Raspberry Ale?

I just brewed an all grain red ale. It's in the primary. My son in law asked me about making a raspberry ale. Thinking about adding two or three pounds of fresh, clean, sanitized raspberries to the secondary before I racked the red ale on top of them. Let it set for two or three weeks.

Has anyone done it this way before? Suggestions welcome. I just want a hint of raspberry in the ale.

Thanks

Anyone, anyone, anyone?

I am currently making a Pete's wicked ale clone and will be using fresh strawberries. From what I have read there are a few ways of adding fruit to your beer.

1. Buy a can of fruit puree from your local HB store. It is sanitized already and easy to add. just pop in to the secondary and rack your beer to it.

2. Add some extract to your abeer at bottling.( not very good in my opinion)

3. Add some fresh fruit to secondary and then rack your beer to it. (there
are two ways of doing this)
a. Freeze the fruit and then add that to the secondary( after thawing),
The freezing bursts the fruit cells. Plus freezing helps kill the germs.
b. Or you can take the fruit and heat it to (I believe) 120F for twenty
minutes and then add the fruit to your secondary.

You could also do a mixture of the above. From what I have read, the more fruit the better. I am planning on adding 7 pounds of strawberries to my beer, you may want to rethink the 3 pounds. Or not. Hope that helps a little. I can give better advise in about a month or two when my beer is done. Good luck!

I made a raspberry wheat a while back, I heated about 7lbs of frozen raspberries at 160 for 10 minutes, then racked on top of them in secondary. I also added extract at bottling, that was a bad idea. The fruit flavor would have been just right with just the fruit and no extract.

I also did an AG Raspberry Wheat last summer. I added about a cup of Raspberry extract to the secondary. The flavor seemed strong at first, but mellowed in a couple of weeks. In fact, you couldn't taste the berry flavor at all by the time the keg was drained, which took around seven weeks.

I brewed a 5 gallon batch last fall, it is here in the Fruit Beer recipe section. I added 2.5lbs of raspberries, that was plenty... 7lbs????? That seems like ALOT.

Pol

I may try the frozen, but I really think I like the fresh fruit idea. I don't want it to overtake the ale, but finish with a hint of raspberry.

OK, I used frozen raspberries. I used two 12 oz packs, I let them thaw, then sanitized the outside of the package. Put them in the secondary & racked.

We will see, I hope I didn't just screw up a good red ale!

ontap@home said:

OK, I used frozen raspberries. I used two 12 oz packs, I let them thaw, then sanitized the outside of the package. Put them in the secondary & racked.

We will see, I hope I didn't just screw up a good red ale!

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Did you heat them above 140 for at least 10 min. Frozen berries are not sanitized just cleaned. Next time just drop them into 1/2 qt or so of boiliing water and let them set for 20 min or so before putting them into secondary.

Good luck sounds like it will be good.

I let the berries thaw, in the bags, sanitized the outside of the bags and put them into the secondary. As I understand it, the berries were ready to eat, so to prepare them for freezing, they are washed and blanched then quick frozen. I hope not heating them again doesn't screw up the brew, but we will see.

Ok, the raspberries have been in the secondary for about 3 weeks. Racked it into a tertiary fermentor so I could leave the berries behind. The berries have lost all their color, looked like cat crap........ The ale smells great! Took a gravity reading, 1.014-015. I'll leave it in the fermentor for a couple more weeks to clear before I rack to the keg. It will be good to know how this turns out.

So...it has been a few years...how did it turn out?

I made a batch myself with a Brewhouse Munich Dark lager kit, munich lager liquid yeast, 1.5 Lbs frozen raspberries, and 2 Lbs honey. It took a few months to come into its own, but it is now fantastic. The raspberry is apparent as soon as it enters the mouth, but it isn't overpowering.

Hope yours was great!