Pineapple Wheat

"For the ladies!" Hey we are not here to judge! If you like pineapples in your beer thats fine! Just kidding. I do not make wheat beers so I will not coment on your process. Good luck.

 

If he really wants to help the ladies out he should just eat the pineapple

 

Pineapple enzyme is used as a meat tenderizer because it breaks down proteins...don't expect much head retention in any beer with pineapple...but maybe worth a shot.

 

There are a few threads on the subject on HBT. At a quick glance, it appears those who used frozen concentrate or juice had better results vs fresh puree/cubes in regard to how much the pinapple flavor came through.

Either way, I would also be at least a little wary about how tart/acidic the final product may be.

 

yeah... we tried a pin apple beer once, and thereafter I instituted a never-budging rule, I will never do another fruit beer so long as I live and breathe.

we used pineapple concentrate, when it was done brewing it was horrible, just horrible. all the sugar was gone and you're left with extreme sourness which was more than a little bit unpleasant.

Now, Maui brewing company brews with pineapple, and it tastes fine, so after our failure we did contact them, and what they do is use Maui pineapple (which I think truly is a must, it is's FAARRR sweeter than what you get stateside), slice it, and then they grill it to caramelize all the sugars.

 

Boy, I am glad my wife likes hops.

 

Don't let these guys rag on you, pineapple is great. I have no input into the process, but good luck w/ the beer.

 

Mine was all meant in humor (good, bad or indifferent), not to be taken personal.

 

I know , I'm playing around too.

 

I chopped one pineapple up for 1 gallon of a berliner weisse, added some sulfites to kill off the bugs, then put it in a gallon growler for a week. Had a great head, a faint pineapple aroma and a nice pineapple sweetness at the back end of the taste. If I were to do it again, I'd double the pineapple to get an in-your-face pineapple flavor.

 

dont bother with pineapple at flame out. yeast will consume the sugars and co2 will scrub away the flavor. racking onto the fruit should give you some more lasting flavor. every fruit is different, and it depends upon the base - ive had success using anywhere between 3-5 lbs of fruit for a 5 gallon batch using this method.

also - you may want to think about pastuerizing your fruit before you add it, unless you are okay with some potential wild yeasties getting in. do your ladies like wild yeasties?

 

do you know what the ladies like? My best friend is an avowed beer HATER, she is a big fan of the pineapple and malibu type drinks, so I thought... boy I can make a pineapple beer, which I never even bothered trying to serve her. Interestingly we were at a beer bar once, and she tried Kasteel Rouge, which was, incredibly the only beer she has ever liked.

 

cube your fresh pineapple (1.5 pounds per gallon of beer)
freeze your fresh pineapple
thaw your frozen pineapple
puree your thawed pineapple in a sanitized blender
add your puree to your secondary fermenter
rack you beer from primary into the secondary fermenter
allow it to referment / sit on the pineapple for 2-3 weeks
cold crash your secondary fermenter (if possible)
bottle / keg your beer

 

I made a Pineapple Wheat IPA once. Really good, except too bitter. I used Falconer's Flight hops (the original blend, not the 7Cs one). 40% Pils, 50% White Wheat Malt, 5% Flaked Wheat, 5% Dark Wheat Malt (or use the Wheat extract kit). Use lots of hops near the end of the boil (no bittering charge). Ferment with 1056. After 2 weeks, rack onto 1 freshly cubed pineapple and 2oz Falconer's Flight hop pellets for one week. Rack to bottling bucket, and bottle as usual. Even after 6 months it still had a decent amount of pineapple kick. The Falconers throw off lots of pineapple and blend very well with the pineapple itself. FG was 1.013.

 

Expect the unexpected.

 

I've tried my hand at a pineapple wine once. Once.

It came out just like you'd think a jug of pineapple juice would taste when it's in the back of the fridge too long.

Not all fruits give off their respective fruit flavor when fermented. As cmmcdonn mentioned above, you should be careful how you try to tackle this. if it were up to me, I'd be looking for a pineapple extract, or possibly some hops that throw off a pineapple flavor before trying to go down this road again. Extract has the forgiveness that you can add this AFTER you've fermented your beer and you can pull out a tasting glass and dropper for some mad scientist time alone in the basement.

 

I'd say that you should keep on brewing steadily with some standard stuff, take notes and learn as much as possible and try this out for next summer. My second batch was a mango IPA that ended up horrible because I didn't know enough at the time to make it good.

 

New Holland had a Pineapple Wheat on tap a couple of years ago, very solid, very acidic. Good luck!

 

I would not brew a wheat beer with pineapple before I had brewed at least one wheat beer without pineapple. Especially for a second batch. IOW, get the base beer right before tweaking with intermediate level ingredients/techniques.