Skittlebrau?

[peas_and_corn]

OK, I'm trying to find a way of making a skittle beer work. I tried once- essentially I made a pale ale and added what I call 'skittle extract' that is, boiled skittles (they dissolve, I found out) to primary. It turned out to be too 'skittly'. I think that I mught have added too much, or going for the whole range rather than individual colours may have created problems in itself.

So there's a couple ideas and I was wondering if anyone had any input-

separating flavours/groups of flavours (ie green/yellow, orange/red)?
Mash skittles?
Skittles in stubbies (if so, how to balance with amount of sugar added?)?
Skittles/skittle extract in secondary?
How much to add?

This is an experiment that I've wanted to do for a while so it'll be good to bring it to FUITion. (ha, ha).

Cheers,

Dave

 

[Mr Bond]

A search found this thread

 

[peas_and_corn]

Cheers! Had a read of everything there...

The BA site mentioned that skittles don't have gelatine so the bottles won't have alien snot... which would be good.

So, the question is this- skittles in secondary or bottles? If I go for bottles I can separate flavours and have yellow in one, green in another, etc, which will be an advantage of aorts. Secondary I'll avoid the gunk in the bottle.

Then there's how to measuer how much priming sugar to add- maybe minus weight of skittles from the wieght of sugar I was going to put in anyway, or a little less subtracted (since not all will be fermented)?

 

[Adamt]

Well skittles are about 75% sugar (had a site with the info on but i lost it somewhere). Could boil the different colours up separately and prime with them. They might not dissolve properly (well the shell anyway) unless its heated/boiled.

 

[peas_and_corn]

they do dissolve quite well- my first attempt (boiling all together) had them dissolve quite well.

If I prime with liquid, as it seems you're suggesting, there's the issue of 1- what % is sugar and what % is skittle; also, how to work out how much liquid to add (I know it involves some simple maths, but it's been a long time since I've done any maths)?

 

[JCG]

My calculations whould suggest that you for every 3g priming suger you would use you wuold need 4g of skittle, if you were to bulk prime(23L) you need 240g skittle.

I would imagine that every 4g primer would be 3g sugar, 1g skittle per 375ml stubbie.

If I wanted to get skittle flavour specific to bottles I would break up brew into 4 x 5.75L batches bulk prime each with 60g of skittle.

Hope that Helps
JCG

 

[peas_and_corn]

That sounds the goods!!

I'm brewing an amber ale next (I already have the grain), so after that I'll be giving the skittlebrau another go. When it's all ready, I'll certainly post the results on the forum, with notes on each flavour!

I'm looking forward to that one now... it will be interesting...