FS7
Member
I love fruit beers. Not the "fruit soda" macrobrew type, but things with a little bit of fruit flavor. Tangerine wheat is one of my go-tos, and I have always loved Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat (blueberry, at a minimum, maybe with some orange).
The cost effective way to do this at scale as I understand it is with extract. Lots of brewing supply places have these. The "real" way is with fruit puree, juice concentrate, or juice itself, which is not cost effective and not practical at any scale, which is why the big brewers use extract.
I have tried blueberry, blood orange, lemon, raspberry, and tangerine. None of them - not one - have tasted good, instead being rather cloying and fake. It doesn't even matter how much or how little I use, or how long I let it age - it never tastes anything other than fake. Now on the real side I've made tangerine wheat with juice concentrate, orange ales with puree in the secondary, shandy just by mixing with lemonade, all of that. It's all been great.
Is there a secret to this? None of the commercial brews taste anything like this. Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat and Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat, for example, are supposedly made with extracts, but they taste great to me. Why can't I duplicate it? Wrong kind of extract? A step I'm missing?
The cost effective way to do this at scale as I understand it is with extract. Lots of brewing supply places have these. The "real" way is with fruit puree, juice concentrate, or juice itself, which is not cost effective and not practical at any scale, which is why the big brewers use extract.
I have tried blueberry, blood orange, lemon, raspberry, and tangerine. None of them - not one - have tasted good, instead being rather cloying and fake. It doesn't even matter how much or how little I use, or how long I let it age - it never tastes anything other than fake. Now on the real side I've made tangerine wheat with juice concentrate, orange ales with puree in the secondary, shandy just by mixing with lemonade, all of that. It's all been great.
Is there a secret to this? None of the commercial brews taste anything like this. Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat and Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat, for example, are supposedly made with extracts, but they taste great to me. Why can't I duplicate it? Wrong kind of extract? A step I'm missing?