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My plan is a Raspberry Wheat Beer using the Thomas Cooper Wheat Beer kit, with Dextrose (300g) and Light Dry Malt (500g)... and 2kgs of hand picked raspberries. I'm using a Coopers kit fermenter.

I would like as many opinions as possible on when I should add the berries for maximum raspberry flavour? (I have racking equipment if racking is needed). Please be specific.

Cheers.

I have a strawberry hefeweizen in secondary at the moment.

I brewed a basic hefeweizen and let it ferment out.

I then racked onto the strawberries (which were treated with sodium metabisulphite - campden tablets).

Let that go for another week and then racked again.

Raspberries are preferred for fruit beers as they add colour as well as flavour/aroma. I used 4kg of strawberries in mine (18L) and it had no impact on the colour. Its smells and tastes of strawberries though!

If you didn't want to rack after fermentation was complete you could dump the raspberries in the same vessel. Just make sure you do it after fermentation is complete. Freezing them first is recommended. I prefer to treat mine with SO2 but you could 'defrost' them in 80C water for 1 min instead.

Leave it sit for a week or 2 and then rack to get the beer off the raspberries to bottle/keg.

Thanks mate, super helpful!

I like the sound of your strawberry hefeweizen!