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So my wife has requested I try making a raspberry wheat beer. Here's what I have so far...

Volume: 5.0 gal
Est Original Gravity: 1.053 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.4 %
Bitterness: 16.2 IBUs
Est Color: 4.3 SRM

Ingredients
Amt Name
4 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM)
4 lbs 8.0 oz White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)
6.6 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)
1.00 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker [4.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
3 lbs 1.0 oz Fruit - Raspberry puree (0.0 SRM) added in secondary

This recipe is based on various ones I've found on the web. I'm thinking about taking out the oats. I'm guessing they were only added for head retention and I'm not sure they are necessary. What are your thoughts? Also, I'm not sure what yeast to use. I was thinking about using a Belgian weizen yeast but I'm concerned about the competition of banana flavours with the raspberry. Any suggestions?

-Kevin

EDIT: Oats have been removed.

With nearly 50% wheat, I think the oats are a bit redundant.

Can't agree more. Consider them gone....

-Kevin

I'd use - 05 and consider rice hulls for the mash.

Sent from Tapatalk 2, a prick of a company.

What benefit do rice hulls add to the mash?

-Kevin

kberry wrote:What benefit do rice hulls add to the mash?

-Kevin

They'll help with lautering. That much wheat can make for a sticky mash and you could end up with a stuck sparge. Rice hulls will add additional filtering material and should make sure that things stay running.

Oh great! Thanks for the tip. About how much would you add for a batch this size?

-Kevin

would rice hulls help at all with a BIAB wheat beer? Or since theres no sparging would it make much of a difference?

dexter wrote:would rice hulls help at all with a BIAB wheat beer? Or since theres no sparging would it make much of a difference?

I wouldn't think so.

kberry wrote:Oh great! Thanks for the tip. About how much would you add for a batch this size?

-Kevin

about a half pound, but soak them in water overnight if you can - there's no point in letting them soak up your wort

akr71 wrote:about a half pound, but soak them in water overnight if you can - there's no point in letting them soak up your wort

Thanks for the tip!

So I'll add a half pound of rice hulls and use US-05 yeast.

-Kevin

Re: the concern of banana notes from that yeast. If you can keep it cool during the ferment, the esters will not be thrown up by the yeast as much. 16-18C (low to mid-60s) I think would help this.

Racked to a secondary yesterday and added the raspberry.

How long would you guys leave it in the secondary?

I'd leave it 25-30 years.

Not my favorite style.

Sandy

I'd say 2 weeks maybe? Making an apricot wheat myself this afternoon.

Had a buddy make some of this. He had a lot of fermentation happen in the secondary from the puree. It actually foamed out of his air lock. Just a heads up!

Yeah, I looked this morning and it was defiantly active.

I left my RW in for somewhere between two and three weeks. The raspberries were stripped white and partly floating so I crashed and siphoned off. Turned out great.

I used the can from NG.

I'm looking at doing a raspberry wheat in the very near future - does anyone have any thoughts on using the NG puree versus the IQF berries from SS? Has anyone tried both ways? For those that went the IQF route, how much did you use?

I've never done raspberries, but with blackberries I got more flavour from purée than I did with whole berries.

The puree is pretty convenient. I've used frozen in a lambic. I far prefer the puree for cleanup reasons, even at the high price.

I did iqf, 3 bags in a five gallon batch, came out great - quite raspberry. I found using them easy enough (pour bag into carboy) and I think getting the puree in would have been harder, bit that's just me. Getting them out just involved swirling a bunch

CorneliusAlphonse wrote: ... I think getting the puree in would have been harder ..

I figure the new wide mouth fermenters will take care of that!

Puree is easy, it's juice. But with wide mouth fermenters, either method is going to be simple to fill and clean.