Raspberries, cherries, and my next recipe?

I found out that one of good buddy co-workers has many pounds of frozen raspberries in her freezer. Homegrown berry goodness! I think that this just begs for a raspberry beer... but I don't know what kind to make! I'm actually thinking about modifying my River Grand Brown Ale recipe to use the raspberries... maybe accentuate the chocolate malt flavor a little so the beer has kind of a chocolate and rapsberry thing going on... Hmm, actually, that sounds really interesting, perhaps I will do that... a name will come later, but here's a concept recipe:

9lbs Maris Otter
.5lbs Crystal 40L
.5lbs Victory
.75lbs Chocolate Malt

1oz Sterling 5%AA FWH

US-05

4lbs Frozen Raspberries in Secondary

Obviously... this is basically exactly my brown ale recipe. I hope to get a little higher ABV on this than the first go around, I think I'm getting better efficiencies now. if not by much.

I just don't know much about making raspberry beer... I'm going to have to look for some help in some forums. The raspberries will be going into secondary... but the question is, do I need to puree them? Sanitize them? (There's already alcohol by secondary... shouldn't it be ok?) Just put them in and crush them a little? Since they've been frozen... I would think they would be fairly mushy already...

And what about flavor? Hopefully I've got a good amount of berry... I don't want to overpower the malt, I'd like a balance between malt (with bitter dark chocolate being a predominant malt flavor) and tart raspberry. Will 3/4# of chocolate malt and 4# of raspberry achieve that? And the hops... Sterling are apparently a decent replacement for Saaz... is that a good choice? A rough guess on IBU is 20 for one ounce of Sterling... is that too much? Founders Cerise comes in at 15... so I would think 20 would be ok, since I'm hoping to have a beer that is less fruity than Cerise! Otherwise, I have a couple of ounces of Glacier at 7.4%AA, would be a little more IBU but Glacier is such a smooth hop...

Another co-worker has asked me to help her husband brew his very first beer... so I might be popping a guys brewing cherry! He mentioned that he might like a Honey Wheat style brew... and I've never done that exact kind of thing. I did try a honey beer with wheat in it a summer or two ago... but that's when I was having much trouble getting a decent brew... so I won't even look to that. I know honey should be added as late to the boil as possible for maximum aroma... so I'm thinking about something like this:

4# 2-row
2# White Wheat
3# honey (55 min? Add then bring to boil for 5 min?)

1oz Glacier 7.4% FWH

US-05 (Do I use anything else? Bah... no!)

I'll work more on this recipe later... totally off the top of my head with no research and no basis in anything. I'm more interested in the raspberry brew, and making sure my Pale Ale came out ok at the moment!!

Wild!

There's at least one flavor that the majority of beer drinkers would, I'm sure, insist does not belong in beer. There are likely many more, but the one I speak of today is: Sour. Yup, sour. You might not think that Sour would be a very good flavor in beer, but let me tell you, there are some wonderful sour beers!

Currently, I am drinking a Rodenbach, a red ale from the Flanders region of Europe (on the boundary of France, Netherlands, and Germany). The sour in this beer is awesome, not a mouth-puckering sour, but smoothly sweet and sour. It's really a treat. Another sour beer that I have tried and REALLY enjoyed was Festina Peche from Dogfish Head. Festina Peche was a Berliner Weisse (sour, light German wheat beer) fermented with peaches.

In the Flanders region of Europe, and in Belgium, many sour beers are produced through spontaneous fermentation, in other words they let the natural yeast and bacteria in the air "infect" their beer and ferment it. In this case, the infection can come from many agents: Saccharomyces (regular beer yeast), Brettanomyces (another yeast), Lactobacillus (bacteria in Yogurt), Pediococcus (bacteria that makes Sauerkraut), and others less desireable single-celled beasties. In the production of the Lambic style of beer for example, the cooled wort it allowed to sit uncovered for a period of time to allow the infection of yeasts native to the Senne valley around Brussels.

So this led me to wonder... Are there enough native yeasts and bacteria in the Grand River Valley around Portland for me to get spontaneous fermentation? The answer is... yes. After brewing my Colin's Colsch recipe the second time last Friday, I took my gravity sample and left it outside all night, and in a window sill all day. As of this morning, something is causing some bubbles and fermentation to occur. I don't know yet what it is, it could be weeks before it even ferments out, but I'm very curious to find out what I harvested! So we'll see if that pans out and if I can brew a Wild Portland ale!

But in researching everything I could about wild ales and wild yeasts/bacteria, I found some good notes on how to make Berliner Weisse. Apparently the key is... DON'T BOIL! A guy had posted a recipe in a thread on BeerAdvocate. It was very simple. Do a step mash with lots of wheat malt... and then let it cool and ferment for 6 months. See the missing step? Straight from Mash, to chill, to ferment! And apparently what ends up fermenting the beer is Lactobacillus spores on the grain itself! The trick is (apparently) to mash up to 175F, which will kill most of the nasties but leave the Lacto to live. So, I plan on trying this in November. I will probably buy a new fermenter just for this, since it's going to take 6 months... but I would LOVE me a Berlined Weisse come next May or June!

I'll let you all know how my wild experiment turns out!