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03 June 2010
Ask Mecha: Honey Something Wheat On Saturday, I'm going to brew a wheat beer with honey and some kind of fruit. But what kind should I use?
Caveat: I know very little about homebrewing. Does freshness/quality of the fruit make a difference? If so, and assuming yours next door are as good as ours right now, I'd try strawberries. Ooh, and I bet here in a little bit when they come in season, peaches would be great too.
If you want a wildcard, I'd vote for sweet red/orange/yellow bell peppers.
strawberries make sense to me too! Raspberries are about to come into season in my area, but are a few weeks from peak right now.
But I also like the idea of honey-blackberry-wheat ale. Blackberries don't get enough love; they're the more common, coarser, poorer cousin of raspberries but are darn near as good, and a lot rootsier and less fragile.
I'd probably go with orange peel over juice because I like the oils in the peels, and because I imagine the honey will add enough sweetness, although either or both are possibilities.
Freshness/quality definitely makes a difference. Both the local strawberries and blackberries are very good (and I'm using local honey, so, hey).
Before I made this post, I was leaning toward either blackberry or lemon. I'm definitely receptive to other suggestions, though.
I think both would work. I make a blackberry-lemon cake that relies a lot on the extra lemon OOMPH of lemon zest. The oils in the zest pack a lot more punch and are more zingy than the juice, and they offset the sweet berries really well. So maybe both? Just a touch of zest, though