Watermelon Wheat Recipe
Last year I decided to make a go at brewing a summer wheat beer with fruit. There seems to be a lot of interest in the 21st Amendment’s Watermelon wheat so I thought I would that recipe as a basis for my recipe.
Sean O’Sullivan, the brewmaster at the 21A, is pretty tight lipped about his recipe but he has given several interviews over the past year that give many tips about the recipe. I used these tips to derive my recipe. So without further ado here are the notes:
• The recipe is 60% pale malt, 40% Wheat – There are no notes of crystal in the grist.
• Hallertauer Hops, 17 IBU
• Clean yeast: Probably White Labs 001- “O’Sullivan ferments with a house strain of ale yeast, which scavenges the sugar in the fruit and leaves the essence of watermelon without a sweet fruit flavor.”
• 400lbs of Watermelon In 370 Gallon Batch
• Dry Crisp Finish (Low finishing gravity?)
• Pale Straw Color
Based upon these notes I came up with the following for my recipe (10 gallons):
Grist:
12.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
8.00 lb Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM)
Hops:
2.00 oz Hallertauer [3.60%] (60 min) Hops 14.7 IBU
2.00 oz Hallertauer [3.60%] (5 min) Hops 2.4 IBU
Mash @ 152 for 1 hr, Target Gravity is ~ 1050, Ferment in the Low to Mid 60s for 1 week.
On brewday or before cut the flesh from 1 20 lb watermelon. This should yield approx 12-14 lbs of fruit. Put the chunks / juice in ziplock bags and freeze. Quick note here my batch was ten gallons. The important ration here is the about 1.2 lbs of raw watermelon into 1 gallon of beer. Ive gone as high as 1.5 and it was still not overpowering.
Thaw and add to the primary fermenter after about 1 week, it should be towards the tail end of the fermentation. This will restart the fermentation, like crazy. Now this is important dont let anybody who will potentially be drinking the beer see inside the fermenter, because they will never drink it if you do. It will be a yeasty watermelon mess, but damn it will smell good.
Before kegging/bottling pull out the chunks of watermelon. I used a slotted spoon, this made transferring much easier, but it was still a pain in ass due to the seeds.
What you will have when you are done is a great summer beer. Its not going to taste like a watermelon jolly rancher, it is going to be a nice wheat beer with great watermelon aroma and a strong hint of watermelon flavor. Your guy friends will claim that its a chick beer, however they will quietly sneak back to your kegerator for a second or ever third glass. As for the ladies, yes, they too will love it.
Brew it up and let me know how it turns out.
Nice work on the recipe. How long was the extra fermentation due to the watermelon? I was thinking of pureeing the watermelon versus the chunks. Thanks for the blog, enjoy your posts.
Todd – You can probably count on another week to ten days of fermentation. I think that amount of time allow most of the sugars to ferment out plus for the beer to build on the watermelon aroma.
Regarding puree vs chunks. I think that pureeing it is probably not going to be necessary. Once you freeze and thaw the stuff the resulting fruit is pretty much a liquid. If anything take a sanitized potato masher to the melon once you have it carved out in a large bowl. The resulting mix will be anything but chunks. One other thing to consider is if you decide to puree it you will need to seed the entire thing. Trust me there will be plenty of watermelon flavor/aroma without pureeing it.
Thanks for reading! Its nice to know that I am not the only one reading it. Let me know how it turns out.
Cheers, Brian. I ended up hitting the chunks in the blender and then strained it through a fine strainer to get roughly 3 cups of “juice” into 5 gallons (that amount was based on some other recipes I’ve run across). This was about 1/3 of a reasonably sized melon. I went ahead with blending for two reasons – ease of insertion into the carboy and freezing/thawing time (which I usually do with fruit for beer, it’s just that I was in a bit of a rush to get this beer done and carbed for a party). I put in the juice once the yeast dropped and left it for about 4 days before kegging. There was some additional fermentation of the juice but not much from what I could tell. The beer is still carbing but on first taste it is a nice subtle watermelon flavor (somewhat Jolly Rancher-y to my surprise) that hits right in the middle and lingers slightly to the end. I think it’s probably the right amount and would expect that the flavors will meld a little with time. I might make another batch with a little more juice depending on how it ultimately finishes. Thanks for your advice!
I am thinking about making one but using the extract instead…hopefully it doesn’t give a medicine like flavor
I think that you would be surprised how easy it is to brew with real watermelon. It takes about 15 minutes to prepare the watermelon for freezing and the flavor you get is great.
I just re-brewed this recipe two weeks ago, and thus far the flavors are amazing.
Brian –
Any worries or problems with contamination from adding “unsanitized” watermelon into the fermenter? Have you thought about using Campden to sanitize the fruit?
Thanks….
Campden has been know to retard yeast activity, so I’m not sure I would go that route. While contamination is possible when adding unpasteurized fruit there a couple things working against it.
1. Freezing the watermelon knocks the bacteria load down to virtually nothing.
2. Fermented beer is a pretty inhospitable environment for bacteria. By the time you are adding the watermelon the beer’s PH has dropped significantly and it is full of alcohol. Two things that bacteria are not crazy about.
3. Last, this is not a beer that is going to be aged. This is a beer that you will drink within a couple months (six months tops probably). Any strong brett based flavors take months to develop. In the off chance that contamination does occur, by the time those flavors are developing, this keg is going to be blowing CO2.
Just be sure to pitch the proper amount of yeast (erring on the side of too much), practice good sanitation, and drink it quickly.
Perhaps its just me, but Id say just don’t worry about it and brew just the beer. Ive brew over 40 gallons of this stuff over 4 distinct batches and have never had an issue with contamination.
Hope that helps.
If the beer was going to be contaminated it probably would have occured