Hello from MD

[babar79]

Hello everyone from here in Maryland. I have been using this site for quite some time for the brew sessions. Really enjoy this feature.

I'm sitting here enjoying my latest brew (double IPA), only my 4th one. I'm really enjoying brewing and wonder why I haven't done this sooner.

My wife is suggesting that I do a fruit beer for her. I am only doing extract at this time but wanted to ask if anyone has a favorite fruit beer recipe that they would like to share. I only see a couple in the recipe builder.

I appreciate any info and look forward to getting to know everyone here and gaining some knowledge.

-Babar

 

[Altbier bitte]

Sorry Babar - never brewed a fruit beer. I guess there are some advantages to being single. You could probably google up plenty, or check homebrewtalk.com - they have a search function. If you have any of the standard brew books you probably have one on your shelf. Anyway, welcome to brewing. It's pretty awesome cracking a cold one you made yourself, eh?

 

[JAMC]

I had a very similar suggestion from my other half, who doesn't do beer at all (I think it's the hop bitterness she can't stand...).

So we went strawberry picking and I used the second runnings of a 5G batch to create a 1G test batch that mixed the weaker wort in with the juiced strawberries. No hops went into it at all, and I didn't even pasteurise the strawberry juice because of suggestions online that it would kill the flavour.

The results were... err... an interesting benchmark. Sharp doesn't even begin to describe it. With fruit I think you have to take into account the fact that a good proportion of the sugar will be munched by the yeast as it's highly fermentable, leaving a noticably sharp, citrus twang in it's place. The FG on this batch was 1.004 FFS!

If I were to attempt it again I'd probably not use the second runnings (too weak, couldn't taste any malt at all) to start with a higher gravity wort and a higher sugar content. I'd also cut back on the quantity of fruit juice I used, which accounted for about 20% of the entire batch - equivalent to two full punnets of strawberries. I'd probably knock this back to 10% at the most.

Heed my advice sir and don't end up with something that's basically a super sharp wine!

 

[LarryBrewer]

Welcome to the site!

Here are my suggestions for the fruit beer:

Go with 2-3 pounds of chopped/crushed fresh fruit in the secondary over fruit extracts. Now is great time, as harvest is here for many fruits and berries.

Low amount of IBUs (under 20).

Yeast: hefe, cream ale, or neutral.

 

[babar79]

Thanks for all the info. I had thought about the 1 gal "test", but that doesn't sound good.

Looking forward to getting to know everyone.