Raspberry Wheat: Red 57

For my dad's 57th birthday I decided instead of getting him a gift I would teach him how to brew beer. It was a great opportunity to both share time with him and make him a gift that he would enjoy. We kicked around a couple of ideas and decided to brew a raspberry wheat beer. The recipe is easy to follow, simple, and turned out excellent. The beer was so tasty I submitted it in the 2012 National Homebrewing Competition.

Brewed 12.17.2011

Grain:
5.5 pounds American Wheat
5.5 pounds American 2-Row

Hops:
1 oz Hallertau 60 minutes (4.4% AA)
0.5 oz Saaz 10 minutes (4.3% AA)

Yeast:
1 and 1/2 packets Safale US-05

Mash:
3 gallons at 150 F
Sparged 3.5 gallons @ 180 F

Original Gravity 1.052
Original Volume ~4 gallons

12/24
Gravity at 1.020, racked beer into a 5 gallon corny keg and added 60 oz of frozen sugared raspberries. (Needed to purge keg twice daily to keep pressure in check)

01/2
Botteled ~4 gallons with 3oz of table sugar

Tasting 5/7/2012

Appearance: The beer pours a magnificent pink red color that gives away the raspberries as soon as it comes out the of bottle. The carbonation is a little high and champagne like. It causes little bubbles to constantly be surging to the top of the beer. The head is pink and stable through the entire glass.

Aroma: Raspberries! The berries cover up any hop aroma and there is only a little malt aroma detectable.

Taste: The beer is sweet to start but finishes with a bit of a pucker from the raspberries, this is aided by the high level of carbonation. The berries really come through in the flavor of the beer.

Overall: This is an awesome beer. It turned out wonderful and there is very little I would change about it. Maybe dial back the bottling sugar or allow it to sit in the secondary longer to make sure there is no residual sugar. Although this beer is a little girly it makes a wonderful summer treat.

5/9/2012
Got the score back from the National Homebrewing competition. The beer scored a 31, which equates to a very good.I am pretty proud of my first submission and will be brewing this beer again (with my dad) for competition with the above changes to the recipe. Hopefully we can bring home a medal with it some day!