[thehay95]

What are some tricks to make the best possible wheat beer with fruit (say raspberries, blackberries...). Main problems:
- no head
- all fruit sugars ferment away, so remaining taste is sourness...

[majorvices]

No head and sourness could be a sign of microbiological contamination from the fruit. Hard to say exactly. I use the aseptic purees from Oregon fruit almost exclusively and it works great.

[reverseapachemaster]

You shouldn't have problems with fruit killing the head or creating sourness (aside from acids naturally present in the fruit).

If anything fruit adds a lot of water and some fermentable sugar so it can thin out a beer. You see this happen less, at least commercially, because the common trend in many fruited beers is to add an obscene amount of fruit and end up with some fruit solids in the beer. Even without adding an enormous amount of fruit you won't get too much thinning unless you're using particularly watery beer. But then take that into consideration when designing the beer and add more wheat or unmalted grain to add protein content to help with a thicker mouthfeel.

[erockrph]

My best tip is not to use hefeweizen yeast strains. There is to much clash with the berry flavor in my experience. I would stick to a clean ale strain (Wyeast 1010, Chico, etc.).

It's interesting that you mention that the beers end up too sour for you. I find that without a touch of acidity fruit beers end up kind of flat and uninteresting. I usually use a 3711-based saison as my fruit beer base, since it ends up with a bit of acidity and a fuller mouthfeel despite the dry finish.