the infamous dragon/passion fruit berliner
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inflictor-of-grimness
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Actually, since Wakefield is only making bottles available to OG members right now, I have plans (or at least kind of a joke idea that's been tossed around with a friend) to make one and call it PFDF, and then do a ****ty hand drawn label of a woman with a dragon.
Anyway, the key to getting the beer pink is to use red flesh dragonfruit. The white flesh stuff, obviously, won't give any color. It's not an easy fruit to come by, and I think it's pretty expensive.
As far as recipe goes, it's very difficult to imitate someone's berliner weisse process. Find a process/recipe that works for you. All I can tell you is that Wakefield's berliners are VERY sour and have a lot of fruit flavor. Dragonfruit doesn't have a very distinct flavor, so use enough to make the beer pink, and then load that **** up with passionfruit.
Anyway, the key to getting the beer pink is to use red flesh dragonfruit. The white flesh stuff, obviously, won't give any color. It's not an easy fruit to come by, and I think it's pretty expensive.
As far as recipe goes, it's very difficult to imitate someone's berliner weisse process. Find a process/recipe that works for you. All I can tell you is that Wakefield's berliners are VERY sour and have a lot of fruit flavor. Dragonfruit doesn't have a very distinct flavor, so use enough to make the beer pink, and then load that **** up with passionfruit.
I tried a dragon fruit Berliner using 8 lbs dragon fruit (American beauty variety - and that was flesh weight after removing skins) in 5 gal. The color result was what I wanted but no fruit flavor. I would suggest looking for Thompsons which have a plum flavor. Of course if you just are going to put in passion fruit too then dragon fruit flavor won't matter as I think the passion fruit will over power.
I can weigh in on this one - I've brewed one commercially (320 Gallon Batch)
Gose Base - 60/40 Pils/Wheat. OG: 1.045. Mashed @ 153. FG: 1.008 (1968 Yeast)
Pre acidified my kettle souring to 4.5 pH using phosphoric acid. Brought up to boil for 10 minutes to pasturize, then added 12 quarts of yogurt (Kirkland brand from Costco) to kettle after cooling it down to 100 F. pH @ end of souring was 3.5 (after roughly 30 hours). I shot for a slightly higher pH because of the acidic bite you can get from passion fruit.
Knocked out and pitched yeast (1 million cell/degree plato/ml). After fermentation was nearing the end (3 days later, about a plato from terminal) I added:
120 lb Passion Fruit Puree
80 lb Dragon Fruit Puree
Fermentation drug on for 2 more days, after which I let it sit on yeast for 48 hours and then cold crashed.
The final results yielded a deliciously sessionable sour - not too acidic and not too pink. The passion fruit flavor was definitely at the forefront, it came off as slightly grapefruity, but not over bearing. If you are looking for a definitely passion fruit forward beer, I would add another 40 lb of it to my recipe (and then scale down of course). The color was pale pink/orange - not nearly as saturated as JW fruit beers - if you want that, I would double the amount of dragon fruit I put in. Though, the problem with dragon fruit: it's expensive as hell (I paid over a $1 more per lb than the passion fruit), and it really doesn't contribute squat to flavor.
Hope this helps!
Gose Base - 60/40 Pils/Wheat. OG: 1.045. Mashed @ 153. FG: 1.008 (1968 Yeast)
Pre acidified my kettle souring to 4.5 pH using phosphoric acid. Brought up to boil for 10 minutes to pasturize, then added 12 quarts of yogurt (Kirkland brand from Costco) to kettle after cooling it down to 100 F. pH @ end of souring was 3.5 (after roughly 30 hours). I shot for a slightly higher pH because of the acidic bite you can get from passion fruit.
Knocked out and pitched yeast (1 million cell/degree plato/ml). After fermentation was nearing the end (3 days later, about a plato from terminal) I added:
120 lb Passion Fruit Puree
80 lb Dragon Fruit Puree
Fermentation drug on for 2 more days, after which I let it sit on yeast for 48 hours and then cold crashed.
The final results yielded a deliciously sessionable sour - not too acidic and not too pink. The passion fruit flavor was definitely at the forefront, it came off as slightly grapefruity, but not over bearing. If you are looking for a definitely passion fruit forward beer, I would add another 40 lb of it to my recipe (and then scale down of course). The color was pale pink/orange - not nearly as saturated as JW fruit beers - if you want that, I would double the amount of dragon fruit I put in. Though, the problem with dragon fruit: it's expensive as hell (I paid over a $1 more per lb than the passion fruit), and it really doesn't contribute squat to flavor.
Hope this helps!
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