This has me thinking.
A friend of mine makes about 400L of wine per year - a mix of grapes but mostly Merlot and Shiraz.
Has anyone else tried incorporating Grape juice into Beer? Could get out of hand quite quickly - with all the fermantables available.
Would be interested in trying this next year - need to do some more research first.
Has anyone seen this in Perth - want to try it first.
RM
edit - for anyone who didnt see the article in the Age <snip>
That's right - a beer made from malted grain and grape juice. In this case, a generous amount of shiraz juice is added to the brewing kettle and while the resulting ale is fundamentally beer-like in character, the grape adds intriguing complexity.
When Saltram Wines' chief winemaker, Nigel Dolan, decided to make beer he approached Matilda Bay's head brewer, Brad Rogers, with a proposition (both work for the Foster's Group).
"I wondered if you could use grape juice to make beer and what it would add to the final character," Dolan says. When Rogers said it could be done, they made some test brews at the Matilda Bay Garage Brewery in South Dandenong.
The juice is a concentrated version of the same Barossa Valley grapes that went into 2006 Pepperjack Shiraz, with some 90 kilograms in a 2500-litre batch; about a third of the fermentable sugars that make Pepperjack Handcrafted Ale come from grape juice.
Apart from the shiraz, Dolan and Rogers selected grains including malted barley and malted wheat and hops that they felt would be complementary.
Czech saaz is used for a spicy bitterness and Amarillo provides tropical fruit notes, all of which balances the lively acidity and touch of tannin from the shiraz.
"The brewing process has parallels with winemaking," Dolan says. "In both you are converting natural, raw ingredients into fermented juices. Selecting different grains is like choosing different parcels of fruit for wine."
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