Brew Your Own’s MC Hawking’s Event Horizon (Raspberry Wheat)

(5 gallons/19 L, extract with fruit)
OG = 1.044  (1.040 before fruit) FG = 1.011 IBU = 14 SRM = 4 (before fruit) ABV = 4.2%
Here’s one we developed especially for this recipe collection. This beer takes less than 90 minutes to make on brewday. For best results, follow the instructions closely — even though some of the steps are a bit unusual. MC Hawking’s Event Horizon is a crisp, wheat beer accentuated by the raspberries, which add a tart, fruity note. This beer will disappear like it’s been sucked into a black hole.

Ingredients

2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) Briess Wheat dried malt extract
3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Coopers Wheat malt extract (liquid, canned)
6.0 lbs. (2.7 kg) frozen raspberries
6 AAU Perle hops (30 mins) (0.86 oz./24 g of 7 % alpha acids)
1 tsp Irish moss
1/4 tsp yeast nutrients DCL Safale US-56 (dried yeast) Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephan Wheat) or White Labs WLP300 (Hefeweizen) yeast
1.2 cups corn sugar (for priming)

Step by Step

Use distilled or soft water. Heat 2 gallons (7.6 L) of water to a boil, then turn off heat. Stir in dried malt extract and bring to a boil. Add hops and boil for 30 minutes, adding Irish moss and yeast nutrients with 15 minutes left in boil. Shut off heat. Wipe off the outside of malt extract can with a paper towel soaked in sanitizing solution, then open and pour extract into hot wort. Sanitize a spoon to get the last bit of extract out of the can. Stir wort with this spoon until you think the extract is dissolved, then stir 1 minute longer. (The extract in the can is sterile, so there’s no need to boil it for sanitation.) Cool wort immediately and transfer to fermenter. Add water to make 5 gallons (19 L) and aerate. (The specific gravity at this point will be 1.040.) Pitch both dried and liquid yeasts and ferment at 72 °F (22 °C). After primary fermentation ends (in 3–4 days), sanitize a bucket and add frozen raspberries. Mash raspberries with sanitized potato masher, then rack beer on top of them. (There’s no need to heat the raspberries to sanitize them.) Place lid loosely on bucket, but don’t seal until foaming from fruit subsides (usually 2–3 days). Seal bucket and let beer sit in contact with fruit for 10 days total. Bottle with corn sugar or keg and carbonate to 2.8–3.0 volumes of CO2.