think I will just use WLP001 yeast, thoughts?
 
I've made a pineapple wheat a few times. For a 5 gallon recipe, I used 4 1lb. cans of Dole crushed pineapple straight out of the can. Juice and all. Turned out pretty good with nice citrus/pineapple flavor. It was also nice and crisp.
 
MetallHed said:
I've made a pineapple wheat a few times. For a 5 gallon recipe, I used 4 1lb. cans of Dole crushed pineapple straight out of the can. Juice and all. Turned out pretty good with nice citrus/pineapple flavor. It was also nice and crisp.
Click to expand...

Nice - would you say the pineapple flavor with this approach is obvious, or subtle?

I was in the grocery store this weekend and I saw that crushed fruit and it got me thinking - perhaps it's close in concept to the vintners purees
 
You can definitely taste the "citrusy" flavor. I would say it's not completely in-your-face pineapple flavor though. It was light and crisp with good citrus/pineapple flavor and was great for summer.

You could always start with a lesser amount and add more next brew if you want a bigger taste of pineapple. I thought the 4 pounds per 5 gallons was good though, IMO. The citrus kills the head so don't expect any on these types of beers. I don't think adding anything to get a bigger head on your beer will help.

...making me thirsty, I might have to brew it again this year.
 
I am going to try that as well! I am not sure if that is cost effective at the brewery level but we will see
 

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