Fruit Beer watermelon wheat

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I liked the wb-06. It had a tart finish but it went well in the beer. American wheat is good and german ale would be fine too. Hope that helps.
 
Its time for batch number 2 for the year. I think im gonna try it with the watermelon juice from kroger this time if they still have it.
 
Dude said:
Until they come up with a hop that smells like watermelon, I think a pale ale would make the watermelon useless. Also, too much bitter would kill the nice faint, sweet, watermelon aspect, IMHO.
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I have been wanting to brew this beer and found this post. My local home brew store owner just got back from a trip in Seattle and went to a lot of breweries there. He went to one and they had an "experimental hop" that is not released and is supposed to have an amazing watermelon flavor. Somehow he was able to track down the grower and was able to get 11lbs. I know half of it is almost gone but I plan on going tomorrow to pick up as much as I can.

Now my question should I attempt this recipe with the experimental hop? AA on hop is 11 if i recall correctly.

And recommendations for yeast?
 
evancold said:
I have been wanting to brew this beer and found this post. My local home brew store owner just got back from a trip in Seattle and went to a lot of breweries there. He went to one and they had an "experimental hop" that is not released and is supposed to have an amazing watermelon flavor. Somehow he was able to track down the grower and was able to get 11lbs. I know half of it is almost gone but I plan on going tomorrow to pick up as much as I can.

Now my question should I attempt this recipe with the experimental hop? AA on hop is 11 if i recall correctly.

And recommendations for yeast?
Click to expand...

If your gonna try it with a 11% AA hop I would say add no bittering hops at all and hop burst it the last 20 minutes of the boil hard. I would have to plug the number in to get some ibu figures but thats what I would recomend. Try it with 1056 so you get a idea of the hop flavor and go from there.

What was the name of the hop?
 
Ok, so I just brewed a 10g batch of this on Friday and got it into the fermenter. Today my AC broke and it's 85 inside my house right now. We are looking at 100+ weather all week and my AC won't be replaced till Friday at the earliest. I don't have anywhere to move this/take it, any ideas? Will it be ok?
 
When the temps go over 100 outside my House will be in the mid 90's. It went out the week of the fourth and I thought it was fixed.
 
you can put it in a tub with cold water and put a tshirt of the carboy. As the water wicks up the shirt it will evaporate and help cool it down. You can also put some frozen bottles of water in there with it that will help too.
 
I found the juice at the store again and added it to secondary. It tastes just as good as cutting up a melon and juicing it yourself and its a lot easier. I will keep using it as ling as I can find it.
 
apologies if this question has already been answered in this thread, but do we know what the impact of adding 4 cups of watermelon juice in a 5 gallon batch is on our specific gravity?

thanks...
-KD
 
KidDynamite said:
apologies if this question has already been answered in this thread, but do we know what the impact of adding 4 cups of watermelon juice in a 5 gallon batch is on our specific gravity?

thanks...
-KD
Click to expand...

I don't remember off the top of my head. I took a gravity reading of the juice when I made it and can't find what it was. The gravity will depend on the ripeness of the melon. The number 1.035 stands out in my mind for some reason though. If you add 4 cups its not going to make that much more alcohol.
 
Ben -
i saw an old post where you came up with a gravity reading of 40 (1.04) for pure watermelon juice...

here's where i'm confused: that's 40 points per pound per gallon, right?

so if I use 4 cups, which should be about 2lbs of watermelon juice (working off the fact that a gallon of milk weighs 9 lbs, so a quart should weigh about 2 lbs... and yes, I know that milk is not equal to watermelon juice), that's about 80 points, divided by 5 gallons = 16 points of gravity? that is not insignificant...

thoughts?

is my math bad? (it very well may be...)
 
KidDynamite said:
Ben -
i saw an old post where you came up with a gravity reading of 40 (1.04) for pure watermelon juice...

here's where i'm confused: that's 40 points per pound per gallon, right?

so if I use 4 cups, which should be about 2lbs of watermelon juice (working off the fact that a gallon of milk weighs 9 lbs, so a quart should weigh about 2 lbs... and yes, I know that milk is not equal to watermelon juice), that's about 80 points, divided by 5 gallons = 16 points of gravity? that is not insignificant...

thoughts?

is my math bad? (it very well may be...)
Click to expand...

It would be the same as adding .5 gallons of water and .45 pounds of dry malt. It will only raise the gravity .004 points
 
Ben -

thanks for the reply... I'm not doubting you, but can you explain how you came up with: "It would be the same as adding .5 gallons of water and .45 pounds of dry malt. It will only raise the gravity .004 points"

thanks...
 
KidDynamite said:
Ben -

thanks for the reply... I'm not doubting you, but can you explain how you came up with: "It would be the same as adding .5 gallons of water and .45 pounds of dry malt. It will only raise the gravity .004 points"

thanks...
Click to expand...

I took my brew program and added .5 gallons of water and .45lbs of dry malt to get to a 1.040 gravity and then added it to the original recipe which gave me the .004 difference. I may be wrong but that's how I got that number.
 
Ben -
Hmmm... cause I took my brew program, created a new custom adjunct with a gravity of 1.04, and added 2 lbs of it, and it matched my math...

a friend points out to me: "think of the watermelon juice as wort with a gravity of 1.04. if you add that to your existing 1.04 wort, there will be no change..."

which also makes sense...

I remain confused as to why I can't use John Palmer How To Brew math like this:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-5.html
 
answering my own question, from another friend:

"The fault in the logic is that the watermelon juice does not have the potential (or typical yield) of 40 pts per lb per gal. Because it's already fully diluted and we're reading the SG. It does have 40 pt per gal, and thus there is 12.5 pts in that 5 cups. When you add it to 5 gal of 1.04 wort you then get 212.5 total grav pts for your final wort. And the final volume is 5.3125 gal. And so 212.5/5.3125 = 40, thus 1.04 SG. "
 
KidDynamite said:
answering my own question, from another friend:

"The fault in the logic is that the watermelon juice does not have the potential (or typical yield) of 40 pts per lb per gal. Because it's already fully diluted and we're reading the SG. It does have 40 pt per gal, and thus there is 12.5 pts in that 5 cups. When you add it to 5 gal of 1.04 wort you then get 212.5 total grav pts for your final wort. And the final volume is 5.3125 gal. And so 212.5/5.3125 = 40, thus 1.04 SG. "
Click to expand...

Sounds perfect!
 
So i've only ever brewed two batches of beer (24L or 6.3 Gallons) and they were both pretty simple and i didn't mess around with them very much. This recipe seems like something great to brew up for the summer, but I'm a little confused about some things:

From what i've read, specific gravity has something to do with the ratio of sugars and water in the brew, which would obviously be changed with the addition of Watermelon. How does the watermelon change the SG and what am I supposed to do about it?

Also, since this is a summer beer and i want it to be quite light (I'll be adding 4 cups of watermelon so it is fruity too), whats the mouth feel and strength like on this beer? I'm usually all for something with lots of hops, but that wasn't my image for this beer.

Thanks so much, hopefully i'll be able to get an update up on this beer when i throw it in my primary.
 
Jpogfreak886 said:
So i've only ever brewed two batches of beer (24L or 6.3 Gallons) and they were both pretty simple and i didn't mess around with them very much. This recipe seems like something great to brew up for the summer, but I'm a little confused about some things:

From what i've read, specific gravity has something to do with the ratio of sugars and water in the brew, which would obviously be changed with the addition of Watermelon. How does the watermelon change the SG and what am I supposed to do about it?

Also, since this is a summer beer and i want it to be quite light (I'll be adding 4 cups of watermelon so it is fruity too), whats the mouth feel and strength like on this beer? I'm usually all for something with lots of hops, but that wasn't my image for this beer.

Thanks so much, hopefully i'll be able to get an update up on this beer when i throw it in my primary.
Click to expand...

Its about 5.5%abv and the watermelon juice is about the same gravity as the wort so it won't give you any more abv but it will increase the volume just a little. I mash mine at 155 normally for a medium mouth feel. Just brew as normal and be very clean when handling the watermelon and you will be great!
 
Brewed this last week as a 1.5 gallon batch. last night i racked it onto 2 cups of juice. shouldn't have started fermentation again, or should i repitch?
 
Is this normal?

ForumRunner_20130614_215156.jpg
 
Thx. I'm about to keg a wheat I brewed and add about 5 cups of watermelon. Fresh or from Kroger if I can find it. Has anyone here thought of adding some sorbate???? It's used in winemaking to keep fermentation from starting back up if back sweetening a wine.

It would maybe preserve some of the sugars from the watermelon.
 
Wild Duk said:
Thx. I'm about to keg a wheat I brewed and add about 5 cups of watermelon. Fresh or from Kroger if I can find it. Has anyone here thought of adding some sorbate???? It's used in winemaking to keep fermentation from starting back up if back sweetening a wine.

It would maybe preserve some of the sugars from the watermelon.
Click to expand...

Yes I had thought about doing it but didn't want my beer to be a sweet fruity mess. I have never had any luck with it stopping fermentations either. But what ever works for you man.
 
I just make a American wheat and toss in the watermelon extract and if you like watermelon jolly ranchers its a good beer!
 
Ben -
I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of this using my own extract variation: 3.3lbs wheat LME, 2lbs light DME, 1oz Hallertau for 60 minutes... I let it ferment for a week, then added 5 cups of of squeezed and strained watermelon juice and gave it two more weeks before bottling.

I think next time I'd actually do more watermelon - the flavor is subtle enough that most people have told me "I'm not sure I'd be able to figure out that it was watermelon if you hadn't told me."

thanks for the idea, thread, and methodology!
-KD
 
KidDynamite said:
Ben -
I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of this using my own extract variation: 3.3lbs wheat LME, 2lbs light DME, 1oz Hallertau for 60 minutes... I let it ferment for a week, then added 5 cups of of squeezed and strained watermelon juice and gave it two more weeks before bottling.

I think next time I'd actually do more watermelon - the flavor is subtle enough that most people have told me "I'm not sure I'd be able to figure out that it was watermelon if you hadn't told me."

thanks for the idea, thread, and methodology!
-KD
Click to expand...

That's odd most of the time 5 cups of juice is more than enough. Glad you like it though.
 

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