Raspberry Summer Ale

[ericmooray]

Hi all,

I'm looking to design a great light summer beer that is extremely thirst quenching, sounds easy right? But there is a catch it has to be something that non beer drinkers would want to drink. So i have decided to brew a blonde ale infused with raspberry hoping that it will win over non beer lovers. I would love to get some feed back on the recipe before i brew it because i have no experience with fruit beers.

Batch Size - 5.5 Gallons
Mash efficiency - 76%
Original Gravity - 1.044
Final Gravity - 1.009
ABV - 4.5%
IBU - 20

Mash Temp - 150 degrees
Boil - 60 Minutes

8 lbs Great Western 2-Row
.5 lbs Flaked Wheat
.25 lbs Crystal 20l
.5 oz Magnum Hops 13.8AA 60 min
6 Lbs Raspberries (secondary)
Wyeast American Ale II

Primary Fermentation 7 days
Secondary fermentation 10 days

The raspberries woud be mashed up and boiled and for 10 minutes before adding them to the secondary. I hop this will cause a pectin haze, and kill any bacteria in the berries.

 

[WhiteEagle1]

I would be curious to find out how this turns out. Been thinking about doing something similar..... Though, you might want to do some reading. Think I read something about not boiling the fruit and freezing it instead.

 

[cheezydemon3]

ALL of the fruit and other experimental beers I have seen (including mine) turn out "Wow this isn't all that bad!" at best, lol.

Swing away brother I am not trying to be a killjoy, but I myself have given up on fruit beer attempts. May you have better luck!

 

[bcgpete]

I did this strawberry blone a year ago, and it turned out really good. I used 8 pounds of frozen strawberries from walmart, straight into the secondary. It turned out great, with a nice strawberry hint (abita strawberry?). I just brewed it again, AG this time, and will be adding 6 pounds of fresh strawberries this afternoon, assuming SWMBO remembers to pick them up on her way home from work.

I'm using less this time because the fresh are much sweeter/stronger than the frozen crap I got at walmart. You're recipe looks pretty solid. I would definitely freeze them over boiling them, I think you'll lose a lot of the flavor that way. If you're really worried about sanitizing them, you could mash them up and bake them at about 170F for half an hour. I'll probably just toss them into some starsan solution for a few minutes tonight.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f75/succulent-strawberry-blonde-132423/

 

[ericmooray]

Thanks for the quick replies, I have never heard of freezing the fruit before do you guys know what effect this would have? i guess im not really worried about sanitization, at that point the ph should be low enough to kill just about anything i throw in.

I have also heard of people just throwing the fruit into the boil at flame out, but many people have commented about the beers being to tart. Has anyone ever tried putting the fruit into the boil?

 

[bcgpete]

I believe freezing breaks down the cells so that the flavor is absorbed better. I think...

 

[Jukas]

I used BM's centennial blonde as the base for mine... Bought 4lb of frozen strawberries and threw them into a sanitized blender to make a purée. Then added that to a 3G better bottle and racked on top. Holy vigorous secondary fermentation! Make sure you use a blowoff

 

[ericmooray]

well i was planning on using frozen raspberries, they are out of season right now and frozen ones are dirt cheap. For those of you who have used frozen berries did you get alot of pectin haze? I want this beer to be cloudy like a hef.

Jukas thanks for the heads up on the secondary fermentation i will make sure to use a big carboy.

 

[bcgpete]

Mine was a little cloudy, but I think it was the wheat. If I remember I'll take a picture of the brew this evening when I rack to the secondary to give you an idea of what it looks like pre-berry addition.