Rasberries

[hooky]

I'll have ripe rasberries in my garden by the end of May. I'd like to use them in a brew. Does anyone have a recipe that they like? I'm assuming it would be a wheat or lightly hopped ale, but I honestly don't have a preference. I'm also not an all grain brewer, but I'm comfortable with a mini mash/extract recipes.

Thanks in advance.

[Otis_The_Drunk]

Just about any wheat beer recipe would work.
What you want to do is (and don't jump onto me people) is make a piree' of the rasberries and add to secondary so that the rasberry flavor will come through...

I did sort of the same thing by adding 4 lbs of blackberries to a hefe, it came out quite nicely.

[Mad Scientist]

Otis, what the $&%@ is a piree'?:D

At any rate, especially with fresh fruit, make sure you pasturize.

The berries will add fermentable sugars to the beer, so make sure you adjust accordingly, or just do like I did, and mash 12 lbs of 2 row, and 3 lbs of white wheat malt, get a good extracion, and then add 5.25 lbs of berries in the secondary...it was so strong, it never carbonated. Oh yeah, 1 oz Cascade at boil.

[Grog]

Otis - Any type of antimicrobal regime you followed, or did you simply spin and pour?

[mookow]

Originally posted by Boerne Brew
Otis, what the $&%@ is a piree'?:D

At any rate, especially with fresh fruit, make sure you pasturize.

The berries will add fermentable sugars to the beer, so make sure you adjust accordingly, or just do like I did, and mash 12 lbs of 2 row, and 3 lbs of white wheat malt, get a good extracion, and then add 5.25 lbs of berries in the secondary...it was so strong, it never carbonated. Oh yeah, 1 oz Cascade at boil.

Hmmmm. I made a 9.5% weizenbock that I added 1# per gallon of raspberries to, and it eventually carbonated (took it over a month, but it managed it). What was your OG pre-berries?

[Otis_The_Drunk]

Actually I didn't pasturize Grog, I was using frozen blackberries and it turned out just fine.
Done it that way for years and never had a bacterial infection.
Just remember when you add the fruit that you will get a boost of fermentation in secondary.

Moocow, my OG was 1.056.

The beer comes out a little dry but the berry flavor shines through.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by mookow
Hmmmm. I made a 9.5% weizenbock that I added 1# per gallon of raspberries to, and it eventually carbonated (took it over a month, but it managed it). What was your OG pre-berries?

I'll have to go find it, I want to say when I racked over to the secondary, the ABV was somewhere like 8.1 or 8.2 (we made this about a year ago). The raspberry taste was great, but my brewing partner hated it, and his stayed around far longer than mine did, but even when I moved at the end of january, he still had a couple of bottles, that *might* have had a slight fizz, but it never had any sort of proper carbonation to it. After doing some digging, we determined that it was at least 11% after everything was said and done with.

[zoom6zoom]

One of the best brews I had recently was a chocolate raspberry stout... yummie!

[Mill Rat]

If you like stout and fruit, this one's hard to beat. I brewed this around the new year so it'd be ready as a Valentine's gift for my wife (positive reviews resulted). I don't have access to my brewbook at my current location, but if there's interest I'll post the recipe.

[gallowd7]

My first (and last) foray into fruit beer was about 10 years ago. I collected a gallon size ziploc bag of wild berries from the woods and froze them until late summer. I brewed a light ale from extract, can't remember the recipe, and loaded the secondary full of the fruit and racked on top of it. The result was utterly undrinkable for about 6 months. However, it made a fantastice spring ale that people still talk about. Go figure.

[mookow]

Originally posted by Mill Rat
If you like stout and fruit, this one's hard to beat. I brewed this around the new year so it'd be ready as a Valentine's gift for my wife (positive reviews resulted). I don't have access to my brewbook at my current location, but if there's interest I'll post the recipe.

Please do.

[Mill Rat]

Originally posted by mookow
Please do.

Here it is. I cut and pasted it out of my brewbook spreadsheet:

BREWING RECORD
Name: Chocolate Raspberry Oatmeal Stout
Batch Size: 5 gallons
Date brewed: 12/27/05
Date to secondary: 1/7/06
Date Bottled: 1/21/06
Date(s) sampled:
Date ready: 2/5/06

Grains:
Old Fashioned Rolled Oats 0.5 lb
Belgian 2-row pale 1.5 L 5 lb
Mich Weyerman Munich 4 L 3.5 lb
Black Patent 550 L 0.125 lb
Roasted Barley 500 L 0.25 lb
U. S. Crystal, 30 L 1 lb
Oregon canned Raspberry puree 3 lb

Hops:
Willamette 2 oz, 0 minutes into boil

Salts:
CaSO4, 0.5 tsp each into mash and sparge

Yeast:
While Labs WLP 004 Irish Ale

Prime:
0.5 lb Plain Dark DME

Other:
Irish moss, 0.5 tsp, 45 minutes into boil
Unsweetened non-dairy chocolate, 4 oz, 45 minutes into boil
Oregon canned Raspberry puree 3 lb, added to secondary

Mash:
Dough grains into 10 qt 62C H2O. Hold at 55 C for 30 min. Add 2.5 qt boiling H2O and heat to reach 67C, hold 75 minutes, plus 75 hiatus. Heat to 77C for 5 minutes, sparge w/5 gal 75C H2O

Brew:
Sparge finally yielded 6.5 gallons. Added 2 oz Willamette in grain bag at start of boil. Added chocolate in suspended grain bag (tied off to keep it from burning on the kettle bottom), irish moss, and immersion chiller at 45 min. Removed choc. bag to boiled water in cup, chilled wort to 25C. Transferred to primary at 5.25 gallons, spalsh aerating well, squeezed choc. through grain bag while stirring, pitched yeast. Primary and secondary fermentation at basement ambient, ~18 C.

Original Gravity: 1.064
Test gravity 1: 1.016, 1/14/06
Test gravity 2:
Test gravity 3:
Final Gravity; 1.016, 1/21/06

Notes:
Add 49 oz can of Oregon raspberry puree to secondary through sterilized funnel.
Long mashing with oats, plus that 75 minute added pause (taking my wife out to dinner), totaling nearly 4 hours, resulted in death sparge lasting 5 hours.