Peach Beer

[tuesunsommiel]

I've been curious about trying to experiment with peach flavoring with my beer, since I haven't seen any such flavoring in beer...and the possibility of making my girlfriend take an interest in my hobby with a beer she'd actually drink seems like a good idea.

As a relative novice without much of my own equipment, I was wondering if anyone had tried any of the light beers on the Midwest brewing catalog and had any opinion on their bitterness/natural flavors, etc. before I start experimenting with peach extracts and real peaches.

I've been looking at the liberty cream ale but am a little concerned with the seemingly opposing flavors of hops and peaches.

 

[A4J]

One of my most popular brews (popular with the ladies) was a peach-ginger witbier which was basically a witbier and adding 4oz of tea at flameout.

The hop flavors from cream ales is so subtle that it won't overpower/conflict with the peach flavor.

 

[daksin]

A wit sounds nice, but if you want to flavor a more neutral beer, I would look to a lightly-hopped american wheat. It will lack the yeast character that wits and hefeweizens have allowing the fruit to come through nicely.

 

[microbusbrewery]

I make a watermelon wheat that everyone seems to love. Last time I experimented and split the batch in half and did half with peaches and apricots and the other half with pineapple. If you use real peaches, I'd recommend pealing them as the skin seemed to give mine an odd/unpleasant bitterness. Also I'd use pectinase.

If you go the extract route, dose it in the bottling bucket. It's real easy to overdo so use an oral syringe to precisely measure the extract and only add a little bit at a time. Gently stir and taste it after each addition. I did a hef this way and it turned out awesome.

 

[zmanzorro]

Shiner makes a holiday beer called Shiner Cheer that is basically a dunkel with peach and pecan falvorings. There is a thread over in the Recipes/Ingredients forum that discusses how to add in peach flavoring in a Shiner Cheer clone. IIRC, it covers both extract and real peaches.