Ephemere Style Base for Fruit

I'd like to develop an Ephemere style base to experiment with fruit this fall. I have apple and pear trees and my wife wants me to give apricots a go. I really like the subtleness of the fruit in Ephemere and the way the yeast flavors compliment. So, I'd like a spicy yeast flavor, some haze, fairly dry... I was thinking of starting with something close to a Belgian Wit and then racking on top of the various fruits in batches.

5 lbs wheat dme
.25 lbs flaked wheat
.5 lbs sugar

.5 oz hop addition - 60 min

Safale T-58

Thoughts? Anyone ever used T-58 with fruit before? How much fruit would you use? Any changes to the grains/sugars? Thanks!

Giving this a bump to see if anyone has any thoughts. Thanks.

Let's give this one more go. Yeeeeeeeeeeeah tripple post!

is wheat dme 50/50 wheat/malt?

As for the hops, what kind will you be using? Maybe try some dried/aged hops. Keep the IBU's way low too.

Tbh, I think they use something just like Green Apple Jolly Ranchers. That flavor can't be from real Apples. When you ferment Apples like that it doesn't much resemble Apples in the end imo. I think the recipe though has good components, but I'd consider using regular DME (if like Sir Humpsalots question is no) and then upping the flaked Wheat to 1/3 lb. Keep the bittering low, to like 10-15 IBU.

T-58 isn't terribly spicy imho. The Ardennes strain gets spicy.

The standard base for fruit beers is 50% wheat malt, 50% light/pils. Use just under 1 oz of hops or leave them out overnight if you want to use the whole package. So for example here's what I'd do:

3 lbs wheat dme
3 lbs pils/extra light dme
~1 oz saaz (old or reduced quantity) @ 60min

If you want it with more body/cloudier/more head, add some white wheat, at most 2 lb.
If you want it drier, add some kind of easily fermentable sugar, at most 1 lb.

As far as yeast goes, I'd go with a liquid strain, but I'm sure T-58 would work in a pinch.

thanks guys. i believe briess wheat dme is 60/40. as for the extras, i saw white wheat in several recipes. unfortunately, it needs to be mashed. is it a better choice than the flaked oats?

thought i'd give T-58 a go, since i'll be doing several small batches. i don't expect a ton of complexity but hopefully it will add some flavor.

White wheat doesn't *need* to be mashed to extract color and a little bit of other good stuff. I don't have the know-how regarding what it actually does, but I know that you can get good things out of it by steeping for 30 minutes. All I know for sure is that it was the main ingredient that made my batch of Austin homebrew's oberon clone.

Oh, that's good to know. That was just the info on the wiki malt chart, but if people have had success steeping the white wheat, I'd be down to give it a shot.

Also, would it be better to add the sugar to dry it out, or could i toss in some champagne yeast when i rack onto the fruit? I dig the champagne edge in the cider I made last fall. Would it overpower everything else, or might I be okay since the initial fermentation would be done?

I would or wouldn't add the sugar depending on what fruit you're adding. I've found some fruit seems to lead to a drier beer because of all the simple sugars you add from the fruit.

Here's a recipe I got from averaging about 30 fruit beer recipes off beertools. It's about as definitive as you are gonna get:

4 gal, 74% Eff.

4.37 lb Pale Malt
1.75 lb Wheat Malt
0.45 lb Crystal 40L
0.50 lb Honey

0.4 oz Hallertauer 60 mins
0.4 oz Cascade 15 mins

California Ale Yeast

Add 2 lbs of fruit in primary and 2 more in secondary, along with 1 oz of flavoring.

For an American fruit beer, that would work great. For something closer to a blended lambic, though, I'd stick with the 50/50 barley/wheat and a single small saaz addition for bittering. California Ale yeast also will not offer the spiciness the author is looking for.