The folks who mass produce beer (or horse piss) may never understand craft beer and its drinkers. There is a world far beyond diluted, pale yellow, consistently boring lagers that the big brewers know about but don’t venture into it. With their large brewing equipment it should be easy to go craft, but the one single aspect of higher brewing cost holds them back.
Perhaps not in India, but in other parts of the world, big brewers regularly air their ads that feature bubbly yellow liquids in glasses, in the hands of consumers and regularly talk about the innovative brewing they continue to do. Innovation indeed!!
I was once a so called ‘horse piss’ drinker, but the switch to craft beer was simply a better choice. And the choices are endless: IPAs, blonde ales, barley wines, stouts, pale ales, wheat beers, rye beers etc.
So when there’s very little innovation in mass produced beer, they simply cannot draw craft beer drinkers back to their watered down beers. The reason I said this much about the big brewers and their 'innovation' is because of a twitter post by Anheuser-Busch that seem to insult craft beer, or in this case 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat. If you can’t beat them, harry them. Of course, this wasn’t taken lying down by craft beer drinkers and they responded. Anheuser-Busch may have actually given publicity to 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat.
This is one post that made me think of brewing a watermelon wheat since I had some wheat at home. The issue I faced was with the amount of watermelon to be added to the beer in the secondary. I spoke to another brewer who made a watermelon Hefeweizen and he stated that about 100ml of watermelon puree per liter of beer gives the finished product a faint amount of watermelon flavor. I haven’t tasted his watermelon Hefe and therefore I do not know what it tastes like but I decided to go ahead with the same calculations.
The bitterness and gravity of the beer is intentionally low to allow the watermelon to shine, although slightly and not overwhelm the beer. With the addition of the watermelon puree, the SRM is expected to change a bit and move to a slightly darker shade of yellow but it wont shift to red, reddish or orange. I will post my findings once I bottle the beer.
Watermelon Wheat (Tasting notes here)
Specifics
Perhaps not in India, but in other parts of the world, big brewers regularly air their ads that feature bubbly yellow liquids in glasses, in the hands of consumers and regularly talk about the innovative brewing they continue to do. Innovation indeed!!
I was once a so called ‘horse piss’ drinker, but the switch to craft beer was simply a better choice. And the choices are endless: IPAs, blonde ales, barley wines, stouts, pale ales, wheat beers, rye beers etc.
So when there’s very little innovation in mass produced beer, they simply cannot draw craft beer drinkers back to their watered down beers. The reason I said this much about the big brewers and their 'innovation' is because of a twitter post by Anheuser-Busch that seem to insult craft beer, or in this case 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat. If you can’t beat them, harry them. Of course, this wasn’t taken lying down by craft beer drinkers and they responded. Anheuser-Busch may have actually given publicity to 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat.
This is one post that made me think of brewing a watermelon wheat since I had some wheat at home. The issue I faced was with the amount of watermelon to be added to the beer in the secondary. I spoke to another brewer who made a watermelon Hefeweizen and he stated that about 100ml of watermelon puree per liter of beer gives the finished product a faint amount of watermelon flavor. I haven’t tasted his watermelon Hefe and therefore I do not know what it tastes like but I decided to go ahead with the same calculations.
The bitterness and gravity of the beer is intentionally low to allow the watermelon to shine, although slightly and not overwhelm the beer. With the addition of the watermelon puree, the SRM is expected to change a bit and move to a slightly darker shade of yellow but it wont shift to red, reddish or orange. I will post my findings once I bottle the beer.
Watermelon Wheat (Tasting notes here)
Specifics
Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain
Type: All Grain
IBU: 12
SRM: 3.5
OG: 1.048
Grains and Sugars
910 grams Pilsner
730 grams Wheat Malt
730 grams Wheat Malt
Hops
2 grams Aurora @ 45 min.
Other Additions
Other Additions
Add 800 ml of fresh watermelon puree to the beer in secondary after a week of fermentation for 3 days.
Yeast
Fermentis WB-06 Wheat Beer Yeast
Schedules
Mash at 65.5°C for 60 minutes
Sparged at 80°C for 30 minutes
Boiled for 45 minutes.
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