Raspberry Blonde

This is a Slyko combination of the Radical Brewing book by Randy Mosher, Eschantz' Requiem Raspberry - BierMuncher's Centennial Blond, and EdWort's Bee Cave Brewery Haus Pale Ale all of which I read on the INTERNET @ HomeBrewTalk.com . These are all great recipes & well received for their ease of use. I've adjusted the yeast, starter & the fermentation time to MY liking. I can't even take credit for the FANTASTIC change in yeast. I went into my favorite LHBS and they didn't have the Nottingham. We simply subsituted Wyeast in it's place. The suggested aging came about since following BM's recipe it originally tasted like soap, so being the lazy SOB I am, I just left it. 3 weeks later, it proved to be an amazing goof! (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f75/requiem-raspberry-56285/)

I’ve been tweaking the recipe for a few months now and this is it. BierMuncher's original recipe for Centennial Blond calls for a much shorter fermentation cycle, this recipe requires a much longer time. When I drank this early, it tasted terrible. Let it age. This is the recipe that will be a permanent fixture at my house. I’ve brewed it numerous times, served the first brew to friends, families, and “curious on-lookers” It's light, crisp, dry, with a background of raspberry. Very tasty! I love a light fruit beer.

Definitely don't use raspberry juice, concentrate, or extract. Go to your grocery store in the frozen fruit area and pick up 40 oz of raspberries and just thaw and throw in the fermenter. Do not buy the kind with any added sugar. Read the ingredients label to see if there is any crap in there that you dont want. It's a little expensive but it's great. I never sanitze them. I just thaw and toss them in. THey'll float for a while and might drop out of suspension. They'll mostly turn white after the yeasties have had their way with them.You could go to a farmers market and grab fresh ones. Whatever you do I would only add whole fruit to this beer. The juice or extract thing is no good for this one. I have used both red raspberries and black raspberries. Both work great. It's hard to tell the difference to tell you the truth.

Once I matched up Centennial as the bittering hop and Cascade as a flavor/aroma hop…that’s when the magic happened. Don't use any flavor extract, that gives too much an overpowering & forced taste.

Light and crisp. The IBU’s are on the low side, but there is a nice sweet/spicy balance to the beer. The great fresh taste of a craft ale with an extremely clean finish. Very drinkable fruit beer with wide appeal. I’ve yet to have anyone, even BMC drinkers not say it’s one of the best beers they’ve tasted….period. The secret lies in the name. I moved through Northern Brewer, Nugget and Pearle hops, all in combination with Cascade. Even went with a strict Cascade hop bill which is EdWort's recipe, but was just a bit on the tart side for this lighter grain bill.

This is also a simple, hard to screw up recipe. At just around 4%, this is a quaffer. Hops will boil over, so if you are anywhere near boiling over, it is imperative to lower the heat significantly then add hops, then resume boiling slowly. And brew outside.

The raspberrys are loaded with natural sugar. Yeast loves sugar. Don't be suprised if you have to add a blow off tube to the secondary, a 5 gallon bottle bomb is what we're trying to avoid. Do not buy raspberrys with any added sugar.

Just make sure there is no added sugar in the raspberries. otherwise, you will end up with a stronger/dryer beer. unless you like the dry/strong beer.... ha ha

Look at BM's post regarding using gelatin finings when kegging your beer. I started using it and my beer is always super clear. Beersmith recommends adding Gelatin Finnings to the Secondary Fermenter. This beer is full of seeds & pulp, strain it, filter it, use gelatin. You'll be glad you did. The seeds with clog up your keg if you don't.

I cut the dip tube on one of my kegs and wish I hadn't. If you don't cut it, you will just have to pour a couple of pints when you first tap it to get the gunk out, and then it will run crystal clear. If you secondary with Gelatin, it will be crystal clear when you rack to the keg. I don't like crunchies in my beer.

Brewing fruit beer is not for everyone, but a properly balanced fruit beer can be light and refreshing on a hot summer day. Beers that include fruit vary widely in taste, style and strength. Lighter-bodied beer so work better with most fruits. Darker & bitter beers fight with the fruit. Whatever the style, a properly balanced fruit beer should not betray the underlying taste – fruit beer is a beer with a touch of fruit flavor and not a wine cooler! Let's not overpower everything & just taste the fruit. Adding a flavor extract has an overpowering taste and is not recommended in my experience. Fruit extractsw are amid at the "beginner" segment of the brewing market. This beer's raspberry taste is very subtle & very refreshing. My 1st 5 gallon keg lasted less than 1 week, it's that good. The quality of homebrewed fruit beers can be high because the cost and time factors are not a big issue.

Raspberries are the easiest fruite from which to make beer. Their intese, single-minded character haqngs in there forever and cuts through almost any other flavor present. Red raspberries seem to have a better flavor in beer than black berries.

When brewing with STRAWBERRIES, unless you can get out in the fields and pick them yourself, frozen stawberries are you best bet. BLUEBERRIES seem to fade to nothingness.

Fruit beers are generally formulated to be light tasting, light bodied, and also lightly hopped. The reason for this is simple – most fruits lose a lot of their flavor during fermentation, and a strong malt or hops flavor will tent to overpower the subtle fruit flavors, making the fruit undetectable in the finished beer. A lightly hopped wheat beer as the base beer is often a good choice.

Most authors recommend that you freeze whole fruit once and thaw it before adding it to the beer. Freezing fruit breaks open the cell walls, allowing more flavor and aroma to permeate the beer. I use a rolling pin on the frozen package to further break down the berries. Thaw it before adding it to the secondary however, to avoid shocking the yeast with a sudden change of temperature. Again, do not buy any raspberrys with added sugar. the best way to incorporate fruit into your beer is to add it to the secondary fermenter. Avoid glass carboys, if you must than leave a large headspace and use a blow off tube to avoid blowing up the whole jug.

Add the entire berry package to the secondary fermenter. Before you thaw it, simply crush the entire bag with a rolling pin. I get the 12.0 oz. frozen raspberries @ Walmart for $3.99. Just simply open the crushed, thawed package & put the entire contents in the secondary. Freezing the berry breaks it down. Since whole fruit in particular contains a lot of microbes and bacteria, adding fruit too early in the fermentation process can lead to infection. By the time your beer is in the secondary fermenter, it has a higher alcoholic content, is more acidic and also nutrient depleted but yeast rich, all of which serve as a guard against potential infection.

Definitely don't use raspberry juice. Go to your grocery store in the frozen fruit area and pick up 40 oz of raspberries and just thaw and throw in the fermenter. Read the ingredients label to see if there is any crap in there that you dont want. It's a little expensive but it's great. I never sanitze them. I just thaw and toss them in. They'll float for a while and might drop out of suspension. They'll mostly turn white after the yeasties have had their way with them.Whatever you do I would only add whole fruit to this beer. The juice or extract thing is no good for this one. I have used both red raspberries and black raspberries. Both work great. It's hard to tell the difference to tell you the truth

Raspberry is one of the best fruits to use with beer. The flavor and aroma hold up well to fermentation, and come through well in the finished beer. The flavor is strong even at a rate of 0.5-1 lb per gallon, making raspberry a favorite of commercial beer brewers. 40 oz. or 2 1/2 lbs of rasperries is max, anymore & the flavor is much too stong. It will overpower the beer. I buy a 12 oz. frozen rasberries package @ Walmart. Add the entire berry to the Secondary.

There will be alot of raspberry gunk floating around in the secondary. Don't worry, this is normal. I've tried to add a hop filter to the racking cane when transfering it to the keg, but it didn't keep up the siphon & I found it was overkill. I've since learned to use a metal twist off you get in the grocery store for your fruits & veggies. Combine it with a muslin bag, and you're good.

Since the first pint, it has gotten clearer (I keg) and the raspberry flavor has mellowed out and is less sour. So if you like it sour, drink it up, if you want less sourness, age it. A beer with instructions on how to drink it??? Pour into glass till a 1/4 is left in bottle, then swirl and pur rest into glass. At that point I did have a glass so i just tipped and swirled, then AHHHH, that was a good beer. So i tried it with mine and wallah, it tasted great too. gotta mix up the yeasties, I guess. I do agree with incorporating some of the yeasties back into your glass.....seems to mellow it out even further.

Thanks HBT & Radical Brewing for all the tips! ;-)