Raspberry blonde

Ok so I made a blonde ale and added 40 oz. of organic raspberries to the secondary. Everything went off without a hitch. After a week in the bottle, great color, wonderful aroma and actually nice carbonation. But, the beer has a certain bitterness to it. Almost sour ness. It's clean and I don't think it was infected. Should I relax knowing it'll calm down with time or any of you have ideas for a next batch to sweeten it up?

LouBrew13 said:

Ok so I made a blonde ale and added 40 oz. of organic raspberries to the secondary. Everything went off without a hitch. After a week in the bottle, great color, wonderful aroma and actually nice carbonation. But, the beer has a certain bitterness to it. Almost sour ness. It's clean and I don't think it was infected. Should I relax knowing it'll calm down with time or any of you have ideas for a next batch to sweeten it up?

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I don't have a lot of experience with brewing with fruit, but have read that it can make it quite tart because the yeast ferment out the sugar. I have heard good things about combining purée in the secondary with some flavored extract at bottling. Also, maybe a little lactose will bring out some sweetness for you.

I made a raspberry blonde ale (1.045 OG). I found that the taste went from sweet when it was first ready to sour after a month or two. There is a balance between getting enough fruit flavor and having too much fruit and developing tartness. With too much fruit the ale may become tart. Personally I liked the sour bite my raspberry blonde acquired after a few months in the bottle.

I have a brewery in town that makes a rasp blonde that my girl loves. But it's on the sweeter side. Not too much though. I was going for that. I guess I'll give it some more time. But patience has never been my thing.

Made a strawberry blonde with 8 lbs of strawberries. The smell is amazing, but the taste is so tart. I even backsweetened it a little, but it clearly needed more. Next time I try a fruit beer, i think I will use fruit to get the flavor and then backsweeten with concentrated fruit juice or something similar. I Really want to make a strawberry blonde that I like but I dont think i could find strawberry juice concentrate. Would need to use a strawberry Kiwi juice or something. Of course, gotta kill the yeast first or keep constantly cold t stop fermentation, so no bottling this beer...

My local shop has an extract that they suggested. I wanted real though. Perhaps the extract accomplishes the flavor without fermenting out the sugars.

Well for you fruit beer lovers, it's a success! Patience has never been my thing. An extra week has made all of the difference. It's delicious