Apricot Wheat

[Danzar]

Ok I've just cracked another one of these (leaving most of it to age) and wow! It's about 3 months old now and I'm very happy with the way it has come along! No mistaking it for a wheat but it's fairly well balanced. The apricot is evident, probably more so than it was previously because I reckon some of the other fruity flavours from the yeast have settled down a bit leaving just the apricot taste. I didn't think it would end up this good!!

That's it - must do this one. Pale - I've been waiting on your definitive taste test!

[Pale_Ale]

Yep - pretty happy with it...the only comments I would make is keep the carbonation pretty low and get rid of the apricot skins thoroughly. I didn't do either very well and this would have made a big difference. Also I wouldn't hesitate to use 2.5 - 3kg fruit with the same recipe.

[ozcah]

Question about racking.
People have mentioned racking on to the apricots after a few days. I don't rack my beers and I don;t have a second fermenter to rack into so I was wondering if instead of racking, could I drop a bag of apricots into my primary fermenter 3 or 4 days into the ferment?

I'd end up leaving the bag in until bottling

I can't see why this wouldn't have the same result.

Any thoughts?

Catchya
Osc

[rwh]

Should work. You just want to avoid most of the CO2 produced during the primary ferment; so long as you wait for it to be nearly finished, you could add them to primary. Note all advice on pasteurisation tho.

[timmy]

Osc,

I don't know whether the bag will impart enough of the apricot flavour if done this way. Cooked and pureed my apricots before adding to secondary and will probably do this again for the next batch (using a Canadian Blonde this time). Bunnings sell cheap 25L camping water containers for about $15 that are perfect for racking. Just make sure you crack the lid before draining them because they tend to distort under vacuum (ask me how I know this...).

Cheers,

Tim

[rwh]

OK, I'll bite: how do you know that?

[drsmurto]

Ok Pale_Ale. I turned 10kg of apricots into jam last night, got 42 jars! But there will be more apricots ready to pick by the weekend with the hot weather we are getting. Dont think my partner is keen on making anymore jam so will have more than 3kg to play around with. Might just do a K&K for this one rather than spend 5 hours brewing.

So any tips and hints on how to improve on your attempt? I love the idea of combining the spiciness of saaz with the apricots. Any reason to use a wheat yeast over a kit yeast or even US56 or S-04 or even nottingham? Timmy - your input would be very welcome too as would anyone experienced in fruit beers. I was planning on steeping them as mentioned and then blitzing them in a blender till nice and smooth.

I will also have plums coming out of the proverbial in the next few weeks and the figs are prob due to be picked this weekend. Think i will give the figs to th eold lady to make jam and keep the plums for sauce making and a plum wheat beer.

Cheer and fruity beers
DrSmurto

[Kevnlis]

Hey Doc, If you go to the links on my website, near the bottom there is a link for recipes. In there is an AG recipe for "Slugbait Apricot Cobbler Ale":

Fermentables
5 lbs. British 2-row
3 lbs. German Wheat malt
4 oz. chocolate malt
4 oz. munich malt
1 lb. honey
1 gallon fresh apricot puree - ~ 7 lbs.

Hops
.75 oz. Hallertau (5.3 alpha for ~17 IBU) @ 60 mins.

Other
1 ea 8" cinnamon stick

Yeast Wyeast 3068

Procedure Mashed all grains with single infusion at 154F. Collected 6.5 gals. sweet wort, boiled
down to 5 gals. Honey and cinnamon went into the pot @ 10 mins. Chilled and pitched 1.5 qt.
Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephan). Fermented in primary 24 hours and racked onto pasteurized ’cot
puree in clean, sanitized carboy. Left on the fruit for 5 days. Racked to 2ndary. Batch primed with
corn sugar and bottled 10 days later.

All the extract recipes I found use "flavouring" or "essence".

What about an Apricot Lambic? That could be very nice!

[drsmurto]

Dont suppose you could convert that to english for me Kev.....

SI units only please, not of this gallon and lbs shite!

Removing tongue from cheek now....(or is that foot form mouth?)

Wouldnt the choc malt over power the apricot? I like the idea of adding honey to compliment the apricot. Its a bit of everything recipe by the looks of it!

My last ginger was described as a ginger wheat lambic, pity that wasnt what i was aiming for! No lambics for me, i like beer and cider in separate glasses!

Cheers
DrSmurto
p.s pencilled in the apple and strawb beer for shits and giggles.

[Kevnlis]

Half as much choc malt may be better, but I would use a bit for colour and a touch of flavour. Maybe put a bit more munich in, or change it to a caramunich addition and drop the choc? That recipe looks great, if I had access to 3 kilos of apricots I would certainly give it a go!

[drtom]

Too slow! We just jammed, bottled, ate & gave away >30Kg of apricots off our tree. It's the biggest crop we've ever had - I think it likes the shower water.

T.

[KEG]

how do you reckon it'd go putting a few jars of jam into a wheat?

certainly would up the fermentables - does your jam have much sugar in it, or is it mostly fruit?

[timmy]

My K&K based approach using 3068 and a load of pureed apricots came out with a sourness that was very lambic-like...

Might have a crack at making a Berliner Weisse with apricots now that I think of it.

Cheers,

Tim

[drsmurto]

10kg for jam, 4kg for eating at thats the first crop of the season, still loads on the tree. Havent watered it once in the 9 months we have lived here!

The birds are also getting there share, tree is too big to net without a crane!

Could you use the jam for brewing? Its just apricots, sugar and lemon juice.

As for using munich or caramunich for colour i want the apricot colour to be evident as much as the flavour.

1/2 and 1/2 pale and wheat malt, touch of caramunich for colour, hallertau or tettnang for bittering. Dont want it to be malty. Aiming for around 3-3.5% abv before apricot addition. 3kg of apricots would add a decent amount of sugars.

EDIT - Keg - my jam was 1:1 apricots:sugar and 1 lemon per 1.5kg of apricots. So would add lots more sugar than just the fruit but i dont think it would hurt - lemon juice has never stopped fermentation for me in the past.

[timmy]

Know what you mean doc.

My parents have a large tree and I still have about 5kg of frozen fruit from last season. There's only so much apricot jam/pie etc that I can eat so the only solution appears to be beer or wine (I found a nice apricot wine recipe on the ABC site a while ago that I'm keen to try...).

[drsmurto]

<SNIP>
(I found a nice apricot wine recipe on the ABC site a while ago that I'm keen to try...).

Do share!

[earle]

Could you use the jam for brewing?

I'm not much of a jam maker but doesn't the lemon help bring out the pectin which thicken the jam? Would the pectin interfere with the brewing process? It's entirely possible I may be well off track and wrong.

[drtom]

Jam might work okay but two problems occur to me: (1) pectin, (2) sucrose.

Normally, you try hard to avoid pectin in your beer. I think it's no worse than chill haze, which harms only the appearance, so I guess if you don't care, then it's not a problem.

But jam is stiff with sugar (literally, actually), and unless you make your jam with dex, which would be an interesting experiment, you'd be incorporating a significant amount of sucrose in you beer. Maybe the fruit flavours will mask the flavours from the sucrose. Could be worth a try.

cheers,
T.

[Pale_Ale]

Ok Pale_Ale. I turned 10kg of apricots into jam last night, got 42 jars! But there will be more apricots ready to pick by the weekend with the hot weather we are getting. Dont think my partner is keen on making anymore jam so will have more than 3kg to play around with. Might just do a K&K for this one rather than spend 5 hours brewing.

So any tips and hints on how to improve on your attempt? I love the idea of combining the spiciness of saaz with the apricots. Any reason to use a wheat yeast over a kit yeast or even US56 or S-04 or even nottingham? Timmy - your input would be very welcome too as would anyone experienced in fruit beers. I was planning on steeping them as mentioned and then blitzing them in a blender till nice and smooth.

I will also have plums coming out of the proverbial in the next few weeks and the figs are prob due to be picked this weekend. Think i will give the figs to th eold lady to make jam and keep the plums for sauce making and a plum wheat beer.

Cheer and fruity beers
DrSmurto

I would use as much fruit as possible, obviously you will freeze the fruit before using it in the brew, then heat it up and chuck it in. Pectin will be released from the fruit if the water is too hot but honestly I wouldn't be worried about clarity in a wheat beer filled with fruit.

I find if you start with a wheat kit, you have all the bitterness you need and just throw some saaz in for a bit of flavour and aroma. As I've mentioned before I would keep the carbonation on the lower side if bottling.

In terms of yeast I would think S-04 or Nottingham would be quite ok with it. From memory I used the Coopers yeast that comes with the wheat kit. Just don't use the saf wheat yeast, it's not really right for a wheat beer of any kind.

Cheers

[Kevnlis]

I hope you do not mean WB-06 Pale_Ale? I just pitched that yeast to 2 brews