Continuing my fervent interest in fruit beers, I wanted to brew a hopefully simple, single fruit beer. Colorado peaches are famous for being absolutely delicious. The best peaches I have ever tasted in this world have come from Colorado. Why not get some amazing CO peaches and make a simple, delicious beer? Certain fruits, while delicious and sweet, don’t seem to give up their deliciousness. I first noticed this in the previous beer I made, Strawberry Rhubarb, where the strawberries, even with using 8lbs of them, never came through as a flavor. Apparently peach is also a difficult flavor to infuse into beer. It keeps it all the delicious peach flavor to itself. Greedy bastard.
Grains
16oz Standard 2 Row
8oz Pale Wheat
Hops
1oz Saaz (3.6%AA) @60min
Malt
6lbs LME
Yeast
Wyeast Belgian Ardennes (3522)
Additions & Fruit
1lb Honey (racked onto in primary)
10lbs Peaches (racked onto in secondary)
SG: 1.050
1wk: No idea. Forgot to take a reading before racking onto fruit and honey
FG(3wk): 1.010
To prep the peaches for the beer, I sliced and pitted them before putting them in the freezer for the night. The day before racking the beer into secondary, take the peaches out of the freezer, thaw them, mash them, and then add Pectic Enzyme (.5tsp/gal).
This beer is one of the least favorite beers I’ve made. Not because it is a bad beer, it isn’t. It’s simply that this beer turned out so damn basic. It tastes a standard, middle-of-the-road beer. I was mostly disappointed because all of the ingredients used should make a damn good beer. CO peaches, honey, and a Belgian yeast?!?! That equals some deliciousness. Either I don’t know what I’m doing or the stars didn’t align for this one. Even my dad, who will drink anything, only said it was okay. I think that’s the worst review I could get. It didn’t even get better after years of conditioning. If you want a boring beer that to drink while doing taxes or something else awful, and one that’s reliably basic over the years, brew this beer.