wailua Wheat...Passion Fruit

Hello all,
I was hoping to make a wheat beer and add some passion fruit in secondary to make something refreshing for the summer like the Kona Brewing Company's Wailua Wheat.

My question is how much passion fruit or passion fruit juice should I use. any suggestions are gratefully accepted as I've never put fruit in my beer before.

I love Wailua wheat... I had it while I was at Kona last month.
the passion fruit taste is awesome.
As for amount of passion fruit, I think it is better to do a small batch experiment to determine the optimal amount.
Are you using extract or real fruits?

Yeah it's very refreshing. I was hoping to use whole fruit but if the quantities are massive that may not be an option.

Rezzing an old thread here but was wondering if anyone ever came up with a clone for Wailua Wheat? A buddy of mine gave me five very fresh passion fruit over the weekend and I'd like to make use of them in a Wailua Wheat-esque way. If not, I can guesstimate a grain bill...and then considering adding a portion to the mash and the rest to secondary - unless someone else has better ideas?

If you can get nelson sauvin hops, add these to your flavor addition. Widmer drifter pale ale uses these and it tastes just like passion and guava.

I too would love to find a clone for this tasty brew! I has one in the Honolulu air port the other day and was completely thrown by how crisp and refreshing it was!!! It's one I think the wife will like too.

Not a terribly useful add, but remember that a little fruit can go a long way. It is a wheat beer with a hint of passion fruit, not the other way around.

Do keep us informed of how this brew goes, it is a rather tasty beer!

Bumping an old thread in hopes someone has uses passion fruit in a wheat beer? FWIW I brew a pineapple wheat with 1 pineapple cored and skined per gallon with citra hops on a very basic wheat recipe and it's fantastic. Pineapples in secondary for 2 weeks. But I was hoping someone has tried passion fruits?

I have not. If you have a wheat recipe that goes well with pineapple though I would figure that would be a good base. Figure Citra might not be the right hops, though.

nelson sauvin hops <--- definitly will be looking for these!

Just touching base to see if anyone finished a batch a d how it went. Looking to make an extract clone using a basic American wheat kit and fresh passion fruit. Any pointers/stories would be appreciated.

Cheers!

I made a Wailua Wheat clone last summer that I was pretty happy with. I racked 2.25 gallons onto 10 oz of fresh passionfruit and let it sit for 7 days. I then racked to a clean fermenter for an additional 6 days before bottling. At bottling I was worried that the passionfruit was too potent, but after a few weeks in the bottle, I thought the balance was great.

I'm about to scale it up to a 5.25 gallon AG batch and I'm planning to double the fruit 20 oz. Based on my limited experience scaling up dry hop quantities I'm a little worried that the fruit may be too subtle, but I don't want it to be overpowering either. I'll try to remember to follow up after this batch is ready...

As a side note, the fruit is pretty damn expensive in NorCal. For the first batch I got it at Nugget Market for about $8/lb - but that's for the whole fruit. I only got about 40% usable fruit by weight (the rest is the shell), so the price as used in the beer was about $20/lb!

@mswallin Thanks for the post. What did ou use as the base beer? Just a typical American Wheat?

And did you go with the Nelson or what hops?

mswallin13 you must be near me if your shopping Nugget, Thats our go to grocery store. Still want to get going on this but lately a kitchen remodel has had me NOT brewing for almost three months!

This was my base recipe-

4.0 oz Carapils - Steeped for 20 min
4.0 oz Crystal 15 - Steeped for 20 min
2.5 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat DME
0.5 lbs Briess Golden Light DME
0.25 oz Rakau (11.4%) 30 min
0.25 oz Pacifica (6.1%) 5 min
Wyeast 1010 - American Wheat

OG - 1.051 FG - 1.012
IBU - 20 Color - 4.6 SRM

@thetmaxx - I got the fruit from the El Dorado Hills Nugget. They didn't have any in the store, but they were able to special order fruit really quickly...but for $$$$$.

Hopefully this worked, but anyone guess what waterfall is behind my beer, hint I was in Maui! Still haven't cloned it yet, but this was fun!!