I Just started my first batch of american wheat and was thinking of adding some fruit to it during secondary, just had a few questions before doing so. If i add fruit to it what are some suggestions to add a decent amount of fruit flavor and what fruits have you used that tasted great. I was thinking of raspberries or blackberries. When I do add the fruit to secondary my guess would be they also should be sanatized before adding them. What would be the best way of doing that just boiling them? If I do will that also kill alot of the flavor?
If anyone can give me some pointers or suggestions please let me know. Thanks!
American wheat will most likely have a citrus lemon back ground flavor. a lot of people like orange in the wheat. I like mine as is with a lemon on the glass that you can play with and set aside as you drink a fine wheat beer. but anyway some dried orange rind with out the pith (1 oz) will work. or Ive heard of useing some peeled and crushed sour oranges (5 pounds). i would use the same amount for just about any fruit. I would cook the fruit first to prevent adding unwanted bugs to beer and to break down the sugars so they are more readily fermented.
Is this your 1st beer ever or just the 1st wheat? If it’s’ your very 1st beer, I would skip any fruit additions and just brew it normal.
What is the recipe? If it has a stronger citrus flavor from the hops fruit may not work well.
If you haven’t made it yet, A clean bittering hop at the begining of the boil and little to no hops at the end will allow the fruit to show through better.
Raspberries or blackberries should make a good addition. Fresh or frozen?
If fresh from home, rinse in water to get them clean. A dunking in starsan/iodaphor, and shake to try. Freeze them for a few hours to get the pulp to break down. Then crush them and add them to the fermenter when fermentation is done. Fermentation will start again because of the sugars in the fruit. Let it go for 4-5 days. then transfer to a second fermenter to allow any solids to drop out.
The alcohol present in the beer will take care of any bugs that might make it in.
Frozen, I would just crush and add to the fermenter. They were washed at the processing plant.
Both are great ideas I think I will try either the blackberries or raspberries and I will definately freeze them first or just get already frozen ones. This is the second time brewing and first time with the American wheat and its the northern brewer kit if thats what you were wondering. Farely new to it. I got the surly cynic kit waiting till this ones done with. Want to get a little more experience before I brew that one, It looks really good.
I went ahead and added the blue berries made a little bit of a mess but got it done lol. When dumping them in I got a big foemy head of blueberry juice and air so I had to install blowoff. Is the extra air in the fermentor going to do anything to the beer?
Adding the berries was like adding ice cream to a cola. You displaced CO2 that was in solution.
The sugars in the berries will ferment out. Thus CO2 will form and the air lock/blow off tube will bubble.
No issue
So I checked on it and the pulp started coming up the airlock. I took it off sanatized my blow off tube and used that. Later i checked it and the pulp came up the tube about 8" and looked like it was clogging it. I then took it off which was bad, a bunch of pulp bubbled out and made a mess so I sanatized my auto siphon and used it to push some of the pulp down and stirred it slowly which did nock a lot down and I then put the blow off back on and it rose up again but its about 2" from the top so its not going up the blow off at the moment. Do you think stirring it or anything in that whole nightmare of a process might have ruined my beer? Also is all that pulp crap going to settle to the bottom and is all the seeds and pulp going to be in the beer when I bottle it or would it be a good idea to strain it somehow?
There is always a possibility of harming the beer. As long as you gently stirred it you should be fine. If you whipped it around like you were making scrambled eggs…
For a brew like this, a large blow off tube is helpful.
http://brewing.lustreking.com/gear/bbbot.htmlIf you try to strain out the pulp, you will most likely aerate it. Not a good thing. Let this go for a week. Then transfer it to a second vessel for 5-7 days to allow more solids to drop out. Then bottle.
You could try clamping a piece of pantyhose to the exit end of your siphon. But that may aerate it also. I would just go with letting it sit to drop. And, anything that does make it to the bottle should not cause much of an issue. This style of beer is best consumed young.
Ok i will just keep an eye on it and trasfer it later like you said. Here is a pic of it.
