How much raspberry for raspberry wheat

[BrewingChip]

I have a 5 gallon American Wheat that is finishing up primary fermentation and I am looking to add raspberries to make it a sweet raspberry wheat. I bought 5 pounds of raspberries a couple weeks ago and they've been in the freezer ever since. I have done a lot of research on adding fruit to beer yet I am still unsure what the best way to do it is.

1. How sweet/tart will my beer be with 5 pounds of raspberries? Should I add more/less if I want it to be sweet without being too tart?

2. How should I add my raspberries? Should I simply sanitize and add whole, should I pasteurize on the stove top? Will one technique produce more/less sweetness?

Any help with this will be immensely appreciated as I am a rookie homebrewer.

 

[pmoneyismyfriend]

I usually use 3lbs of puree. You'll want to get the seeds out of the berries. I don't know how much puree you'll get from 5 lbs, but with the 3lbs of puree, there is plenty of raspberry flavor and tartness. My most recent batch I also added raspberry extract, though I'm not sure I needed it, it may have mellowed the tartness a bit.

 

[BrewingChip]

I already have the raspberries thawing now. My plan is to pasteurize the berries on the stove top, let it cool, strain the liquid from the seeds using sanitized cheesecloth, and then add the liquid to my beer. Is this a solid plan, or should I do something(s) different?

 

[pmoneyismyfriend]

What state is your beer in? Primary, Secondary fermentation? I always ferment for 2 weeks or whenever the airlock is not percolating any longer, and then I pour my puree into the secondary, with a teaspoon of pectic enzyme, and then siphon my beer on top. I swirl daily for about 10 days and then let it settle and then keg.

 

[TravelingLight]

The last time I used raspberries (dry saison) I used right at 1# per gallon. Here's the color I got with that rate:

It was just slightly tart. Probably accentuated by the fact that it was dry as hell (1.000) from the 3711. One of my favorite beers I've done. It's not sweet at all. Honestly I get more tartness than sweetness from raspberries.

ETA: You're not going to get much sweetness because it'll mostly ferment out. As far as methods, my typical fruiting M.O. is to add the frozen berries to a freshly sanitized carboy, let them thaw a little, then rack the beer in on top. Note: This is NOT a method to guarantee you won't get an infection. You absolutely can get an infection this way. But, knock on wood, I haven't had one yet. The alcoholic environment of the already fermented beer helps keep the bugs at bay as well.

 

[TasunkaWitko]

This is mostly from what I have read and a couple of brews of my own:

In general, up to a pound of fruit per gallon can be used, depending on your goals. Keep in mind that the sugar will ferment out, so it will probably not taste the way you might expect it to; however, if you age the beer a couple of months or so, the raspberry flavor should start to assert itself nicely, within that tartness.


I brewed an apricot wheat that was pretty darn tart at first, but after about three months it really came into its own and became a much more enjoyable beer than if I would have used extracts to flavor it, in my opinion.