American Prickly Pear Wheat

Not a big fruit beer type but i like to experiment from time to time and thought i would give this a try.

The recipe as follows for a 11.5gl batch...

10lbs American 2-Row
10lbs Wheat
1lb of Honey Malt
2.5oz Kent Golding (5%aa) 60min
0.5oz Cascade (6%aa) 0min
10-13 Bright Red Prickly Pears (Pureed)
Yeast: S05

Mashed the Grain at 152

I split the batch so i could taste the Wheat Beer as is and used the other 1/2 to try out the prickly pear and both came out really nice. Prickly pear has a real subtle flavor when eating it fresh but the flavors really pop in the beer. Has a nice rosey floral nose and solid prickly pear finish and pours a purple/ pinkish hue. I'll probably use half the amount of pears the next round since the flavors is a little over powering. The only other beer i can kinda compare it too is the Watermelon Wheat by 21st Amendment, but that still has a "beer" flavor where mine is hidden behind the fruit. The wife absolutely loves it but i still want the sucker to taste like beer at the end of the day and look forward to trying this again.

I did not pasteurize any of the pears and they were frozen for over 6 months before i could clean them. To clean, i rubbed them in grass to rid them of all the spines and then gave them a thorough rinse under cold tap water. i then carefully sliced off the skin and tossed them into the wife's Vitamix (fancy jamba juice blender) and pureed them. After they were all pureed it fit in a 24oz Odwalla Bottle. DO NOT TRY TO SKIN WITH SPINES! My neighbor who gave me the fruit was the one who told me to rub them in grass before skinning but i thought i could pull it off by being careful...i was wrong! I had tons of tiny ass splinters all over my hands after skinning about 5 before i threw in the towel and called it quits.

I let the beer ferment out roughly 10-12 days at room temp then i transferred the Wheat beer to me mixed with the juice from a 6.5gl BB to a 5gl BB. I Starsan'ed the 5gl BB and then poured the pureed fruit in and racked the beer right on top of it. Fermentation kicked off for another 5 days or so and after that was complete i cold crashed for a couple days and racked into a corny.

When i was pulling hydro samples and tasting, there was a bitterniss i originally contributed to the seeds of the fruit possibly getting pulverized by the blender but it's completely subsided. I'm now left with a colorful, fruity beer that earned me some serious browny points with wifey.

The next round, i plan to slice the fruits and maybe cut them in 1/8's and rack the beer on top of that in an effort to balance the overall profile.

If you have Prickly Pears available i would highly recommend giving them a try. I was really surprised at how much flavor came through when added to beer.

I'll throw up a pick when i get home from from work this evening.

Cheers for Beers!

So, this was posted a long time ago...

A few questions:

Did you make it again? If so, what is the new recipe? Did you use the green or the purple pears? I live in Cleveland and we have a market that has a good deal on P. Pears and would like to give this a try. Any information would be highly appreciated.

Cheers!

MichaelsBrewing,

I have yet to make it again, but it's on my list. The Pears i used were bright red/ purple...basically as ripe as can be. As mentioned, the only change for the second round is cut the pears (4-5 per 5gl) into 1/4's or 8th's instead of pureeing them to balance things out.

If you like fruit wheat's, you'll love this.

Enjoy!

TheDonger

Finally heres a pic of the beer. A little dark but u can still see how colorful it came out.

Thanks for the picture. Lolls nice!

Cheers.

I've been considering adding prickly pear to a saison or porter. Do you think the flavors would blend well with a porter or would it kind of fade behind the darker malts?

Has anyone tried just cutting fruit in half and step mashing them then strain through cheese cloth. Thats what i did and ended up with a very briliant color and flavorful juice. I plan to add the juice to my wort during boil. What are your thaughts on that. Do you think it will change the flavor too much or what.

I think either style would work but the flavors will be more pronounced in the saison. I imagine in the porter some of the fruit could get lost behind the darker malts but still worth brewing IMO.

Let us know how it turns out!

steinsato said:

I've been considering adding prickly pear to a saison or porter. Do you think the flavors would blend well with a porter or would it kind of fade behind the darker malts?

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I think this method would create the perfect balance between the fruit and beer, but depending on the amount of water you steeped with i would be inclined to add it to the fermenter. Throwing it into the boil will kill off some of the characteristics of the fruit, but you might need to boil off some of your fruit tea to hit your target volume.

allclene said:

Has anyone tried just cutting fruit in half and step mashing them then strain through cheese cloth. Thats what i did and ended up with a very briliant color and flavorful juice. I plan to add the juice to my wort during boil. What are your thaughts on that. Do you think it will change the flavor too much or what.

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Thanks i was hoping to mellow out the tartness of the prickly pear this way and get a more suptle flaver but keep the color from it. Do you think the flaver will still be distinguishable or will it change too much to tell it was prickly pear? Im going for a mild to medum notes of the flavor in the beer but want the wheat flavor to be slightly stronger flavor overall. I boiled down the prickly juice to half the volume i started. I added enough water to barely cover them in the pot and steeped down 2 5gal buckets worth of these things. Ended up adding a total of 3 gal of water to them. How about adding at the end of boil that way im not messing with chance of contaminating fermintation by acident think that will do better?

You will be surprised how flavorful the fruit is in the beer and the tartness i tasted from early hydro samples quickly mellowed. Hard to say how yours will turnout since your processes are completely different than mine, but sounds like a much more mellow approach. I was originally shooting for a balanced beer, and think I'll nail it in the next couple batches. You need this first run under your belt so you can do the same. Either way, if it's too fruity, the ladies will love it, more balanced and dry you'll love it. Its a win-win for everyone!

As for adding the juice at the end of the boil, sure. You already killed off anything making the tea and cant see why adding it at zero will harm the fruit any further.

allclene said:

Thanks i was hoping to mellow out the tartness of the prickly pear this way and get a more suptle flaver but keep the color from it. Do you think the flaver will still be distinguishable or will it change too much to tell it was prickly pear? Im going for a mild to medum notes of the flavor in the beer but want the wheat flavor to be slightly stronger flavor overall. I boiled down the prickly juice to half the volume i started. I added enough water to barely cover them in the pot and steeped down 2 5gal buckets worth of these things. Ended up adding a total of 3 gal of water to them. How about adding at the end of boil that way im not messing with chance of contaminating fermintation by acident think that will do better?

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Thanks let you know how it turns out am brewing it this saturday.

Well you are right about trial and error after fermenting for 4 days this ones turning out fruity. I only put 7 cups of prickly tea in it. I think i am gonna adjust the prickly pear and some grain also next batch. I am gonna wait until this one finishes before i make the final desicion on how much though.

Well its done and in the keg. Taste is a little prickly peary and hoppy but has a nice red color even the head is pink. Definately drinkable next time ill make sure have all the grains when i brew it.

This one is definitely going on the to-do list

I just did another split batch with my base wheat recipe and did 5gl w/ S-04 & 5gl w/ S-05 and leaning toward the S-05 after 10 days in the primary. This round I defrosted the prickly pears and dropped them straight into the primary. The carboy with S-04, added about 8 fruits, the carboy with S-05 I poured a cup of juice from the freezer bag and added 4 additional pears. Hoping the carboy w/ S-05 will be more beer forward this round. S-04 i already know will be fruity so that will be for the wife and her friends. =)

I'll post some pics in the coming weeks.

Heres the finished product its a real drinkable brew

I just did a prickly pear wit, and it was coming along nicely (until a keg malfunction left it all over my garage floor). Regardless, I'll share my technique for extracting the prickly pear juice.
I got about 5 gallons of prickly pear fruits, then put them in a kettle with about an inch of water. Heat to boil with a lid on. The steam will soften the fruits, then they can be mashed with a potato masher (by hand). Let that process go for about an hour, then you can drain off the liquid through a strainer, then again through cheese cloth to get any little spines out. Add pectic enzyme just before you add to the beer. I added it to the end of primary fermentation, just when things had slowed down, and it kicked off again for another day or so.

I'll try again with next year's prickly pear haul