Raspberry Bavairan Lager

[gazpachos0up]

Hey ya'll,
The missus has been wanting me to make a raspberry beer for a while now, had a can of coopers Bavarian sitting there so we grabbed some brew enhancer 2 (cause she's not real keen on malty full flavoured beers... yet, she's getting there though)some vienna and melaniodin grain (partially mashed) to freshen up the coopers can and a 500g packet of frozen berries from coles which i mashed, ran through a muslin bag into the fermenter then tied the bag and threw it in too, in a week or so i'm going to transfer to a fresh fermenter with maybe another 200g of berries and some hersbrucker hops for aroma to stick with the german style. How does this sound? is there anything else i could add when i "rack" it? Do you think the raspberries will make it bitter? I was thinking maybe adding a lil bit of lactose to sweeten if neccessary, just 200g or so. Its brewing in my newly appointed brew fridge at 14C

[Kevnlis]

The Vienna and Melanoidin will be quite malty sweet, if you did add lactose I would suggest 100g or so. As for hop aroma, why try to mask the berries? I vote to leave it as is!

[ilovechocolate2002]

simplest thing is to just brew normally , then prime with raspberry cordial...(shame to spoil a gud lager tho)

[petesbrew]

I made this with the canadian blonde kit, but used about 1.3kg berries total across the prim & secondary.
I reckon you at least want another 500g in the secondary, and IMO I'd leave the hops out and just go with the berry flavour. I stupidly added 20g cascade which didn't work with it, although it was still a great beer.

[Chris]

Leave the hops out, or use VERY low amounts of noble.

Berries are best into secondary, and I find 3kg is often a minimum. 5 is usually closer to it. No-one ever said berry beers were cheap

[petesbrew]

Here's a fruit supplier in Hornsby, NSW that do good bulk prices.
http://www.frozberries.com.au
Haven't tried them yet, but I have a raspberry blonde on the cards later this year.

[Chris]

Those are some good prices.