Watermelon

I would love to hear input on this. A couple friends and I are contemplating a watermelon lambic.

 

I've used watermelon before in a honey beer...gutted 2 melons, squished it through my double mesh BIAB colander and just extracted the juice. Holy god that beer turned out AMAZING!!! It added some sourness to the usual version and the flavor of the beer fresh was spectacular!

 

I do a watermelon wheat each summer and it's always been a hit (went through 11 gallons in under an hour at my wedding last summer). The sugars ferment out of course leaving a cool, refreshing watermelon flavor, no funny off flavors to worry about. Some people do comment that it leaves a very slight tartness behind though, but I've been told it complements the beer well. Works well with my American wheat ale base since the beer already has a wheaty sweetness to it that compliments the watermelon flavor well. I can imagine it going well with a gose. I use 8 cups of fresh watermelon juice per each 5-6 gallon batch. I do use a pale ale malt though for the beer, which balances nicely. Did do a 2 row base one time and it was more of a watermelon cooler flavor than I wanted. So, you may want to scale back on the amount of juice you use depending on how tart of a gose you make (maybe best to add the juice to a secondary to get a taste of the base gose first). Here's my process:

Sanitize a cutting board, knife, mesh strainer, blender, measuring cup and the outside of the watermelon. Cut up the watermelon, all pink stuff goes in the blender on high for a minute or so till it's well purified/liquefied, toss the rind. Then pour through the strainer to remove as much pulp as possible. Fresh juice goes into secondary and rack the beer on top of it. Allow to ferment out for a week to two weeks then bottle/keg via your normal process.

 

I'm sure adding the watermelon juice in primary would work just as well. I've actually done so when the initial fermentation was nearly complete due to time and equipment restrictions without any noticeable difference. I tend to use the secondary though since its more of my established process. I'm a fan of letting the beer ferment out for the most part before adding the juice or any fruit as it gives you a better idea of what the final beer will be like before adding the juice and you can achieve a better beer/juice balance, especially if you haven't made the recipe before. You could always go on the low side with the juice at the beginning of fermentation and add more if needed as fermentation wraps up, there's plenty of sugars in the juice to kick-start a secondary fermentation. On a side note, you won't get a lot of gunk with the watermelon, the batch I did last month produced one gallon of juice and only about a cup of pulp from one and a half large watermelons.

 

@Lukass, not really a fan of watermelon, but found this Nice Melons when I was in Florida, it is a Berliner Weisse. It had that Watermelon Jolly Rancher thing going on, but man it was a great beach beer. You might reach out to them (they are in Ohio) and see what process they followed. Several 6 packs of this came home, and most ended up in Tulsa with my daughter, the damned thief.

 

I added it (just juice) before I pitch yeast in the primary and like the results. I'm not a fan of secondaries too much anymore, so I avoid secondary unless its a sour or big stout/porter I'm going to age for a while. I don't think you'll be disappointed with it the primary.

 

Adjust the watermelon puree...Think of the watermelon puree as part of the brewing water, you need a lot of it to get watermelon flavors. Remember watermelon is like "water"

Or make a watermelon simple syrup...then added it to the primary when you have collected the wort. The Concentrated syrup will add a bit of a watermelon kick and the sugars from the syrup will add dry fermentabable sugars.

 

You'll have to make a LOT of simple syrup to get the watermelon flavor out of it since it's mostly sugar and water, plus depending on how much sugar you add it could dry the beer out too much and despite what many think, high levels of sugar WILL add some flavor to the beer too...adding it as part of your initial volume is much easier and will give a much better, fuller flavor without adding possible distracting flavors and excessive dryness.

 

Not a gose but I recently took a can of Berliner Weisse and mixed it 50/50 with tropicana watermelon. Mixed well and allowed me to adjust the flavor with the sour.I'll probably just do this again when i make some BW.

 

Was going to do a gose next Sunday... Watermelon gose? Challenge accepted! Perfect cape cod in August beach beer it sounds like to me!

 

Curious where you ordered from? I've thought about making some, but I always just drink my Berliners straight. I'd be interested in having some around to use occasionally or offer guests though!

 

My daughter brought me a 64 oz growler of BW from a small Hill Country brewery when she was out there tubing last weekend. Nice taste, good bit of funk going on. I figured there was no way I was going to demolish that throughout the week. I keep a bag of mixed berries in the freezer, so the first night I picked out a handful of blackberries and put them in a French Press and poured on a little agave syrup then nuked it for about 30 seconds. Let it sit on the counter for about 30 min to macerate. Poured a small amount of the BW in and muddled it, then filled it up and topped it with cling film and let it sit for about 1hr in the fridge. Next night did the same with Raspberries. Totally transformed the beer and unlike fermenting with those fruits, you get the vivid color of the fruit.

 

Thanks!

 

I'm a little late to the party but I'm about halfway through my keg of watermelon gose. It is such a perfect summer beer! A local grocer has a pressed juice bar and I just grab a container of that. Freeze, thaw, pitch at the end of fermentation and let it ride for another week before kegging.

Report back when you're drinking it!