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

[O'Henry]

I think you could do it either way, or split the difference and use Cal Common yeast. The effort of a lager would be hard to justify adding fruit to, especially if it is lagered for a while imo...

 

[mckenry]

I think you could do it either way, or split the difference and use Cal Common yeast. The effort of a lager would be hard to justify adding fruit to, especially if it is lagered for a while imo...

I just had a thought. I have a culture of Belgian Abbey II.
How do you guys reckon a light colour, lowish BU beer would go with this yeast, to create a grapefruit radler?
Grapefruit may be rind, or juice to taste. Not sure yet, but how bout that yeast? I liked it in my belgian golden as it had that classic tartness that I remember grapefruit juice to have. Complimentary or opposing?

 

[O'Henry]

Split batch? Can you do two 25 litre batches from the one brew?

 

[mckenry]

Split batch? Can you do two 25 litre batches from the one brew?

Good call. I will.

 

[vykuza]

Frozberries has a special on sour cherries in NSW for September for $7.5/kg, so I'm heading up next week to get a couple of kilos for a sour cherry wheat beer. Aiming for 2kg for a 23L batch. At the same time I'm going to grab some strawberry puree and rhubarb for the Berliner Weisse I'm brewing at the moment, and putting half the batch on the fruit for something different.

Having not used the sour cherries before - does anyone know how much sourness it will bring to the party? I'm not looking to do a cheats kriek, but sour and cherry goes so well. I can always adjust with lactic acid.

 

[O'Henry]

It depends a lot on the variety. I would aim for a minimum of 150g/l fruit, 200g if you can, and more of the rhubarb. It doesn't come through as well. Also, rhubarb's tartness is from malic acid, not lactic, so it may bring more sourness without as much of the fruit flavour.

Strawberries have a lot of aroma compounds in the sugars so the flavour will fade as the sugars are consumed. It is bloody great after 1 or 2 weeks, but can't stand up to the lasting flavour of raspberries (3 years) or cherry (10+).

 

[BrewedCrudeandBitter]

I made an absolutely terrible Christmas ale last year when I first started out which used a can of cherries in syrup thrown in a bit of boiling water with some spices and blended up.

I thought I had tipped it all out but I found a bottle not long ago and tasted it for old time's sake. It was still a terrible beer but had improved dramatically and where there was once not a hint of cherries it was quite prominent almost a year on.