Any advice on putting fruit in a wheat ale?

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tehmaxshell

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My roommate and I are considering putting some sort of fruit or maybe honey to a wheat ale we're about to brew. We're not sure when, nor how much to add. We essentially know nothing. Any thoughts?
 
usually fruit is added in secondary. When its done primary fermentation then you rack onto fruit. What were you thinking of adding? i would recomend something like oregon fruit purees because fresh fruit can be a pain. You should use a campden tablet (potassium metasulphite) to prevent wild yeast problems
 
usually fruit is added in secondary. When its done primary fermentation then you rack onto fruit. What were you thinking of adding? i would recomend something like oregon fruit purees because fresh fruit can be a pain. You should use a campden tablet (potassium metasulphite) to prevent wild yeast problems

Wouldn't that kill the yeast in the wheat beer as well? Even after fermentation was done, how would you carb if it was bottled?
 
I made a raspberry wheat a few months ago. I never use a secondary so I just put the fruit at the bottom of the fermentor and then poured the wort on top of it. Aside from the fast that I screwed up the priming sugar and had practically no carbonation the beer turned out well. It had quite a kick to it so I know that fermentation occurred. In addition it had a decent raspberry taste (as far as barely carbonated beer goes that is).


I had done a little reading on adding fruit to beers and normally the fruit is added in the secondary. And most seem like to use 3+ lbs of fruit. Now I thought that was way too much fruit so I just went with 1 lbs of frozen berries. I had planned on blending the berries some so I thawed them. However, when they thawed they were pretty mashed up so I just threw them in the fermentor. After a few days in the fermentor I could see what looked like cherrios floating in my semi-transparent fermentor. I was a little disturbed by it but assumed that the beer has just sucked all of the color out of the few remaining berries (which is exactly what happened). I just wish I hadn't screwed up the priming sugar...it would have been a great beer.

Anyways, when I add fruit to a beer again, and I am positive I will, I will most likely just follow the same procedure of pouring the wort on top of the fruit in the primary.
 
I just did a peach wheat. After primary fermentation I racked it onto a can of peach puree, then kegged. In the keg I added a 5oz bottle of peach flavoring. Since I keg I was able to chill and carb before adding the flavoring, and I added it little by little to make sure I wasn't over-doing it. It's pretty darn good now.
 
My roommate and I are considering putting some sort of fruit or maybe honey to a wheat ale we're about to brew. We're not sure when, nor how much to add. We essentially know nothing. Any thoughts?

I've added honey to several different beers and I've always added it with 15min. left in the boil and I uaually use 2lbs. As far as fruit goes, I've only done 2 fruit beers and used 5lbs of fruit in both and I added it to the secondary.
 
I made a strawberry wheat a while back. I added 1# to the boil and then 3# to secondary. After three weeks in the bottle it had a nice balanced strawberry taste. I opened one the other night, 4 or 5 months in the bottle, and the strawberry taste was almost gone. The beer was real popular with the ladies and I will probably make it again but add more fruit.
 
My current drinking beer is a cherry wheat made with cherry extract.

It's going fast, so I plan on another batch soon. For that one, I am going to use either fresh/frozen cherries, cherry juice, or both. Maybe some frozen sour cherries and some sweet cherry juice to balance it out.

Wheat beers should be drank young, and yeast is part of the taste, so I am not sure about racking to secondary. I may just mix and puree the fruit and juice, heat it to 170* (no higher or you get astringency issues), cool it and dump it into the primary after two weeks. Let it sit a week or so, then rack to keg.

If you use blackberries, you probably won't have tartness issues. They are pretty sweet, but you still might want to add a little malto-dextrin to counter what tartness there is.
 
I've made a couple of batches using blackberries that I harvested myself.

I froze the berries to break up the berries and release the juices.

I added the berries still frozen to the wort when it was at 180 F.

I went straight from primary to bottling bucket.

My understanding is you have to eliminate the wild yeast and bacteria that are on fresh fruit. There are 2 ways of doing this. One is pasteurization and the other is chemical.

One problem I had was when racking to the bottling bucket, I got some of the berries into the bottling bucket and into some of the bottles. It didn't hurt anything, but towards the end, it did clog up my bottling wand.

Overall, the beer came out great. I got lots of compliments on it. It did come out with a weird color. It wasn't quite purple, and it wasn't a brown like normal wheat beer. It did have a distinct berry flavor.
 
For the raspberry I am drinking now, I added 3 lbs to the secondary and I have a good flavor and color. I pastuerized them first. I had the exact same experience as Eves. After a few days all the color runs down into the beer and it looks like little cherrios floating around. At that point I decided to get the raspberries/cherrios out of there.
 
Wouldn't that kill the yeast in the wheat beer as well? Even after fermentation was done, how would you carb if it was bottled?

Potassium metabisulfite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

generally it prevents new "infections" from taking hold. Yeast are not harmed save for wild strains or not well established variants. Essentially your just preventing anything new, whats already happening is fair game. The yeasties will be fine
 
I just kegged a blackberry American wheat. I made it for my wife who doesnt like beer, and she likes it. I added 2 cans of Oregon fruit blackberries, syrup and all to the secondary. I let it stay in there for a week and then kegged it. I added the syrup from a 3rd can to the keg. Like I said, its for her and she wanted as much blackberry flavor as possible. I have to say that it is very good.
 
We were thinking maybe some blackberries. Thanks for the advice.

I've racked two batches of a generic, lightly-hopped, light-colored ale pitched with farmhouse yeast. 2wks in primary, then racked onto 1lb of blackberries per gallon in secondary. Another 2wks there then bottled.

Really, really good. Tart and fruit-tasting without sweetness.
 
We were thinking maybe some blackberries. Thanks for the advice.

ahh black berry wheat beer - that is something I know about

I've made it several times

here is what you want/need to know about black berries:

1. Don't bother trying to pick them - a couple pounds of already frozen black berries you can get at the grocery store for a buck or two, so unless you just like to pick berries don't bother.

2. If you decide to pick them anyway, you need to blanch them - so basically what you do is boil a large pot of water, put the berries in a collander and pour the boiling water over them. Don't soak the berries in water or you lose lots of the juice. Another reason to buy them at the grocery is you can skip this part.

3. After you blanch them, put them in a ziplock bag or tupper-ware and stick them in the freezer.

4. Do not put the berries in the blender - DO NOT. If you do you're beer will have floating berry pulp and it will look gross so even though it will taste ok, your friends and family will look at you funny if you try to get them to try it.

5. You need a good wheat beer add the berries too. A simple one that works beautifully is 5# Wheat Spray Extract and 1/2 oz Perle or Sterling for 45 minutes. But any wheat or hefe recipe you want to try would be a good start.

6. Now ordinarily most people don't do a secondary with a wheat but in the case of blackberry wheat - that is what you want to do. When you think your primary ferment is almost but not completely done, take your frozen berries out of the freezer and put them in the bottom of your carboy or bucket you're going to use for the secondary, then rack the beer out of the primary and into the secondary on top of the black berries, put on the airlock and leave it. The fermentation will kick back up again for a few days.

7. Now when you bottle it, do your best to leave the berry pulp behind and not get it into your bottles. This is next to impossible to do, but not putting the berries in the blender and straining or filtering the beer someway is a big help.

8. How much blackberries to add ? I've seen recipes that called for as much as 2-3#s for 5 gallons, personally to me that is way too much but obviously some people like that. For my tastes, I think a pound is just about right - a pound will have a noticable black berry taste but it will still taste like beer. Two pounds, and it will no longer taste like beer it will taste like berry.

9. Also, avoid the blackberry syrup or black berry flavored extract if you can. I've used it before, but I think you'll be lots happier with real black berries.

10. One last thing, black berry wheat is a beer you want to drink pretty quickly, so even though you are doing a secondary - don't let the beer sit and linger when its done get it bottled or kegged so you can drink it.
 
Isn't there a "Man Law" about this?

I grew up with my dad always telling me:


"Real men do whatever the hell they want."


Following some sort of conformist 'law' seems counterintuitive to that core belief :mug:
 
I recently did a cherry wheat. I put 4 pounds of cherry's into the boil pot right at flame out and squished them up with a sanatized potato masher. Then poured it all into the primary fermenter. Let it sit in primary for about a week, then secondary for about a week and a half to 2 weeks without the cherry's. It gave the beer a nice suttle cherry taste and smell with a beautiful color without overpowering the taste of the wheat beer it self.
 
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