peach wheat - partial mash

[mcbar]

Hi everyone - just looking for a bit of feedback on my recipe. SWMBO is 7 1/2 months pregnant and has requested a peach wheat beer as a tribute to her reproductive prowess :rockin:

(to be consumed post baby of course)

My recipe is inspired in part by my own wheat saison which turned out well and this:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/peach-wheat-39444/

2 lbs pilsner malt
2 lbs wheat malt
0.75 lbs flaked wheat
0.75 lbs abbey malt
2.2 lbs wheat dme

1 oz glacier hops 55 mins

Wyeast 1010

Step infusion 20 minutes at 104 degrees, 40 minutes 140 degrees, 60 minutes 158.

After three weeks, take 5lb frozen peaches and heat with two cups of water to 160 degrees and let sit for 20 minutes. After peaches have cooked bring them back down to room temp and add to carboy. Rack beer on top of peaches. Let sit an additional week then keg or bottle. Two weeks minimum for peach flavor to mellow out.

I'm pretty comfortable with the grist. I really enjoy the slight sourness that the abbey malt brought to my wheat saison and I think it will complement a fruit beer nicely.

I chose 1010 because I'd like to keep banana to a minimum.

Glacier is what I have on hand right now but I'm open to suggestions.

I have zero experience step mashing. Most of what I do is BIAB. I hear that step mashing can have quite an impact on a wheat heavy grain bill. How big of a difference does it make? Can I do it without a proper mash tun? Any suggestions? If I decide to skip the step mashing I will likely replace the pilsner malt with locally produced 2-row malt.

Lastly, I'm thinking I might scale the peaches back to 4 lbs although that still seems like a lot - apparently the flavour contribution of peaches is quite subtle. Any suggestions on the easiest way to get a bunch of peaches into/out of a glass carboy? Or should I just pick up another plastic bucket to use a secondary?

Thanks in advance!

 

[thejuanald]

What about a peach puree? I'm also trying to make a recipe now for a wheat beer for the fiancee with either peaches or mango. From what I gather, a puree would work well. If anything, you could just puree all your peaches in a blender or food processor and then bring it to boil to kill anything that might cause an infection and then cool it down and add it to secondary and pour on top.

I'm also wondering whether or not the secondary is necessary or if I could just add the puree to primary.

 

[mcbar]

I've seen a few recipes around that call for 3 lbs of peach puree, which I believe is sold as a wine base. I can't find any of that, and unfortunately I don't have a blender. But I can't think of any reason why that wouldn't work.

As far as I'm aware it's totally ok to add fruit to the primary as long as you're careful to minimize splashing. Using whole or parts of fruit, I would be more comfortable racking on top - but either will work just fine.

 

[mcbar]

Got this in the fermenter. Pre-boil efficiency was 77% which was my best yet. OG came in at 1.055 which was a little higher than anticipated. Might skip the extract next time and go AG.

I decided to go with a single infusion mash since I don't have a proper mash tun. Still figuring out exactly how I'm going to manage these peaches...

 

[mcbar]

Added 4 lbs of peaches to the primary inside of a mesh bag. Following some advice on these forums I decided to go with frozen peaches cooked at ~160F for 20 minutes. My temperature control wasn't super accurate - I erred on the side of too hot and definitely hit boiling a few times. I hope I didn't drive off too much flavour.

I'm planning on letting it sit for another week or so before checking for stable FG and bottling.

 

[mcbar]

Left the brew on peaches for one week and took a gravity reading. It was 1.011 - feeling cautious I decided to rack it off the peaches and give it a few more days. After another week gravity was 1.01 and seemed stable. Sample tasted quite tart, with a subtle peach smell. Bottled it with 145g of dextrose.