While I would like to eventually try my hand at souring some beers, I figured incorporating some raspberries into a straight-forward, refreshing summertime ale would be much a better bet, for now – not to mention a hell of a lot quicker process from grain to glass than trying to go lambic. As fun as it does sound, messing around with wacky brett & pedio cultures can wait for a while as I continue to nail down the basics of solid brewing.

In any event, I figured the good old American Wheat style should lend itself pretty well to the addition of fruit. So, once again I found myself hitting up Brewing Classic Styles as my first stop in putting this recipe together. I went with a fairly simple grain bill of 45% Pale Wheat Malt, 45% American Pale, and 10% Flaked Rye. The rye addition was the only deviation from the BCS recipe. I added it in the hopes that the rye “bite” might play nicely off the tart flavor of the fruit. I went with 1oz of Ahtanum hops for bittering at 60 minutes, plus Bramling Cross hops at 10 minutes and flame-out, for a total of roughly 18 IBUs. Fermented with WLP001, California Ale yeast.

After fermenting for about a week, I prepped 24oz of frozen raspberries from Trader Joe’s by bringing them up to 165F for 15min on the stove. I then chilled them, added them to the fermenter, and racked half of the 5 gallon batch on top. I let this hang out in secondary for roughly a month before bottling. It turned out great, with just the right amount of raspberry flavor – not over the top. I’ll definitely do a full 5 gallon batch of this one next time, maybe even sour half of it.

Have you “fruited” your beers before? If so, chime on in.  I would love to hear about it – what style you used for the base recipe, how did you went about adding the fruit, etc.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Playing a bit of catch-up, here… This video was taken about 48 hours into primary fermentation. As you can see, the yeast rocketed out of the gate. There was a lot of bubbling in the beer, and there was a large krausen at the top of the carboy already. I have to say, this was quite the sight to behold for my first homebrewing experience. Very exciting! The sound of the fermentation lock glugging every 5-10 seconds put a huge smile on my face as well. I was initially concerned that I may have to switch out the lock for a blowoff tube, as the krausen started creeping up the neck of the carboy, but it ended up  stopping just short of overflow.