Style Of The Week 10/12/08 - Fruit Beers

[brettprevans]

the King of Fruit beers, extract, (now AGing) has spoken.

Ive made a few of Ben's brews and they are great. His Strawbeery and a couple of others are getting a go this summer.

 

[drsmurto]

I can get berries relatively cheap ($10/kg) so maybe thats what i should look into.

Jam strawberries should start appearing very soon - saw them last year for $3/kg.

Any comments on using a Kolsch base rather than a weizen? I like it, more so as i have very little wheat but also as i actually like a Kolsch.

Do you treat the beer with any finings before kegging?

 

[newguy]

Hi Newguy,
my wife has been onto me about making a mango beer. Do you remember the fruit to beer ratio you used?

Sorry for the delay in answering. I juiced 16 Phillipine mangoes and added that to ~17-18l of kolsch. The mangoes available in most grocery stores here are the Mexican "Tommy" variety. They're very large and are red when ripe. I found the Phillipine mangoes in a Chinese grocery. They're yellow and about 1/2 the size of the Tommy variety. I can't recall for certain, but I think that there was 2-3l of juice. Hope this helps.

 

[newguy]

What would be a good fruit to put with a Kolsch base?

2 or 3 years ago for the AHA's Big Brew Day, we contracted a local micro to produce 1200l of what was essentially kolsch wort - approx 85% pale, 5% light munich and 10% wheat, bittered with a single addition to ~20 IBU. A lot of people that bought that wort ended up making fruit beers and most seemed to turn out well. Strawberries, raspberries (in moderation), and blueberries all worked very well. Someone tried making a plum kolsch and it didn't work out so good but I think that's because plums usually don't have a lot of flavour (I find anyway). I've done a mango kolsch (mentioned earlier) and it was really good.

 

[brettprevans]

Any comments on using a Kolsch base rather than a weizen?

from my limited experiance with both (mostly drinking them rather than brewing), I recon the kolsch would be better with the light berry but its a bitch to settle the yeast out. if kolsch hears a mouse fart is stirs up. I like the kolsch style. *CM2 now waits for lots of other who know better to tell me that im wrong*

Jaming Straws - closest I could find this afternoon (after phoneing around) was in Silvan (about 60min from melb). $5 per kilo. not bad so ive order 4 kg for saturday pickup. Guess im making making Ben's strawbeerry this weekend!

 

[bconnery]

I can get berries relatively cheap ($10/kg) so maybe thats what i should look into.

Jam strawberries should start appearing very soon - saw them last year for $3/kg.

Any comments on using a Kolsch base rather than a weizen? I like it, more so as i have very little wheat but also as i actually like a Kolsch.

Do you treat the beer with any finings before kegging?

I think a Kolsch would work very nicely for fruit beers in general. I don't see the cloudiness as an issue.
I haven't actually made one yet so I can't speak from experience but I've drunk some and I say go for it!

Truth be told i haven't actually kegged any fruit beers yet because I generally need to distribute them to family a bit so I bottle them.

I would just rack them from the fruit for my final step which is a few days in the fridge for cold conditioning and then gelatine as I normally do.

 

[brettprevans]

well my strawbeery ale is down (BConnery's recipe)
I should have read the wiki article forst though.....


DON'T boil, you'll lose all your fruity goodness and risk leaching pectic acid into your wort, causing a haze in the final beer.
bugger, well i only sort of boiled it. more like bough it to a simmering bubble.

DON'T pulp. Don't bother - This will just make it harder to rack your beer off the fruit. See "Freezing" below.i pulped them too. but i did freeze them afterwards.

DO freeze your fruits for a few days or weeks before you use it. This will break-down the cell membranes and make the fruitiness easier to extract into your beer. finally got something right

Unless you grow them yourself, don't bother with strawberries - you need a truck-load of them to make any impression on the beer. Or alternatively buy a large box of 'jamming' strawberries from a market.couldnt get jamming strawberries even from a berry farm. used 4kg of normal strawbs

smells and looks greatin the secondary. should be ready to keg in a few days. will post pics once ready,

 

[winkle]

Will be doing a batch of my Acerola Pale Ale this week since we're into fruit beer weather. This time using 0.5kg of steamed rice and mashing it at 64 c. Yeast - 3711, should end up pretty damm dry B) .

 

[kook]

Just tried some cherry witbier that I'd made for the wife, using the morebeer flavourings. Bit dissapointing - they don't seem to add any colour, and the flavouring/aroma seems a bit muted. Will add another bottle in 24hrs and see if it helps. FYI - ratio was one 4oz bottle in 10L of beer.

 

[drsmurto]

With the hefeweizen now bubbling away and the strawbs ready to be chucked into secondary my thoughts have turned back to the nectarines.

They are almost ready, i can smell them metres from the tree and its leaning over under the weight of all the fruit.

IIRC Mercs own makes a peach beer? Since nectarines are peaches without the 'fuzzy' skin i thought i could be onto something here. I could easily spare several kg to go in a beer, i gave away more than 15kg last year to work colleagues along with yellow plums and vast quantities of figs (which this year are bigger than the nectarines!).

I think since its a much more subtle flavour than berries it would work more in a kolsch base than a weizen......

Its also the last year for my satsuma plum which is falling over and will need to be cut down after fruiting. I had plans of putting the plums into an old ale or a stout.

 

[Pennywise]

Just tried some cherry witbier that I'd made for the wife, using the morebeer flavourings. Bit dissapointing - they don't seem to add any colour, and the flavouring/aroma seems a bit muted. Will add another bottle in 24hrs and see if it helps. FYI - ratio was one 4oz bottle in 10L of beer.

Are those the flavouings that Craftbrewer sell? If so, I've found that the flavour actually gets more intense as time goes on (well, from the one time I've used them anyway). I made a rasberry wit and could hardly notice the flavour to start with, about 2 weeks later, it was quite noticable.

 

[bconnery]

With the hefeweizen now bubbling away and the strawbs ready to be chucked into secondary my thoughts have turned back to the nectarines.

They are almost ready, i can smell them metres from the tree and its leaning over under the weight of all the fruit.

IIRC Mercs own makes a peach beer? Since nectarines are peaches without the 'fuzzy' skin i thought i could be onto something here. I could easily spare several kg to go in a beer, i gave away more than 15kg last year to work colleagues along with yellow plums and vast quantities of figs (which this year are bigger than the nectarines!).

I think since its a much more subtle flavour than berries it would work more in a kolsch base than a weizen......

Its also the last year for my satsuma plum which is falling over and will need to be cut down after fruiting. I had plans of putting the plums into an old ale or a stout.

Let me know how you go with the nectarines. They are my favourite fruit so I've been trying to work out what beer might work for them.
I think a kolsch could be good.
I had an idea of something using hops like D-Saaz, from which I get a strong stonefruit flavour, as a sort of complement. Kind of a fruit APA as it where. But I'm not sure whether that's really a good idea.
Otherwise maybe stewing or baking them first with some vanilla or cinnamon sugar and then in the beer? Or toast some malt in a juice of the pulp of them?

15kgs, the mind boggles. You'd see me a lot if I lived round your way

 

[barls]

just put the the keg of raspberry wheat i did a while ago ( a case swap at least a year ago), ill try to get a pic of it.

 

[barls]

here it is boys and girls.

 

[raven19]

With the hefeweizen now bubbling away and the strawbs ready to be chucked into secondary my thoughts have turned back to the nectarines.

They are almost ready, i can smell them metres from the tree and its leaning over under the weight of all the fruit.

IIRC Mercs own makes a peach beer? Since nectarines are peaches without the 'fuzzy' skin i thought i could be onto something here. I could easily spare several kg to go in a beer, i gave away more than 15kg last year to work colleagues along with yellow plums and vast quantities of figs (which this year are bigger than the nectarines!).

I think since its a much more subtle flavour than berries it would work more in a kolsch base than a weizen......

Its also the last year for my satsuma plum which is falling over and will need to be cut down after fruiting. I had plans of putting the plums into an old ale or a stout.

I have a Kolsch in secondary with Gelatine already added. Shall I keep some aside for a small experiment? Happy to split the proceeds with you Dr if you are able to spare some fruit.

 

[drsmurto]

I have a Kolsch in secondary with Gelatine already added. Shall I keep some aside for a small experiment? Happy to split the proceeds with you Dr if you are able to spare some fruit.

Sounds like a plan!

They are very close to being ready, probably another week at most.

How many litres do you want to trial? I can easily spare a few kg.

 

[raven19]

Well the Kolsch is pretty darn tasty as is. Have 20L ish in the secondary. Maybe a 5L experiment, will use some different dosing rates of fruit for some side by sides...

Iirc 3G used a heap of rasberries in his wheat a while back - ended up a tad too acidic. But when blended it was tops.

Thinking 3 x 2L old juice containers, dose with differing amounts of fruit. Ferment out, then bottle.

I dare say 2 kg would be more than enough...?

 

[drsmurto]

No problem.

Does this count as collaboration brewing? :lol:

Ok, so nectarine beer sorted, now for the figs.

 

[mfeighan]

sort of OT, but what is a kolsch and what commercial examples could i try - dan murpheys is down the road so semi decent selection to choose from

back on topic
i did a double batch of wheat beer and split it to experiment with fruit, added about 1.2kg raspberries into a secondary fermenter with 20l
just tasting out of the fermenter it is quite tart but has a nice subtle raspberry background. did i add too much berrys for the tartness or should i have brewed a higher fg beer to combat it or is that the taste i was supposed to get FG is 1010 and hasnt moved for a few days

 

[raven19]

No problem.

Does this count as collaboration brewing? :lol:

Ok, so nectarine beer sorted, now for the figs.

I ended up going Peaches in the Kolsch - bottled it this arvo.

I went with varying %'s of fruit in 3 different mini-batches. Will need the Dr's sampling still! :icon_cheers: