What makes an addition good for a basic wheat beer?

Question

My second batch of beer will be a basic wheat beer and I will rack half with peach puree and half without to see the difference.

I am looking for suggestions of other additives for wheat beer. People use fruit based additives like lemon peel or orange peel, but what about spices like cinnamon?

What qualities make for a good wheat beer additive?

Answer 1

No offense, but try making the wheat beer without the peaches first. If this is your second batch there is a pretty high probability there are parts of your brewing process that can be optimized. Tossing peaches in there may just hide or create new problems so you won't really be able to tell whats wrong and how to fix it.

Otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much about additives, you want the peaches to shine. Try something like the WLP351 Bavarian Weizen Yeast, I think that's the Schneider brewery yeast, and the clovey flavor of that would work well with peaches.

Answer 2

I do want to suggest that if you do like it, you could simply grate some lemon rind - a little bit - into a few bottles to experiement with how you like it. I like this flavor but it is preferential and personal. Label those bottles with how much you put to find out. I would say that if you think it would work try a little in the bottle after the brewing process and note how long it was in there an how much.

Answer 3

Keep half of your beer free from additives. The best part about trying something new is learning what it adds, so you want to have a good baseline to compare against. I would also suggest only adding one new thing at a time to be able to pick out what that ingredient does.

I fully appreciate the excitement of adding things and experimenting, I usually try to do something different with 5 gallons of each of my 10 gallon brews. I'd highly recommend trying a batch with nothing different besides the yeast, and after tasting Jester King's Drink'in the sunbelt this weekend, I would recommend trying a hoppy wheat (I certainly will be soon.) They used Amarillo apparently, in addition to Falconer's Flight and Magnum, none of which have ever touched a wheat of mine before.

Answer 4

I've been watching Discovery Channel's "Brew Masters" a bit lately and a trick that Sam often does is to take a ready made beer you can clone (either a basic recipe of your own or perhaps a commercial brew), adding various ingredients to steep for a short while (real quick, before it warms) and drinking it on the spot. It's no science but it sounds like a great indicator of what might or might not work.

You can also try brewing 5x 1 gallon of the base recipe and fermenting with 4 different additives and a neutral batch.