Fruit Beer Strawberry Rhubarb Wheat Ale

3# Briess Pale Ale malt
3#White Wheat
8oz 120L crystal
8oz Flaked Oat (flaked wheat would work too)
8oz Acidulated Malt

.2oz Chinook 11.47%AA @ 60 Minutes

6lbs Strawberries
6lbs Rhubarb (both rough cut and frozen)

Single infusion 154F 60min mash, I lost about 2 degrees during the course of the mash but I didn't consider that a huge deal.

So brew day and recipe notes. First I needed the acid malt to adjust my cities crazy PH 8.9, my stouts and darker beers always turn out great but pale-r styles always seem off, if you don't have this problem I'm sure adding 8 more oz of your base malt will keep the gravity the same. Use a chloride/sulfate ratio that bends towards malty.

I ended up with approximately 95% efficiency on this batch, originally calculated at 75% efficiency for a 1.042 beer since I knew the fruit would ferment and add more ABV. As for the hops I took a page out of sour brewers book and only use the bare bare minimum of hops, I faux-aged the hops by taking them out, measuring them, then throwing them in a plastic zip lock bag and left them out for 2 days (sealed).

I think any low-floculating yeast with relatively low attenuation characteristics would work well with this beer. I chose Denny's Fav 50 because the description seemed to suit a fruit beer style pretty well. The low attenuation I wanted so the beer would not finish too dry. When I took a gravity sample at day 10 of primary it was at 1.020, I did not take a sample after that, I'll bet from tasting the finished product it was around 1.013-1.015, still sweet but not IPA dry.

If you can pick the strawberries from a good 'pick your own' strawberry farm/patch. The ones I picked had a couple different varieties of strawberries mixed in together in the patch, some tasted like bubblegum, some tasted like blueberries, and the snozzberries tasted like snozzberries. I campden'd and threw some pectin enzyme on the strawberries and rhubarb after they thawed, next time I may skip the pectin since I was partially going for the slightly cloudy look (not that clear beer is bad, its a very pretty color). Rhubarb was from the farmers market, the stuff grows like weeds around here though so when I remake it I may get myself lost in the woods and pick wild rhubarb. I think I could go with 3-4lbs of rhubarb in the future though since the stuff is so potent.

Posting this recipe because I wouldn't change a thing about it... Well, not really, I can't help but fiddle and experiment. Though that does not change that this is the first recipe I imagined, formulated, executed, and it came out exactly how I expected and wanted it to turn out. I will update with photos soon, it has passed my approval, now the paperwork is being filed for SWMBO approval.

The original intent was somethign similar to New Glarus' Strawberry Rhubarb Ale which is pure ambrosia, I think in terms of flavor and aroma I nailed it but I will find a bottle of NG's and do a side by side photo and tasting. I will be rebrewing this recipe as soon as I can get fresh strawberries and rhubarb again this summer. I *know* this beer is gonna be popular with everyone who tries it. As a general experiment it was extremely successful, since part of the intent was to try and make a sour beer without using bugs not that I am going to throw rhubarb in every beer I want to be sour now.

The only things I may try different is using flaked wheat instead of flaked oats though I don't think it would make a *huge* difference in terms of flavor. I think a low floculating belgian yeast might be interesting to try though the yeast doesn't play a huge part in this beer in general so long as it ferments it and doesn't ferment it bone dry.

100% go out there and brew this right away, its delicious, and, brew a big batch, I lost almost 2 gallons to transfer losses and trub/fruit pile. Next batch I am going to do a concentrated boil and top off to get 10 gallons and ferment them in separate containers, and potentially pitch different yeasts to see if I can detect a noticeable difference. Normally I wouldn't be this bragadocious about a beer I made but this is definitely a winner.

Big fluffy pile of strawberry and rhubarb, I'll stage a nice photo of the finished product in a nice glass this week.

Looks from the notes like you added fruit to the secondary?

I've made a rhubarb rye (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/rhubarb-rye-412780/) a few times...

First couple of times, I used 5 lbs of rhubarb. Chopped, then frozen, then thawed in secondary. I found it to take on a vegetal flavor that takes a couple months to age out.

Last time I made it, I only had 3lbs available, so that's what I used. I found that amount of rhubarb to have just as much in terms of rhubarb tartness but much less in terms of that vegetal flavor.

So if you don't like it right away, let it age for a month or two... Then, when you make subsequent batches you can slowly back off the rhubarb until you find the right proportions for your recipe...

Use the extra rhubarb to make Yooper's rhubarb wine: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f79/rhubarb-wine-29310/

Yup, threw all the fruit in in secondary, it was a big damn mess trying to get 12lbs of fruit chunks into a plastic carboy. I inverted a 5 gallon water bottle like the ones they put on office coolers, stuck the neck into my 6 gallon one and cut the bottom out of the 5 gallon and used it like a giant funnel.

Left the beer on the fruit for 2 weeks I think my notes say, I needed a tertiary step though to try and get more of the fruit material to drop out.