Fruit Beer Humuhumunukunukupuaa – Passionfruit Witbier

After tasting Avery's Liliko'i Kepolo at the brewery in Boulder, CO, I decided to try to reproduce its charm for those of us who don't live in their distribution area.

The recipe started with a traditional old world Belgian Wit mash bill and was honed to offer cleaner, more tart flavors to mesh well with tropical new world hops and the luscious sweetness of ripe passionfruit.

This has been excellent after 3 test batches. Hope this allows more brewers to take advantage of late Summer seasonal flavors.

Cheers!





GRIST
4lb - Flaked Wheat
4lb - Pilsner (use your favorite)
1.1lb - Flaked Oats
0.25lb - Honey Malt
0.25lb - Munich
0.5lb - Rice Hulls

MASH - Efficiency: 75%
Protein Rest - 122 F for 15 minutes
Saccharification Rest - 154 F for 75 minutes
Mash-Out - 168 F for 10 minutes
Sparge - Batch or Fly @ 170 F

BOIL - 90 Minutes
.5oz Magnum @ 60
.5oz Hallertau Blanc @ 5
.5oz Motueka @ Whirlpool (10min prior to cooling)

PRIMARY
Ferment with Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier for 3 weeks, raising temperature daily from 68F to 72F (Days 1-5).

SECONDARY
Rack onto 4.5lbs Passionfruit Puree (pasteurized or preferably made fresh and treated with Campden tablets). Allow to ferment out for 7 days. Add 1oz Citra, dry-hop for 7 days.

CARB
Carb to 3.6 Volumes (7.37oz corn sugar if bottle conditioning)

Brewtoad link (use to scale up/down):
https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/humuhumunukunukuapuaa

I made a passion fruit wheat after trying that beer too.. I'm about to rack into secondary with passion fruit and kiwi (the passion fruit was too expensive to get 5 lbs so I added kiwi, it was like $30 for 2 pounds of passion fruit)... Avery told me that add fruit to secondary to prevent yeast from eating the passion fruit sugars... what I'm wondering is how can I bottle carb it without the yeast eating the fruit sugars? That and preventing a bottle bomb. I usually keg so bottling is still new to me

clintandhisbeer said:

I made a passion fruit wheat after trying that beer too.. I'm about to rack into secondary with passion fruit and kiwi (the passion fruit was too expensive to get 5 lbs so I added kiwi, it was like $30 for 2 pounds of passion fruit)... Avery told me that add fruit to secondary to prevent yeast from eating the passion fruit sugars... what I'm wondering is how can I bottle carb it without the yeast eating the fruit sugars? That and preventing a bottle bomb. I usually keg so bottling is still new to me

Click to expand...

Kiwi would offer that nice green Watermelon rind-type freshness. Sounds good! Fruit almost always go in during secondary, so their recommendation makes sense. But what they're doing to be sure the yeast doesn't eat all the sugars is limiting the TIME IN SECONDARY. The less time spent, the more sugars will remain. I found 7 days is perfect for my palette, but a friend preferred the sweetness at 5 days. YMMV.

But when it's bottle conditioning is the yeast gonna eat away at the fruit sugars?

The fruit flavor is going to come from more than just the sugars, fortunately. You'll lose some sweetness in the bottle carbing process, but not all of it. Fruit sugars are more complex than the corn sugar you'll use for conditioning, so the yeast will eat them last. If you want, you could consider cold crashing your bottles after ~14 days to stop any additional munching away of sugars.

This is a situation where kegging can really be an advantage. It allows fresh ingredients like fruit and hops be tasted more readily.

Overall, I wouldn't fear. It'll probably taste awesome.

Oh, and that Avery Liliko'i Kepolo is crazy good, right!? I get the feeling they may add fresh passionfruit right before keg/canning because it's so damn fruity.

Yeah I usually keg but I'm trying something new... and that Avery is ohhh sooo good!! Thanks a bunch! Cheers

Image added to OP. Bottle conditioned version.

What brand of passion fruit did you use for your beer? Where did purchase it from?

I love reading recipes. So many great recipes, so few brew days. This might make it into my brew queue.

Any reason one couldn't simply add a few cans of Hawaiian Sun or Aloha Maid Pass-O-Guava juice to secondary and call it good? I have a friend who is obsessed with the stuff and has been bugging me to make a Pass-O-Guava beer for awhile now. I was thinking of adding this to a Belgian Wit extract recipe. Any reason this would be a bad idea?