How To Hop a Fruit Beer?

How To Hop a Fruit Beer?
to get to the $59 free shipping with morebeer I buy 2 batches at a time.
When planning my second batch I saw that boysenberry extract was on sale. Being the cheapskate that I am I couldn't resist it. I've been wanting to do a fruit beer for some time so I figured this was as good as time as any.

Here is what I have to make a 7 gallon batch_ Since I can add at bottling I'm only going to add the fruit to 1/3-1/2 of the batch.

8lbs extra light lme
1 lbs belgian pilsner (left over from previous batches)
.5 lbs crystal

I have some east kent goldings and some glena.

I'm thinking keep it simple .5 glena @ 45min and .5 ekg at 15min.

any thoughts

p.s.
morebeer says,
"Add great fruit flavor and aroma to your beer with our natual fruit flavorings. Best if added just prior to bottling. We recommend you start by adding 1/2 bottle and then add more according to your taste. Contains no sugar or haze-causing pectins."

I tend to go on the light end for hopping fruit beers, although I've had a couple good IPAs with fruit (tends to work better with hops and fruits that have similar flavors, Amarillo-peach, Citra-mango etc...). What you have sounds about right, although I'd even skip the 15 min addition.

Never used fruit extract, I would try it on a glass of beer before you add it to the whole thing.

Oldsock said:

I'd even skip the 15 min addition.

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I think your right after doing some reading most people say the fruit and hops compete so you don't want to much.

I was wondering if there would be any spices that would go well with a fruit beer and also stand alone as a good flavor?

agree with the above.

Sweet and bitter go well together

Sweet and Tart go together

Tart and bitter do not.

When you ferment your fruit sugars, you're left with tartness. Bitterness will upset that balance.

Tread lightly and keep your hop additions low in alpha and close to the end of the boil.

Cinnamon is always great with sweet and tart. It add just a bit of spice. A pinch of crushed cinnamon in each bottle during bottling is enough.

sneak up behind it?


_

wildwest450 said:

sneak up behind it?

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And give it a reach-around when you put the hops in...

Definitely don't exceed a BU:GU ratio of .5, and maybe closer to .3

Also, I don't see a need for late hops in a fruit beer unless they are incredibly complementary. So we're talking citrusy american hops with apricot/peach. But I don't know about EKG and boysenberry.

If you're planning on 45 and 60 min additions, I would just up the 60 and get all your bittering from that. You don't get anything from a 45 that you can't from the 60, except more hop usage.

So, to some things up. Use the glena not EKG. Don't worry about a flavor addition and keep the IBUs to around 20.

Do you think the crystal will give it enough sweetness?

I know honey will dry a beer out, is there any way I can add it to the secondary lets say a week before I bottle and it would leave some residual sweetness?

Take your hydro readings before and after your honey addition. I imagine if you wanted to keep some residual sugar, you could just bottle when you hydro reading is somewhere between your pre and post honey addition

gregpio85 said:

Take your hydro readings before and after your honey addition. I imagine if you wanted to keep some residual sugar, you could just bottle when you hydro reading is somewhere between your pre and post honey addition

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This is a terribly dangerous idea! Bottling a beer will not stop the yeast from attenuating. Bottling before the terminal gravity is reached will cause continued the production of CO2 in the bottle which can lead to bottles exploding. To give you an idea it only takes .002-.003 of fermentation to give a beer full carbonation.

Please be careful when giving advice that you haven't tried yourself.

sorry about that. Wanted to be the guy who knew what he was doing.

In doing some reading I've found that the only besides useing malts that leave a sweetness is using lactose sugar.

The only thing is I want to make a batch of beer that can stand alone by itself and when adding the boysenberry extract it just makes it better! Maybe I'm hoping for too much aeh.